Business week piles on SL feeding frenzy

As if Second Life wasn't getting enough press lately, Business Week has this article that goes into more of the teething pains that advertisers are experiencing setting up shop on the virtual wide web (tm).

There are some pretty breathless numbers in the article:

The three-year-old Web-based world has more than one million "residents" who spent $9 million in October on virtual land, products, and services. And while advertising's traditional outlets are losing eyeballs, so far this year the population of Second Life has increased 995% -- a growing potential consumer audience for marketing messages.

The part that I thought most interesting was the author's interpreation of Philip Rosedale's (CEO of Linden Labs) definition of Second Life:

But Philip Rosedale, CEO of Linden Lab, says the supporting technology is continually advancing. "Second Life is improving in resolution and functionality at the rate of Moore's Law. The real world isn't getting better by the day." Rosedale views Second Life not as a multiplayer online role-playing game, like World of Warcraft, or in the same category as Will Wright's forthcoming Spore, which allows players to design their own species. Rather, he sees it as a new social-networking platform, like MySpace (NWS ). (emphasis is mine)

SL is certainly not a game in the traditional sense of the word. No keeping score (other than money I guess but that's just like First Life, right?), no 'levels' and no bad guys... unless you count the growing vandals that continue to be a problem for SL.

The article can be found here.