Simple: it is a big laboratory for trying out new approaches, getting new experiences that can be transferred to other, future projects, too. Though Second Life is not perfect, it is still going to be thrilling in the future and that is why it matters.
These are not only my words, but for example also the words of Sponto and Pham Neutra agrees with him (both articles in German).
Torley Linden has a nice entry about a series of photographs of the Lindens! Go ahead and take a look at it, it’s nice to see them, especially since some are complaining they’re more or less invisible nowadays on the main grid.
I’ve spent today again some time on the voice beta test grid. It has been quite fun and interesting to see how voice is going to change the SL experience.
It’s also a good way to see the Lindens live; no wonder, since it’s beta and only under 10 regions are online, you can see them there. I saw Pathfinder Linden and another Linden, Monroe Linden, even used voice and talked with us a little! Great!
So, basically when you’re going online on the beta grid it’s first looking where the crowd is. There are perhaps 30-40 people online the same time, and they use to flock around, well, that’s my experience so far.
Today was also interesting since we’ve seen an avatar from the company that is providing the voice technology, Vivox, Rockin Randall, who talked with us and answered some questions to us. Nice guy and some very interesting insights, for sure this is going to scale at great lengths, if necessary!
Well, here’s also a little snapshot to show the speech indicators in action, just click on the thumbnail to see the big picture. 
The version 1.0 of Croquet has been released today; no beta anymore. This is for sure a great step for this project and I am excited to see to which place this is going to lead this project now!
BTW, I’ve found another 3d-project today on my radar: Uni-Verse. Founded by the European Union, developed by academic institutes, seems the purpose of this project more in the field of 3d-collaboration. It’s, like Croquet, also Opensource and the demonstration movie on their website looks very interesting. It has also interfaces to Maya and Blender – no wonder since the Blender foundation is involved in the development of Uni-Verse.
It’s really funny upon which things you can stumble upon into Second Life. Goreans are a big and well known community there. But, until now, I never knew that there are also gay Goreans around. I’ve stumbled upon a group called "Gay Gorean Coalition."
The purpose of this group is:
To promote & help gay rp’ers in the Gor community.
We meet the 2nd Saturday of every month at 1pm SL time. Place to be announced.
If you need help or wish to network with others, we are here to help.
SL never ceases to amaze me…