I have always maintained that I LOVE Second Life... even when I literally had no more than 5 minutes in a day to myself, thus couldn't be online, I still talked incessantly about the platform.
Everyone - even the most dediacted users - have had moments of "I think I've had enough." But we always bounce back :)
I was having that conversation with my sister today, to whom I was talking about a couple of poets and a literary agent I have interested in coming in to the virtual world to perform (in the case of the poets) or hold a Q&A session for budding writers (in the case of the agent).
My sister has never really been a fan of SL. She did set up an avatar once but couldn't get to grips with the platform at all. She said, however, for the first poet lined up, that she is going to try again just to hear the performance.
Which got me thinking... if more people were aware of such opportunities within the virtual world, would more people use it? Although it has a userbase of over 12 million now, SL still struggles to attract many more than 80,000 online at any single time. If the technology can withstand it, do we think more people could and would be online at once if this type of event (and others too including live music and so on) were made more publicly available?
Too many great venues fail because of a lack of people. I know people who have closed entire places through the sheer frustration at holding a decent event but having nobody show up (granted, sometimes a tantrum cos one event went badly and sometimes genuinely after months of hard work is proving ineffective). Is there really too much competition for the crowd or is it simply that the virtual world is underpopulated?
Anyway... I would normally post thoughts like this on my SL blog... but since my point is about reaching an audience not yet involved, I guess it makes sense to post this particular musing here.
And that, folks... is all from me :)
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