There is an entertaining article about Second Life in Good Magazine. The title is Get a Life: The Hollow Promise of the Internet’s Next Big Thing.

As I have written here in the past and as I tell audiences of nonprofit professionals on a regular basis, Second Life should be down (at the bottom) on the list of communications, fundraising and marketing priorities. There is no reason to be an early adopter in Second Life when I am certain you have what to do with your email program, your website, your use of video, and your activity on Facebook and other social networks. When you contrast the number of people engaging in online video — more than 80% of everyone online! — with the tiny community of active users on Second Life (peak time active users reach 40,000 in the whole virtual world), you can make an informed judgment about the likely return on your investment of time and money.

Here’s a quote from the article:

The paradox of a virtual world is that it adds human interaction to the online experience, while at the same time making sure you never have to actually interact with anyone. Now, instead of merely buying a book on a website, you can browse a virtual bookstore along side other virtual patrons, without ever leaving your home. This logic—that you’d want to give up both the speed of online shopping and the social experience of actually shopping, that you’d want to spend time in a bookstore but not actually go to one—is depressing, to say the least.