We're Getting the Second Life Relaunch No One Asked For

We are dancing to the the Live DJ set over at http://t.co/ZbQpTus46m 80s music! @SecondLife @SLBCommunity #SL11B http://t.co/gG2wJeksS3 — 2142nd SecondLife (@2142sl) June 25, 2014 For a hot minute back in 2005, people were creating avatars and living a second life on Second Life like there was no tomorrow. PRs were hosting Second Life press conferences. (If you had one of these, please feel free to take to the comments and reminisce.) Brands were creating entire countries (countries, right?) where fans could become immersed in a digital world. Then it was gone. But now Second Life is coming back! Are those cheers I hear for this news or is there a World Cup match on? The Daily Dot tells us that Linden Labs will relaunch Second Life in 2015 sans the embassies and "Second Life correspondents" of yesteryear. Instead, they've enlisted help from Oculus Rift, the virtual reality (VR) company that was purchased by Facebook for $2 billion. Turns out Linden Labs has had some under-the-radar success with Second Life all these years. The network's marketplace has been a thriving place. However, there's been tons of criticism over Second Life's graphics and other digital capabilities. CEO Ebbe Altberg tells The Next Web that now's the time for a relaunch given the fact that VR is going mainstream. And this will be a total relaunch, built from the ground up. The platform has one million users to help get it a solid start. "Games, designs, goods, all the things that make the current incarnation of Second Life the go-to place for current users will be part of the new world," TNW reports. Also part of the "new world," according to the article - motion sickness. Tech companies thrive on being cutting edge. MySpace. BlackBerry. They had a moment. And efforts to revive them have been made difficult because they're closely associated with technology that was popular "before." Meaning before Twitter and Pinterest and Google Glass and wearable tech and all of the things that people are excited about now and for the future. The key to this relaunch may very well be letting go of what Second Life was before - maybe even the name - in order to fully introduce something new and fresh. It's a brand new world out there IRL. No one is looking back to previous lives.

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We're Getting the Second Life Relaunch No One Asked For

They've got a million users, so Second Life could take off.

Tonya Garcia

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Tonya Garcia