s:) WWW::Glimpse Inside a Metaverse ::cOM:: ViDEO

Second Life www.secondlife.com is an online world with a growing population of residents currently over 140,000 subscribers from over 90 countries. Second Life is a privately-owned, partly subscription-based 3-D Virtual World made publicly available in 2003 by San Francisco-based Linden Lab www.lindenlab.com founded by Philip Rosedale. The Second Life World is a large array of servers that are owned and maintained by Linden Lab. The majority of Second Life world is resident-created. Linden Lab actively promotes the concept that residents retain the intellectual property rights to objects they create (although they are required to offer Linden Lab a limited license for the purposes of promotion and marketing. Residents of Second Life are represented in the environment by a customized humanoid avatar. Residents can also create or buy clothing, and attach 3D objects.

Second Life has its own economy and a currency referred to as Linden dollars (L$) and are acquired by selling objects or services. Residents may directly or convert between Linden currency and U.S. currency through Linden Lab's currency brokerage. There is a US$500,000 in economic activity each week.