BBC Radio 1 has 'rented' a tropical island within Second Life for a year, where the world's biggest virtual music festival was staged in parallel with the One Big Weekend event. Last month Regina Spektor's album was the first virtual record release by a major company. We'd been looking for the broadband killer application, and Second Life is it.' 'It's such an immersive experience that people get it quicker than anything else. 'It's the best combination of social networking, chatrooms and a 3D experience,' said Justin Bovington, chief executive of Rivers Run Red, a London branding agency helping to shape Second Life. Women make up 43 per cent of the residents, and the average age is 32. It is an internet community, where people can flirt, do business or go off and build their own virtual Las Vegas. But the most popular, World of Warcraft, is a fantasy of swords and sorcery, while variants such as The Sims also have a defined endgame. There is nothing new about what are known in industry as MMORPGs: Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games, in which thousands of people play at once. And so friendships, love affairs and entire subcultures develop. When they meet another avatar they can start a conversation. Participants choose their avatar's identity - potentially changing sex and ethnicity - then guide it wherever they choose: down streets, into nightclubs, gatecrashing weddings. They do this chatting and trading under an assumed identity - their second life.Īll this is played out in a sprawling virtual country, with its own simulated cities, streets and red light districts. Some run businesses and convert the profits into money in the real world, and some do the same for charity. Some form mutual support groups because in the real world they have a disability or are victims of rape. Some demonstrate their talents in designing virtual buildings or fashions. Second Life has more than 300,000 residents, an estimated third of them British. This is Second Life, the social networking website now recruiting up to 3,000 members a day, attracting the interest of American politicians and threatening to give MySpace a run for its money.
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