Building the Metaverse @ AC2005 (Part II)

Philip Rosedale CEO of Linden Labs (the makers of Second Life) is now presenting his company and virtual world. He immediately went into a demonstration of Second Life ... walking around the virtual world, interacting with objects. He pulled a kiosk out of his pocket, and had it play a life streaming video, and then wandered around until he found other users. He quickly created some objects, took pictures, put the pictures on objects as a texture, and even showed some of the physics by linking objects and swinging them around.

I have heard there are weapons in Second Life, and he showed his pistol and shot at some things. The core server farm is 1200 machines, and they are using ~200Mbps of bandwidth. He indicated that the average is 70-80kbps per client machine. There are currently over 50,000 users, with ~10,00 unique users per day ... about ~3,000 at any one time.

The top in world avatar in making ~$150,000/year in Second Life, with many people making ~$100+ per month. I have to admit that I am very interested in these virtual worlds and the many potential revenue sourrces that might exist. Hmmmm ....