Though I would argue that 30%/month growing rate on a >2 million user base and ~15,000 concurrent users on average at any given time is pretty significant for a service that requires a large download and install and major processing power, the large number of users-- or not-- in Second Life isn't what matters to me as a progressive political organizer.

Rather, what matters to me is what I can do there-- what utility I can create. What I can create there are a) socioprofessional relationships of depth and trust faster than I would have been able to in any other medium other than offline face-to-face-- that's what we've done with RootsCamps in Second Life-- and b) more effective collaboration among a distributed project team than in any other online medium-- that what we've done for NASA in Second Life.

In other words, Second Life's utility for politics today isn't that it allows you to reach a large volume of hearts and minds, but that it mimicks offline face-to-face interaction better than any other online technology. That's what IBM and many Fortune 500's are primarily up to there. If that might be useful to you, don't just take my word for it-- come by RootsCamp in Second Life every Wednesday at 1pm and see for yourself! :)

As Andrew says, size doesn't matter. There are issues related to SecondLife statistics - I've written of them before (and likely I will have to do so again), but it's the interactivity that is of note. That interactivity has lead to over 18,000 concurrent users which is a much more real number than what is often portrayed by the media.

That said - there is potential for SecondLife and other virtual worlds in many different regards. While statistically SL lags the internet penetration (it is an internet technology, after all), it means that there is a larger *potential* reach than has been realized. One of the reasons for this is the 'compelling content' issue as related to the Digital Divide. If you can keep people interacting and involved in a community which you facilitate, you have something. If you build something and let it stand... expect little to happen.

There are many mistakes that organizations make within SecondLife, and that is mainly retaining a Sengoku culture. Shirky has it nailed pretty well at a meta level, but the devil is in the details.

Potential? Yes. Lots of that. Reality? Reference Shirky. What your organization can do? That's up to you, really.

It's always good and right when someone dashes a few buckets of truth over the claim-cluttered curbside of the next big thing. But what leapt out at me in Shirky's article was the fact that so many "providers" are outposting in Second Life - and not just big corporate advertisers, but candidates and Amazon.

Yeah, maybe they don't want to miss out if it does "happen" (a la Rachel McAdams in Mean Girls: "Stop trying to make 3D MUDs happen!"). Yeah, maybe the real number of returns is an underwhelming secret. But when the brick establishment is speculating in virtual real estate, instead of rushing to play catch-up with emergent migrations, then /something/ has changed.

Maybe that something isn't the popular viability of virtual worlds - maybe it's an evolution in how consumers and the establishment circle each other for clues about what's next online. You can't deny that Mark Warner and Toyota make Second Life more likely to end up popular. And you wouldn't be reading this on this web site if you didn't believe (or at least seriously suspect) that early adopters can tell friends and tip a trend.

If Linden would put out some churn and return numbers for "providers," maybe we'd know even more about whether it's oil or snake oil in them virtual hills.

I myself haven't been yet. I registered and created a name, but the DLLs didn't load right on the W2K system I was using (please don't ask why I was using it).