12.27.06
First Life Backlash against Second Life
Valleywag continues to raise alarms about 2006’s virtual media darling, Second Life:
The first thing that’s going to happen, or rather not happen, is that the regular press isn’t going go back over this story looking for real figures. As much as they’ve written about the virtual economy and the next net, the press hasn’t really covered Second Life as business story or tech story so much as a trend story. The sine qua non of trend stories is that a trend is fast-growing. The Residents figure was never really part of the story, it just provided permission to write about about how crazy it is that all the kids these days are getting avatars. By the time any given writer was pitching that story to their editors, any skepticism about the basic proposition had already been smothered.
No journalist wants to have to write “When we told you that Second Life had 1.3 million members, we in no way meant to suggest that figure referred to individual people. Fortune regrets any misunderstanding.” And since no one wants to write that, no one will. They’ll shift their coverage without pointing out the shift to their readers.
There are some great skewering of membership numbers in there.