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SL has the potential to become the backbone and the bank of the metaverse – if they play their cards right. Right now, both the Lab as well as the content creators have too much fear to make the bold step, Maybe soon they will be forced to do it.

This post was mentioned on Twitter by malburns: “Will Second Life be the next Netscape?” http://bit.ly/cWFxfb...

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The other grids are not "walled gardens." They are hypergrid enabled — once you log into to OSGrid, you can take you avatar to Cyberlandia grid, Grid4Us, FrancoGrid, and many more — as well as the hundreds of hypergrid-enabled private grids that are springing up.

Yes, there's not much there to do for retail shoppers, and not much night life. Second Life has them all beat. This is similar to the way that AOL had great forums — and other individual Web sites did not. In fact, the early Internet was dominated by niche, special-purpose sites. Stores posting their hours. Colleges posting class schedules. Professors posting research papers. Hardly compelling content!

But when you take this content in the aggregate — the Internet becomes a wonderful place.

OpenSim does just that — or it will, once we have a decent browser. There is currently no Netscape for OpenSim, no Yahoo, and no Google. But they're coming. I know of companies working on all of these projects. I don't know ahead of time who will succeed — or if it will be someone who comes out of left field, working in a dorm room somewhere. If I knew, I'd be investing every penny I had!

– Maria

What you are describing in your desire for Linden Lab to create an easier way from bounce from grid to grid is basically a means to travel from one walled-garden to another: AOL to Compuserve to Prodigy to GEnie and the rest.

What made AOL relevant when the Worldwide Web portion of the Internet took-off in popularity was that they had portals from within their walled-garden out to the whole internet (not just the web) – and this was around the time that Netscape was at version 1.1B or C and only barely getting any notice at all – long before AOL ever even contemplated purchasing it.

Of all those commercial online services, only AOL is still alive – precisely because of the "window" portal from within that allowed one to venture out to the rest of the Internet.

This is the exact same thing LLV2 does: it's a portal to the rest of the internet (worldwide web portion, anyway) from inside Agtni grid – inside the walled-garden – which really makes the other grids more irrelevant (not meant as an insult) – because whatever reason I might have had for visiting another grid is now with LLV2 exponentially lessened.

You're SO right on — everybody wants their walled garden… from The Great Wall of China to AOL… but sooner or later, the rest of the world passes you by. The idea of Linden seizing the Netscape moment that AOL failed on is very compelling.

I love this article… right up to the end when you turn it into an authoritarian dystopia where I can wear the blouse on my back, but not take a fresh one out of my inventory. I get that not everyone likes openness, Open Source, Creative Commons, as much as I do… but creating hamstrung viewers that prevent you from accessing your own inventory is nightmare.

This article is really about openness and interoperability, about AOL or Linden having the nerve to risk a short term monopoly for a long term presence, but in the end you turn it into a laundry list of ways to put the walls back up. You may be right, content creators may demand this, but I'm more interested in the creativity of the many than the profits of the few.