How many of us already feel that we are spending too much time on our computers? Who of us would really like to spend hours on the computer entertaining ourselves? In the past on line entertainment might have conjured up images of pimply long haired teenagers playing role playing games, or people wandering around forums chatting on topics that they are interested in

But internet entertainment is becoming more and more mainstream. Take Second Life, for example, perhaps the best known of a series of sites that offer you just that – a second life. Here you create your own character (s), known as an avatar, and you enter a virtual world.

Right, you might say, waste of time, who really would bother with that apart from some computer nerds, who don’t have a first life? Second Life alone currently has 7,914,088 total residents and although not all of these are active users, and some of these represent multiple characters owned by one person, 459,785 of these people have logged in within the last seven days.

So, what on earth do all these people do? Once you are a member of Second Life you can set up a business, you can sell your creations, you can buy other people’s, you can buy land, all within this virtual world. Second life has its own currency, Linden Dollars, which are trading currently at about $270 Linden $ to 1 USD. These dollars can be exchanged for real US currency, and some people, about 132, in the month of June, make upwards of $5000 US per month in Second Life.

There are private detectives, writers, sculptors, publishers, dancers, tattooists, avatar constructors, night club owners and so on.

So Second Life is popular with users. No matter how unappealing it is to some of us (and there are some very funny spoofs of it, based around the concept, ‘get a first life’) there is a market here. But the significance of Second Life for us as business owners is more than just looking at it and identifying it as an interesting isolated phenomena. Second Life is just one aspect of an internet shift, quieter than a revolution, but as profound, that is going to change the way we all do business online. It has been dubbed Web 2.0, as in, second version of the web. It sounds dramatic to say that it will change the way we all do business online, but you could go further and say it will change the way we do business, everywhere.

Web 2.0 is typefied by a certain type of relationship between site and user, and although this relationship was at first available on only a few sites, and it was a cool exception, it has spread and is becoming the norm. When new advances become the norm, become expected, to a large extent businesses have no choice but to keep up.

For example, businesses survived for 100s of years without telephone, but it would be ludicrous to try and run a business now without one and say ‘No, people must just come and see me. We did it that way for 100s of years’. People expect you to have a phone.

Business websites also were at first seen as a bit of an interesting luxury, but now most businesses acknowledge the need for at least a ‘brochure’ presence online, even if they are not interested in getting traffic through the search engines.

The current trend on line, which is fast becoming the norm, and which Second Life is a symbol of, is the increasing trend towards user control of content online.
In second life you can build your own virtual life, you can in a sense build your own world if you buy an island.

In youtube you can upload your video and watch whatever else you like – as opposed to television or the cinema where you watch what is provided at a scheduled time . . . although this is changing in the world of TV – the move towards being able to customise and watch what you want when you want on TV will be a good example of the trend towards ‘user’s choice’.

On Digg, Reddit etc you can upload articles, read other people’s articles, get what content you want when you want as opposed to reading a static site page that hasn’t been updated in the last five years.

Blogs, RSS feeds, they are all part of the user choice content revolution. It may not sound very profound, but it is a huge move away from the old static sites.

And a lot of private commercial sites, as well as government sites are beginning to adopt aspects of web 2.0. The ABC and BBC allow you to down load their radio programmes as podcasts (again, what you like, when you like) many sites are running blogs, lots of sites feature youtube videos on their home page, but perhaps one of the most interesting examples of this take up of web 2.0 is the number of businesses and organisations that have virtual presences in Second Life.

Reuters has a Second Life presence. They have created an Avatar, Adam Reuters who has a real life staff member behind him working an 8 hour day in Second Life. You can send him your second life stories etc and they do news for within Second Life. Many companies own their own islands within Second Life, which you can visit (as an avatar) and be marketed to.

One interesting use of Second Life is by universities, one of England’s premiere distance universities is holding its classes in Second Life. They say that their students, who normally have very minimal contact with other students, are loving the opportunity to get together and have virtual lectures, tutorials and social opportunities.

So should you rush out and replicate your business in the world of Second Life? Well, you could. Particularly if you aim to have a lot of sales through your website, having a store in Second Life that links back to your website, or references it in some way is quite a good way to get your web address seen by a lot of people. You may then get a lot of traffic to your site. We are considering a Second Life store for one of our online businesses, we just need to look at things like cost to run it, does it need one of us manning an avatar in there all day etc.

But getting you to rush out and set up business in Second Life wasn’t the point of this article. Rather we wanted to bring your attention to the incredible amount of energy that is being generated by web 2.0. It is the current hot spot on the web, it is on 2.0 sites that people are doing what they want to do – ie – having fun. But also web 2.0 norms are becoming expected bench marks – so be prepared to use blogs, podcasts, video, rss feeds etc in the future. And remember – customers increasingly expect you to provide them what they want, when they want it, in the way they want it.