BUSINESS's views and advantages of Second Life

Business's can use second life as almost a second world to advertise. companies can set up virtual bill boards and virtual shops in this world where people can go and visit,seeing poroducts from the real world,even being linked to the website where you can purchase or reacive freebies of the product.

AUDIENCES views and advantages of Second life

People play this virtual world to make friends,join social groups and also to make money. poeple can make a living by dealing with facilites and items in the game, similar to that of the outside world. they can go into a virtual shop and get links out to websites on the real world, also buiying products that are also available outside the game such s a reebok shoes.

Second Life (abbreviated as SL) is an Internet-based virtual world launched in 2003, developed by Linden Research, Inc (commonly referred to as Linden Lab), which came to international attention via mainstream news media in late 2006 and early 2007. A downloadable client program called the Second Life Viewer enables its users, called "Residents", to interact with each other through motional avatars, providing an advanced level of a social network service combined with general aspects of a metaverse. Residents can explore, meet other Residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, create and trade items (virtual property) and services from one another.
Second Life is one of several virtual worlds that have been inspired by the cyberpunk literary movement, and particularly by Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash. The stated goal of Linden Lab is to create a world like the Metaverse described by Stephenson, a user-defined world in which people can interact, play, do business, and otherwise communicate. Second Life's virtual currency is the Linden Dollar (Linden, or L$) and is exchangeable for real world currencies in a marketplace consisting of residents, Linden Lab and real life companies.
While Second Life is sometimes referred to as a game, this description does not fit the standard definition. It does not have points, scores, winners or losers, levels, an end-strategy, or most of the other characteristics of games, though it can be thought of as a game on a more basic level because it is "played for fun".
In all, more than 9.8 million accounts have been registered, although many are inactive, some Residents have multiple accounts, and there are no reliable figures for actual long term consistent usage. Despite its prominence, Second Life has notable competitors, including There, Active Worlds, and the more "mature" themed Red Light Center.

Web 2.0 is recently known and percived as a second generation of web-based communities,such as hosting servicies including social networking sites, wikis and folksonomies. This aims to aid creativity,collabaration and sharing between users. the name came about after the O'Reilly Media web 2.0 conference in 2004. The name is based on that of a software update but it is most definatly not, theres is no update n technical specifications, but changes in the way software developers and end-users use webs.According to Tim O'Reilly, "Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform."Tim Berners-Lee, a natorious technology expert has questioned where the term can be used in a meaningful way,due to the fact the main componants of "web 2.0" have existed from the early days of the web.
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