It was a running joke for a good while that the Tech industry’s journalists kept a premature obituary on file for Second Life, in a similar fashion that the media outlets keep one in case someone famous hits the can.

Second Life (2003-2009)

Home to a passionate community of gamblers, paedophiles, terrorists, and a lot of sad people who never left their mother’s basements.

And that’s just The Business Insider’s obit. Imagine what FOXNews have hidden away.

InformationWeek ran an interesting analysis in the long-levity of Second Life this week, which is a bit more rational than the usual “zomg – they have sex and gambling and porn and stuffs!” which I’m sure might even get old some day.

But again, InformationWeek haven’t said anything which hasn’t been said before by.. umm.. me. It’s only natural to question the direction of Second Life, and the article looks at the practicalities of the platform. Can enough computers handle the bandwidth and power that Second Life demands to keep it sustainable? Is there enough people in the virtual world to sustain an economy which revolves around buying digital information which “doesn’t exist” in a format where you actually own it yourself – it still remains on LL’s servers.

Thing is, the growing trend in online culture is becoming more mainstream all the time. The advent of Facebook and Twitter are now a part of everyday life for the masses, and with it, so is virtual spending. A report on the BBC says Americans will spend $1 billion on virtual goods this year, on various platforms. And if people are willing to buy little icons for their Facebook page, or splash out on a 2.5D mansion for their Farmtown plot, why wouldn’t they want to create their dream home in Second Life? The idea of buying virtual goods is becoming more mainstream, and with it, the concept of the Second Life grid is destined to become more secure. The whole system relies on the virtual economy, and the more people who are willing to spend in SL, the more it will grow.

The article gives rise to whether Linden Labs’ “dauntingly complex code running on giant server farms” can handle an influx of new users, when grid stability is constantly under scrutiny. As they’re well aware, the key issue affecting the future of Second Life is not grid stability though – it’s the First Hour Experience, which I’m not seeing much progress on, other than a new resource-hogging website which looks just as scary as a user’s first time in SL.

The CSI:NY event showed Second Life that half a million users can try out the platform, but most will simply be too confused and not “get it” as SL is different to what most people are used to. Show someone a game platform, and they expect an objective in a similar way to a game. People just aren’t geared to the concept of a virtual world which has no “win scenario”.

This is the reason you don’t see adverts for Second Life anywhere – most people who try it out would simply get lost, confused and annoyed if they can’t work it out. Nailing down the First Hour Experience is critical for Second Life to bring in new people, and to keep them on the grid. Second Life is otherwise stable enough with a solid and loyal userbase, a grid which doesn’t actually go down as much as we make it out to, and run by a company which is claiming healthy profit.

The sky isn’t falling at all. But the future does have more questions than answers right now.