Second Life Growth Possibilities

I've heard Lindens say they expect to hit 1,000,000 users by year end. (I believe Philip has said this.)

In order to reach this goal, something big has to happen.

1. I know that the Korean community is expected to join us in the fall. I think this is fantastic, and I'm working on Korean content already. Hopefully I will score some merchant space with my proposal.

But this alone will not bring 750,000 new members.

In the MetaVerse Messenger, there have recently been full page ads from PlayAhead.com, a Swedish IM/MobileIM/music and arts site. This site is a lot like MySpace here in the U.S., but with the integration of IM capabilities.

On to the question: Is a merger with PlayAhead on the table? Or some kind of business relationship?

I'd like to know because I would like to know which languages I should be brushing up on.

Duke, the nice thing about emergence is so many things expand quickly. Often unpredictably. Second Life has gotten to the point where we're Slashdotted, BoingBoinged, or otherwise hit with press articles that pop up and dramatically increase new Resident signups. I also read an article in New Scientist about us earlier today!

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/sex/mg19025566.400-the-irresistible-rise-of-cybersex.html

You may have also heard the rapper Chaillionaire is coming to SL, and American Apparel via Aimee Weber is opening up here too. 3pointD has the scoops on those!

http://www.3pointd.com/

Unfortunately we can't disclose some business deals until we go public with announcements because of confidentiality agreements, but there is a lot going on out there. To monitor changes, BTW, I use TagFetch:

http://www.tagfetch.com/results.php?tags=secondlife&news=on&blogs=on&bookmarks=on&media=on

This is just my personal speculation, but I've long wondered how many Residents from China would be fascinated by Second Life, if only for the reason of prior precedent: some very, very large MMOs have core audiences in China, and even WoW has a Chinese adaptation. As you mention yourself, we're moving towards greater internationalism and localization.