SL not over-hyped?

So says an article on CNN.com by David Kirkpatrick, a Fortune Magazine senior editor. I don't know that I really agree, but mainly because all of the articles and hype are, well, just hype. There is no real substance and often misleading or incorrect information (Guardian atricle that Channel 4 Radio will be the first radio station in SL was brought to my attention by Ordinal Malaprop). Up until the time these articles discuss more seriously the proposition of what Second Life is and how its limitations can be addressed to actually reach the digital nirvana that the hype machine describes, I will continue to see the media frenzy as another fad being recorded for posterity.

Yet Second Life may be more important, longterm, than even this much publicity would suggest. That's because what it really may represent is an alternative vision for how to interact with information and communicate over the Internet.

Maybe this holds some water, but what it really says is that the concept is worth the hype, but not necessarily the current product.

However, I do agree that there is a next level and this quote from the piece is part of that thinking,

Looking at Second Life makes me realize just how much the Web, wonderful and useful as it is, still mimics a print model.

However, as usual, the article makes much of what SL should be and not what the reality is. The "user created" content is hyped in a time when there is little protection of works (certainly not with any support from the service company) and when profiteering is starting to price out the regular users that currently make up that content (note recent Island price and tier increases). The view being described is not a user view, but a Corporate view. From that angle, SL most certainly is a potential revolution, as is any tool, such as MySpace, that grew to something so ever-present in the consumer mind that a Corporation bought it and promptly tried to take a current user's url for the use of a Media Giant (Bones Steals MySpace Page).

Read the end of the article carefully.

Every day more big companies turn their attention to this new medium, realizing that it really represents something new. I'm now convinced that one day Second Life or something related to it will become a Google/Yahoo/MySpace-scale company.

Maybe Second Life will grow organically to become that company. Or an existing giant striving to stay relevant might buy it. Or maybe somebody will build a different, even better virtual world.

Nobody is inventing the wheel, but perhaps they are adding a camera to a cell phone.