As I have suspected for quite a while, the whole businesses in Second Life thing appears to have been somewhat overexagerated.
Although Second Life's website claims it has over 8,000,000 members, Forrester Research has found that there are only 30,000 to 40,000 users are logged on at peak times.
When compared to other virtual communities (World of Warcraft anyone?), that number is pretty tiny...
I actually wrote a very long post on this topic, and it was just deleted by mistake. Quite frustrating - that's why you don't talk on the phone and blog at the same time.
Long story short, the argument I was going to make is that Second Life is not dying, but rather virtual communities are just maturing, which is a good thing for marketers.
Much like in the real world, where different demographics frequent different locations, different people enjoy different virtual communities online. Although I don't have research to back it up, my gut says Second life users have very different profiles from Counterstrike users, and World of Warcraft and The Sims Online users, and...
Therefore, as a marketer, it is your job to only enter those communities where you have customers, rather than the one that just happens to be on the cover of Wired or Times this month. Second Life likely wasn't appropriate for many businesses, and hence the pullout. That doesn't mean that it isn't appropriate for any businesses, and definitely doesn't mean that business doesn
