Professional Documents
Culture Documents
by Linden Lab.
communities are used for playful consumption, for marketing and brand-
building, and as tools to study consumer behavior (Kozinets 1999, Muniz and
O’Guinn 2001). Among the many virtual worlds, Second Life (SL) received
experience the world through these bodies. With the tagline “Your world-
online games. This virtual world is simply created, designed and owned by its
multifaceted metaverse society with its own value systems, social structures,
bought and sold on the official virtual currency exchange of SL (Second Life
experiential element of virtual worlds (Vicdan and Ulusoy 2008). The open-
provides a virtual world in which residents interact with each other and their
digital representation of self is the locus of identity in SL. From the moment
(Venkatesh 1999). SL avatars can try out different heads, body types, skin
virtual goods (Poster 2004). Virtual goods can be rendered visually onscreen
(Bartle 2004), becoming visible to both the immediate user and to other
average day in 2007, about 50,000 people logged in to SL and about $US 1.5
million changed hands (Linden Lab Research Inc 2007). Residents’ desires to
acquire virtual goods are major drivers of the SL economy. Users actively
seek, and are even willing to work for, and spend offline money on these
goods. SL provides an avenue for its residents to explore and realize desires
that may not be actionable in the offline world. Consumers live out their
desires, and thereby, imagined sides of the self (Molesworth 2006), through
allows the exchange of about L$270 for US$1 (Linden Lab Economics
making their full-time living from Second Life (NY Times Freakonomics blog).
American Apparel, Ben & Jerry’s, BMW, Fiat, IBM, Wells Fargo, Reebok and
Reuters. At one point, IBM reportedly had over 230 employees spending part
of their work day inside Second Life, and owned 24 private islands for
“virtual worlds may be the future of ecommerce, and perhaps of the internet
References
Bailenson, J.N., & Blascovich, J. (2004) Avatars. Encyclopedia of Human-
Computer Interaction, Berkshire Publishing Group, 64-68.
Linden Lab Research, Inc. (2007). Second Life. Retrieved April 25, 2007, from
http://www.secondlife.com/
Roberts, L.D. and Parks, M.R. (1999). The social geography of gender-
switching in virtual environments on the internet. Information,
Communication, & Society, 2(4), 521-540.
Second Life The Marketplace (2008). Second Life. Retrieved March 11, 2009,
from http://secondlife.com/whatis/marketplace.php
Nikhilesh Dholakia
Julianne A. Cabusas
University of Rhode Island