UberNoggin

I just got back from the Second Life Community Convention (SLCC) and I’m absolutely buzzing with big ideas! Don’t stop reading if you’re a SL naysayer. There’s more to this than meets the eye. If you’re at all interested in how Web 2.0 concepts are changing the internet and how we work, socialize, and think you should be paying attention to the SL phenomenon.

I gave a talk about education in SL at the convention and managed to stir up some big ideas from folks I talked to afterwards who have my brain bouncing around to big big things. First, let me point out that SL is very much a web 2.0 space. Let me go back to my 4 traits of web 2.0:

1. Off-site data: Yes. Your avatar, its inventory, and the rest of the SL world lives on remote servers so no matter what machine you’re on when you log in the world looks and works the same.
2. API: Yes. SL is becoming more open by the day but there are already significant API opportunities for porting data in and out of the space.
3. Prosumer: Oh Yes! Everything in SL is user generated. EVERYTHING! You don’t get much more prosumer than that.
4. Social: For sure! SL is people. Without the people who use the platform, who build and create, and who host events SL would be as empty and dead as the press claims it to be.

So what’s the big deal about SL being web 2.0? Integration. There are lots of 2.0 apps that let you pull info from other services you use but none that has such huge potential as SL. I’m on a constant search for a web 2.0 space where all of my other info feeds and social networks are easily integrated and accessed. But for that to be truly practical you need a space where folks are eager to spend their time, a central “space” that people can call home and pull all of their relevant info to them. In my mind, SL has the greatest potential. If I could sit in my house in SL and edit a rich text doc, see friend notices from other systems such as Facebook, listen to music, and peruse my RSS feeds I’d be a very happy girl. So why do all this in an immersive environment? Why not just a mashup website? Because SL offers tools that are not available on the 2D web. I can’t bring easy 3D modeling of ideas, spatial understanding, custom visuals etc into a 2D mashup site but I CAN bring all of the 2D functions into the 3D space (or at least I hope we’ll be able to soon).

SL could be the most powerful virtual global village around. Imagine dragging a headline onto a friend so he could read the same blog you’re looking at. Or even better, dragging the headline onto a wall so you could read it at the same time. I dream of websites that look more like groups of rooms with doors and teleports to other rooms where I can “surf” along with other people who are in the space and we can talk about what we’re seeing and then add those ideas back to the sites we’re visiting together.

Why can’t the future be here faster!?