A Second Life for Politicians?

Beyond the technological horizon we see today will undoubtedly be new Web 2.0 frontiers for public organizations, and public sector officials will need to stay abreast of these developments. Take the burgeoning Second Life phenomenon. Created and run by San Francisco’s Linden Lab, Second Life (http://www.secondlife.com/) is a 3-D digital universe where individuals-over 3.3 million as of February 2007-take on virtual identities, or “avatars” (Mesure, 2007). According to Linden (2006), there are now 50,000 premium residents (virtual landowners) who each month spend approximately 7 million hours “in-world”; over half of these “virtual residents” are from outside the United States.

How big is Second Life? Already leading corporations, including American Apparel, Dell, Nike, Starwood Hotels, Sony, and Toyota, are staking out a presence in this virtual environment (Jana, 2006; Mesure, 2007). Late last year, IBM even held a “town hall” meeting of its employees in Second Life, led by the firm’s CEO, Sam Palmisano and his avatar (LaMonica, 2006). Likewise, more than 70 colleges and universities, including UCLA, have built virtual campuses and hold classes in Second Life (Olsen, 2007).