Second Life and Having Meetings and Conversations Web 2.0 Style

I touched on this briefly but sitting for coffee this morning, Second Life’s new commuincation style struck me. Yet again it was on the Crayon island – which isn’t that surprising as they have a delightful build on their own island, and have been promoting the island as a meeting place since they went public. I do put my head around a bit (and the second ‘organised’ meeting of morning coffee is happening at 6am SLT this Thursday), and what [shouldn't] surprise me is the ease that conversations can happen.

And I think that this is one of the strengths of Second Life. It would be incredibly easy, using tools such as Yahoo! Messenger , for me to have a conversation with Marilyn. And with Cleon. And with the ‘newbie’ jsut out of camera shot. But how would this have worked using just the IM tools? Well it wouldn’t have. I would have had three seperate chat windows open, and there wouldn;t ave been any of the introduction of people. This morning’s mix of conversation would not have happened.

Second Life changes that. I know some people glorify it as a chatroom with graphics, but it’s more than that. The social angle here shows that. A way for people to mix. To interact with people in a much more ‘real’ way than the aforesaid chatroom. The ability to size someone up from their avatar – come on, we all do it, if you see someone in the Phil Linden jeans and white tshirt you’re thinking ‘newbie’ and almost straight away you’re wary. Problems with lag, asset servers and suchlike aside, this is what makes Second Life a window on a new world.

Postscrtipt: Uri Sklar over at the SL Herald I think has his RL persona seeping through in his comments on the power of virtual worlds and their meeting spaces. Worth reading.