I used to play a lot of second life when I was younger. It was interesting to see what happened to everyone I used to play with.
Everyone became a programmer,or a 3d modeler. Something about having a programming language and the ability to make things strapped to what was essentially a chatroom.
I wonder if your comparisons to Facebook are really fair. I always assumed Secondlife was trying to be something closer to IRC or Discord today then something like Facebook. It's not just a series of events to read but something active to engage with.
Yeah wouldn't surprise me if people learned to code in SL and then moved on to real world projects, since learning one language is always similar to others. If you could do LSL, you could probably handle Javascript.
Hmm interesting on comparison to Facebook. Never thought of comparing it more to IRC chat rooms, but I feel like if you looked at the stats maybe it's better to put your effort into a iPhone or Facebook app if you want a bunch of users. I know there's also some stat that a large amount of the userbase just chats with friends instead of exploring the world. But also some content creators are able to make a full time living too.
http://www.gridsurvey.com/ According to that 41,905 people are online right now. But I guess my point is it seem more niche than mainstream, but still impressive and profitable.
Everyone became a programmer,or a 3d modeler. Something about having a programming language and the ability to make things strapped to what was essentially a chatroom.
I wonder if your comparisons to Facebook are really fair. I always assumed Secondlife was trying to be something closer to IRC or Discord today then something like Facebook. It's not just a series of events to read but something active to engage with.