Myspace, Facebook, Second Life agh please doll! Sooo last season!

It seems to me that virtual communities like Facebook , Myspace and Second Life are just fashion accessories that are this season’s must haves. Is there a point when these social utility networks become old and outdated and ‘so last week’?
For myself, last year was the year of Myspace. Only the cool kids had Myspace accounts. But the particularly ultra cool kids had personalised backgrounds and made friends with Zach Braff. Then this year the Facebook craze hit hard. And all of a sudden Myspace didn’t seem that new or cool anymore.

But how long will the Facebook craze go on for? Surely there has to be a point when the amount of friends you know reaches a maximum. And then what? When the site has nothing new to offer people will get bored and stop logging on. I know this happened to me with Myspace because it got to the point where only random people were asking to be my friend. I got bored with the site and stopped logging on.

The reason I started thinking of this topic is because I started thinking about the people who have left their jobs to start solely producing their income by selling virtual products on Second Life. Surely this is a major risk, because like Nelly Furtado says all good things must come to an end. The virtual world Second Life can’t go on forever because it is a fad, just like how the Friendster fad died. Fashion trends whether they are virtual or not follow the same life line. The trend emerges with the underground people who are in with the know, it hits the mainstream and explodes commercially and then as soon as the nine year olds start sporting the trend then you know it has died and has lost all sense of ‘coolness’.

Maybe I’m just a pessimist, but I don’t think that virtual communities are here to stay. Maybe the concept will stick around for sometime but I don’t think you’ll catch me logging in Facebook or Myspace in 3 years time. What do you think?

Interested in this argument? Check out this site that also talk more on the subject as well as here .

My second life is madness

Until a few hours ago I my understanding of the term second life is when you die and go to heaven (or hell if you a bad ass). Second Life is also however a 3-D virtual community where people create avatars and interact with other avatars, create homes, businesses, go to clubs, go shopping, have sex -basically have a normal real life in a virtual space. Basically its the human form of the tamagotchi and every socially inept computer nerd’s dream.

In Second Life you build your own avatars and pretty much anything else you want to like cars, clothes, disco balls, lamps etc. out of building tools. Because you control the IP rights to the things you build, you can sell them to other users with the Second Life currency of the Linden Dollar ($L). But here is where things get a little absurd. Once you have accumulated enough Linden Dollars you can exchange them into real life American Dollars, the exchange rate at the moment is 300 $L to 1 U.S $.

The initial basic membership is free on Second Life, however every additional alternative account is a once off $9.95. But having a basic membership doesn’t let your avatar (or virtual self) to have much of a lifestyle because it means you can’t own land and therefore your avatar (or virtual self) will be homeless. So by signing up for the premium account for $9.95 a month you can buy land and build on it.

So as a South African I would fork out R71.69 (at the current exchange rate) a month to have a premium virtual lifestyle. Plus I would have to spend even more to buy things that I would be too lazy or incapable of building myself. It just seems crazy to me that people are willing to spend hard earn cash on something that isn’t even real. Business savvy people have jumped on the Second Life bandwagon by creating real life businesses that specialise in selling virtual products for characters. It’s mind boggling that people have created a living selling nothing for something. For more of this topic check out Business Week's My Virtual Life.

For another intersting blog see My so-called Second Life
Also check out Second Life's creators blog