Response to "Why Second Life Will Never Go Mainstream"

Someone has said that this might be the season for SL-bashing, after about a year and a half of SL frenzy in the media. Seems to be true from some of the recent coverage I've seen, including an article from SciFi Tech that says SL is "hard" and "not very fun."

Indulge me for a moment as I mimick the author's style and tone in a whimsical trip through time to my first experience on the World Wide Web, back in the mid-1990s:

"I'm convinced that most reporters who write about the Web have never explored it themselves. Maybe they read news stories about it, but if they had actually "been" to the "web," they wouldn't write about it as if it were a normal place.

Until I decided to write this column, I had never been to the Web. I got a disk from America OnLine months ago and signed up for a free trial account, when the Web was appearing in the news every day, but after choosing my virtual name I had never looked around. I suspected that exploring the "web" would be time-consuming, without much reward. I was dead right. The other week when I actually "went online", I discovered just how much of a learning curve there is, and realized what I'd long suspected: the World Wide Web requires far too much effort and expertise to become mainstream.

It's Hard…

News outlets make it seem like anything goes on the Web, and that anyone can just create a great web page or meet new friends in "chat rooms". Anything goes! This isn't exactly the case. Users only have that sort of "freedom" when they know how to write in a special language called HTML that lets them make a web page other people would actually want to visit. So far, all I know how to do is enter a chat room (where a dozen people say hello but talk about nothing) and press the buttons at the top of the screen which take me to predictable, but not terribly useful places, like financial news or email. As with most things on the Web, you either have to design them yourself, or purchase them from an entrepreneurial designer.

The Web is difficult from the beginning. After a painfully slow wait, a page appears on your screen and there's so much to learn! I'd bet that a lot of potential Web users never make it off of that first page.

…And not Very Fun

I did eventually make it into the "web browser", where I set off to find some friends. I had learned in my training how to enter URL addresses, so I transported myself to parts of the Web that had the most active people. The first turned out to be a casino. Nobody there was socializing — everyone was gambling quietly, only saying commands. This seemed like something people could do just as easily in their own homes. In any case, I didn't see any potential friends lurking about.

The second location turned out to be a pornography site. I got out of there as soon as I figured out what it was.

I wandered away from that page, disconcerted. This is where people spend time? The Web is full of empty sites and poorly designed "home pages". Ads are everywhere, even when you don't want or expect them. One of my favorite activities in real life is reading, so I "surfed" to a site called Project Gutenberg I had heard about. It had about 1000 books, almost all of which I could easily find in my public library. Big deal. And since the texts were "uploaded" by random citizens, they had plenty of spelling errors: that's the problem with user-created content: Users aren't always so great at creating content, even messing up great works of literature.

Why the Web?

Let's say that you'd like to frequent a place where you can network with friends, meet new people, explore common interests, express political beliefs, and even find love. There are a few of those places out there, most notably churches, bars, and cafes. But what about the Web? Online, proponents might argue, you can do all those things and also have access to anything your mind can imagine.

The question that will largely determine the WWW's future is: Are people more interested in making friends and exploring common interests, or in finding a movie review or looking at a picture of someone's coffeemaker? Because if they're more interested in the former, then they'd be better served by turning off their modem and walking downtown. It's easier to do, and you're less likely to do something that would embarass your grandmother.

AOL and the Web will probably continue to grow users steadily (AOL now has over 3 million users), but they will remain a niche application. Need to send a letter? Use a mailbox or just an email program without all the unnecessary and slow WWW bells and whistles. Want a friend? Go meet one - even if they aren't (supposedly) a buxom blonde from Colorado. Real life and SIMPLE computer programs will win this war: people should spend their money and time there. And they would if the media stopped fawning over the WWW and had a better sense of what it is — difficult — and what it isn't: the future of mainstream socializing."

It's been said before but it bears repeating: SL has a lot of shortcomings, but it is the kernel of a new Internet platform that has great potential, much like the Web in the 1990's. Are you going to shoot it down or make it better?