This Isn't Really a Negative Bit on: The PopSci Article

I'm rereading the article on Second Life in the September 2006 Popular Science and still not finding anything new. It's great, I suppose, that The Lab is getting exposure for their product and increasing the subscribership. It remains to be seen how well that translates into regular, active users, but getting people to logon once is the first step. What is always disappointing is that, for some who have been around SL for a bit, the articles have a monotonous feel to them. Everyone likes to see things they feel passionate about being discussed positively, but I think that many of these articles fall victim to the AP Wire Disease. Have you ever read a few sports articles on the same topic. They are almost identical, having added next to nothing to the original wire story. The SL articles are not nearly that bad, but the canned article feel is hard to shake.

Having trudged on to the end of yet another piece on SL with all the same sort of quotes, I found the last bit spoke to me today. King Phillie is quoted as saying, “In Second Life, you can get everything you want on the first day. What’s interesting is what you do the next day.”

I'm sure he has said this before in one of these marketing pieces, but I hadn't noticed. Or perhaps, I never got that far. Either way, it gets right to the fundamentals. What's next?

User retention in today's environment has to have more than a shiny package and a gentle shove off of Orientation Island. I would like to see a followup by one of those "outsider" journalists describing the "next day".