A bit of reflection, a bitter one at that:
Q. What do Second Life, Twitter, Apple's App Store, Google Warehouse, Blogger & Facebook have in common?
A. Very long tails.
While the platform providers get fat, the providers of the content all dream to be the top 2%, with their products or something to say, but 98% are soon lost out in obscurity, out someplace on the set of the longest tails ever created.
I read about how the providers of these low cost of entry platforms are not responding to their "customers, citizens, partners?" or that they are acting like some form of totalitarian government. Ask yourself.. Can they really change the structure of a marketplaces or a dream factory? Face it.. They are selling their basic products or services using the free draw of something similar to a ponzi scheme, but without any payback at all, just selling dreams.
Phillip's Great Platform of Dreams is to real now. So if Linden Lab's new Management decides to make Second Life into an corporate 3rd party entrapment platform, a PG Barbe World or spin off it's Sexland that will only be to hype more dreams.
They have no real way to make more dreams come true for the 95% of those that buy into the pitch. Unfortunately for Linden Lab and all those residents that want a fatter tail, 95% of people that create an account figure it out within less then a month and leave SL behind, that's real life, that is the real marketplace at work.
Ref: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/25/the-app-store-hype-gets-a-dose-of-reality/
