Mario Sixtus, a well known German freelancing journalist, wrote a very critical article about Second Life and the hype around it in his blog. Translated it’s called somewhat like „My ultimately last words about Second Life“.
His message is basically this: modern web platforms have reached today an abstract level, that constantly refuses to be compared with RL equivalencies. Journalists actually have to learn something new if they want to write about those services.
On the other side there’s Second Life: nice, colorful pictures, you can actually show nice movies of the world in your articles, no need anymore to show boring sequences with someone just hacking onto his keyboard, and, oh, look, how convenient, it’s all about sex, so let’s write about it! Ah, a millionaire already? Let’s write about it!
It’s also no wonder, according to Sixtus, that the industry is hailing SL as it’s saviour, since old strategies did not work very well in the WWW and you actually have to learn something new.
In Second Life it’s just like in the good old times[tm]: making ads, opening branches, having nice launches and so on and on… and even better, this time you’ve got the press on YOUR side! Amazing!
Sixtus‘ conclusion is: Second Life is not the internet, it’s a biotop, a bubble for people who fear the future. So it’s target group is for people who still think in terms of the old century; it’s basically the past, but not the future.