Second Life seeks to mix the real and virtual worlds

Second Life now has more than 650,000 active residents

Linden Lab's Second Life virtual universe continues to prosper and grow despite the gloomy economy of the real world, and is shifting its attention to helping mix the two realities.

Second Life has just celebrated its sixth birthday, and in an interview with V3.co.uk, the company's chief product officer, Tom Hale, put to rest any concerns that interest in the online world is waning. He also laid out plans for how the site intends to continue to expand in the future.

Hale claimed that there were 656,867 active Second Life residents in May 2009, racking up over a million logins and over 43 million in-world hours. Users each logged an average of 42.65 hours a month, and generated just under $50m (£30m) worth of user-to-user transactions.

Although Second Life is not a game, it is the second most popular online world, according to Nielsen's April ratings, some way behind the hugely successful World of Warcraft, but well ahead of Lord of the Rings Online and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.

Hale went on to detail some of the initiatives underway designed to expand the presence of Second Life, and to help aid interaction between in-world and online users via three "rings" of interaction. At the core is the full immersion within Second Life. Next is the light immersion offered through web-based interaction, while the outer ring consists of messaging and voice services both within and without the world.

"We want to make Second Life more accessible to anyone to communicate and share Second Life through the web," said Hale.

"Linden Lab recognises there's a place for lighter-weight engagement with Second Life, and further leveraging the web is a strategic choice for the company, hence the launch of the new dashboard and web site refresh."

As part of the move, the company has released a beta version of the new dashboard which provides a lightweight web interface to offer an insight into the world without having to log in. The dashboard provides access to several social networking-style tools, such as a map of Second Life, presence details of friends, upcoming events, recent activity and status updates.

This allows users to see whether anything of interest is going on in-world, or whether friends are online, before firing up the client. Similarly, it caters for a certain level of involvement in situations where the full application cannot be loaded.

"The idea is to make it even easier for residents to manage their Second Life experience, locate and jump straight to relevant places, and provide a familiar place from which to explore," added Hale.

Linden Lab also plans to introduce more services, and to integrate with other popular social networks and online services, further associating the avatar with the person's real identity.

Hale gave the example of working with other online agencies, such as dating sites, to offer another step in the meeting process by letting users create avatars that could explore the world on a 'virtual date', allowing people to get to know each other even better before meeting in person.

Another fundamental part of the transition is the growing use of Second Life's extremely popular in-world and out-world voice functionality.

Voice services were introduced into Second Life in 2007. Over half of residents use them every day, and around 16 billion minutes have already been logged. Around a billion more minutes are added every month, making Second Life one of the largest VoIP providers in the world.

Linden Lab plans to expand these voice services further, making it easier to make calls and send messages from within the world to external friends and family even if they are not Second Life residents.

Business use of Second Life continues to grow, and several large organisations use it to host meetings and presentations, both internally and with customers and clients. Linden Lab is also trying to help ease the introduction for new users to Second Life.

"With such a broad canvas of opportunity available in Second Life, it can often quickly become overwhelming for new users entering the world," explained Hale.

"We're developing ways to create that essential 'hook' that allows newcomers to find the experiences they are most interested in, and then discover more and more as they become more comfortable within the world."

To do this Second Life is introducing the concept of Pathways, which provide a "filtered experience" to guide new users in certain directions based on their preferences or initial reason for entering the online universe.

The idea is not to separate the world into disparate pieces, but rather to try and help users gradually discover various aspects of the world rather than face it as a single deluge.

Linden Lab has also opened an adult-only part of the grid, dubbed Zindara, and a filtered search which uses age verification service Aristotle to ensure that users are legally allowed to access adult themed content.

Although the hype and coverage around Second Life has declined, it is clear that the virtual world is not going to disappear any time soon. Interaction continues to grow steadily, and its economy has remained healthy despite adverse conditions in the real world.