Second Life User Numbers

This was already a small controversy at Le Web 3, though many might have overheard the question posed the the guy from Linden Labs on stage. The thing is that Second Life is saying they have 2 million users and it seems more likely that they have something like 10–20.000. Clay Shirky did a very insightful post on this called A story too good to check. Really worth a read for all those claiming that Second Life will change the world. I still think there is a possibility that this will be amazingly huge, but it will likely take years. I actually had an idea several years ago with friends of starting an online world for educating kids, which I still think is a great idea. I mean allowing kids to learn in an evolving online world (“This is a cow, it makes muhhhh and eats …”), in a secure environment, adapting to their abilities, would be wonderful. I am not sure yet that things like SL are really what some call Web 3.0, believing more in automated agents as the next big trend, but we will see how this game plays out in the next few years.