Think of places in the real world where parks and other public space are absent – the streets are deserted. Art is imitating Life.

If it did catch on, it would need conversation to hold peoples' interest. It will probably never be a place for an effective life of the body (sight is the only sense really engaged), but it could become a place for a second life of the mind.

One of the common complaints I hear is from people discouraged that they didn't get their hand held, that they didn't see what they wanted presented compellingly to them in the limited time that they gave it. Go hunt for it! Or make it yourself, and they will come. SL is huge, and is not limited in personalities or intellects. There are more channels than cable TV, and you know how difficult it is to find anything interesting in that medium.

The forced and artificial inflation of their numbers wasn't just to draw potential premium users or encourage more USD to Linden$ transations, it was also to demonstrate their claims of the platform's scalability. The predictable churn following hasn't perturbed them because it did raise a boost of revenue and investment interest while allowing them to monitor and report how their grid responds to the traffic burden, while costing them nothing but the goodwill of their earlier userbase. Admitting that I'm among that earlier userbase is to indicate how cynical that last observation is — their performance during that stress test was not what they promised, if it's what they really believed.

What will they do when they've relieved themselves of this property they've so promoted? Well, they'll also be relieving themselves of the liability of the free expressions they have encouraged in Residents up to now, so they'll be positioned as the squeaky clean leaders of sim technology and development. After charging the users for years, the users will be able to ride for free, because they are the market audience that businesses will buy sim hosting for.

Linden Labs may retain some premium lands for those who like that 'private membership' feeling, they may produce premium plugins to provide improved content and capabilities, but I think their prime business will be in tech support services and sim-design for those corporations who have bought in or will buy in to hosting on secondlife:// protocols.

I think your idea that Second Life has to be a place for people to live is way off. People don't live in virtual worlds any more than people live on MySpace. And yet, MySpace is hugely popular. Second Life is an Internet extension, not a new place to live. You totally nailed some of the possibilities in your "for SL" section, and then promptly ignored your own advice.

Granted, the name kind of implies what you were thinking, so it's misnamed.

"You build it, they will come" is absolutely not the principle behind SL. That's a common misnomer, and one that I always am explaining to clients. SL's principle is, "They come and build it."

On the numbers, this is reminiscent of AOL's problem for a long time, which was the rate of churn. People would try the service for the free period, then drop off. This gave them enflated numbers for a while but it became apprarent that there wasn't legs to it, and they had to adopt. Then the self-assembled environment of the internet came along and largely blew the walled garden of AOL off the map (along with Prodigy, Compuserve, etc.)

What all these places tried to do was create centers of attention that were like the corner bar or the coffee shop. The intentional vastness of SL perhaps works against that at the moment. It's like a new subdivision – lots of buildings and manicured lawns and saplings, but no people.

I agree on the intelligent conversation front – unfortunately the anonymity of the internet seems to breed rudeness and vacuousness, despite the wealth of information and culture at your fingertips. So I wouldn't get my hopes up there. The last time a really intelligent prolonged conversation happened on the internet was perhaps on the WELL (OK, I'm being blunt here to make a point).