Managing the Gray – Positive Advice That Everyone Can Use to Succeed

No, he really doesn’t. He sees a part of the metaverse only because it’s sticking out of the water for him. 7/8ths of SecondLife he apparently hasn’t seen… and overhyping that 1/8th doesn’t help matters.

Fair point, but of course a publication such as Fortune is going to focus on traditional companies first. That’s the nature of traditional media.

I was just happy to see someone point out what can be done in this medium rather then making it out to be something that it is not.

From the article:

“So far Second Life is way too hard to use. The people who do best there are still techie types. It requires a fairly powerful computer. You have to download a special software application to use it. It can’t be used in many corporate offices (like mine at Time Inc., for instance).”

This is what SL needs to overcome to really make it mainstream. While it is catching on in circles, it really still is in its infancy, and as such remains a niche service. Until the average person with an average computer can EASILY sign-up and get around SL, it will remain niche. The lag and performance issues really need to be addressed, and soon, while the iron is hot and the attention is there.

Lag can’t be addressed until you can run fiber to the home and have a 10Mbps up and down at the wall.

Performance will sort it self out as people get into the upgrade cycles. The cheapest $350 Dell you can get today blows away the $2000 option from 18 months ago.

The thing I find interesting is how distorted people’s views get to be. CC thinks that SL is the best thing since sliced bread and possibly the most important social achievment of the century (but it’s still early). He’s waiting for the FireWire jack intol the back of his skull to become a reality.

Others (myself included) think it’s kinda interesting, but it also somewhat like EverQuest only more pointless (probably not the best word, but the best I can come up with right now). If you could have gotten over the fact that people looked like Orcs or whatever, you could still have a board meeting in EQ with possibly better scenery. Then you could kill a dragon.

Yesterday I met a guy who asked me “Have you ever heard of this You Tube thing? What’s it do?”

That guy is representative of 99% of the population at large. Not the constantly wired community that we’ve defined for ourselves. I think it’s gonna be really interesting to see how, or in fact IF, the communities come together and where they will do it.