Are you one of the addicted citizens of Second Life yet ? For those not familiar with it, Second Life is an on-line virtual world, in which you can interact with a community of 100,000 users from all around the world.
The reason Second Life is generating so much buzz at the moment, it is this week on the cover of Business Week, is that, it is the first of these virtual communities to offer a fully developed financial system based on (virtual) land ownership.
Second Lifers can develop businesses which offer goods and services to other residents for financial compensation in Linden Dollars , which may be exchanged for real currency at a number of third party currency exchanges.
Over time particular real estate in the second life world will develop to mirror the real world, there will be challenges of rich (you can buy your own island – a dedicated Linux server for $1250 dollars and sub-let land parcels) and poor areas , High growth areas, red light districts, all the problems for which GIS technology in the real world is deployed to manage.
So I am off to start thinking about building the mapping agency of second life, now I wonder if I should charge for its products…. or perhaps a web mapping tool funded by Second Life business advertising.