Second Life hires new CEO in attempt to get a second life

Last year marketers and many web pundits were buzzing about the potential of Second Life to change everything from education to brand development. Much ink was spilled on the transformative value of 3-D avatars and millions to be made within the Second Life ecosystem. Alas, the buzz didnt last and Second Life receded into relative obscurity (only 500K active users), behind Twitter, Facebook and an onslaught of Web 2.0 services.

In an effort to revive their dwindling fortunes the company has hired digital prognosticator Mark Kingdon to be its new CEO. Mark is a former Pwc consultant who most recently headed up the interactive agency, Organic. Mark will bring a wealth of ad industry relationships and marketing knowledge to the engineering focused company. Does this mean that Second Life will become yet another purveyor of ad network solutions for marketers? Lets hope not.

Linden Labs Does Right By Parody Second Life Site

I’ve played with Second Life on and off for a little over a year and have been as underwhelmed by the experience as I’ve been overwhelmed with the passion of its users. Some folks “grok” Second Life and some folks dont. I’m definitely one of the donts. To me SL is just D&D 2.0 with a larger percentage of girl geeks. Enter, GetaFirstLife.com, a great send-up of SL by Darren Barefoot, a canuck techie and Shakespeare fan.