EbbeAltberg
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Second Life's second act will be a social network for virtual reality
Eight years ago, I was slouching through my college's required mass-media course and silently groaning while my professor excitedly mapped out the promises of Second Life. That online virtual world, where players create items, clothes, buildings and more for actual sale, would replace the internet, she told us, and render the humble web page as outmoded as the Xerox machine. Her enthusiasm wasn't unwarranted for the time: The first user to earn a million dollars on Second Life had just been featured in Businessweek, and Reuters had assigned a full-time reporter to cover that digital frontier. Ebbe Altberg, CEO of Second Life-maker Linden Lab, admits the press' overblown expectations didn't match up with the early realities of the service. "There was this impression that it under-delivered," he says, speaking from the company's San Francisco office. "It was sort of unfairly overhyped and then got the backlash of the under-hype."
