Businessweek Goes Back to SL

Location: Reflective State of Mind

All in all, it's not a bad treatment of what has happened since their famous 2006 cover story. That earlier piece (cover image shown) greatly contributed to the hype-and-bust cycle that we are still experiencing.

I might quibble with a few points, but some standout observations include:

• How the broken in-world search contributes to problems in growing SL
• How the clunky UI and orientation experiences deter new members.
• The mainland prices have tanked.
  
• That a cloud-based SL would prove better for most mainstream users; I agree.
• That the Lab seems to have bought into the inevitability of virtual worlds as "The Next Internet."

Much of Matt Robinson's story (click for full story) is devoted to interviewing the four individuals featured in 2006. It' s worth a look to show where we've come since then. For a change, mainstream media covered a virtual world with some care and attention to details.