The Industry Standard visited Linden Lab headquarters and shares these two lengthy interviews with top Lindens, Mark Kingdon and Philip Rosedale.

Rosedale said that Second Life had moved beyond an emerging application for technology-savvy users. “There is a lot more diversity in use, demographics and behavior in Second Life today than there was, say, at the end of 2003,” he said.

Kingdon echoed this assessment. “I think the world has gotten its head around the fact that virtual worlds are here to stay,” Kingdon said. “There is a very compelling set of activities that virtual worlds are incredibly powerful for. They erase geographies, they allow for a type of interaction that you can’t get in the real world and they bring with them really interesting economic and business opportunities for users.”

I found these via Mal Burns’ steady stream of SL related news tweets. He’s a great resource for all sorts of interesting virtual world topics.

New World Notes reports: “Second Life developer Linden Lab will announce tomorrow that they’ve purchased two e-commerce services which enable the buying and selling of Second Life content via the Web: XstreetSL, formerly owned by Jay Geeseman (Apotheus Silverman in SL), and OnRez, formerly owned by metaverse developer the Electric Sheep Company.”

Read Hamlet’s full report on NWN.

Wow. I’m quite surprised by this announcement, although it seems like a good move once I stop to think about it. SLexchange is THE best way to find and buy stuff in SL, not counting word-of-mouth from in-world friends. OnRez is a similar but underused service. It’d be great if LL could figure out a slick way to integrate these tools into the SL client search tools.

You can also read the official Linden Lab press release. Head on over to the official forum thread to listen to people rant about the change…errr I mean voice your opinion on the matter. :)

Frequent visitors will probably have noticed that my posts have been few and far between lately. Sorry ’bout that. I’ve been very busy with several projects in-world and have had less energy to devote to other tasks. Here are a few links and other things that I have been meaning to mention:

We had an opening celebration at my Sunset Myst sim for Snowy Hoobinoo’s out-of-this-world floral creations. A great time was had by all. Snowy handed out some free, flowery wings that made us all look like a mobile flower garden. Lots of cool avs and fun people in attendance. You can see pictures of the event on Snowy’ Flickr stream, Tim Deschanel’s, and mine too.

Speaking of pictures…Koinup is a great way to share your SL pics. It sort of like Flickr, but just for snapshots and videos from virtual worlds. I especially like how they gather together all the shots from specific sims into one group. They also track the ‘coolest’ images and places. It’s a great way to find new places to visit in-world. My Koinup page.

The SLurl site has been upgraded. The map loads so much quicker now and the images include more detail. Whatever they did it sure is a nice improvement.

LL reports on the growth of Second Life in 2008 – and of course this brings out hundreds of angry comments from folks who are stilled sore about the OpenSpace mess. Zee Linden is in amongst the mob, taking things in stride and engaging in  honest and informative conversations. Way to go Zee! I’m psyched that SL has grown so much and am very optimisitic about the future of our virtual world.

My friend Thoth Jantzen has expanded upon his Kaleidoscopium idea and created the Disorientation Station. :)  His virtual, immersive kaliedoscopes turn any YouTube video into a hypnotic sensory overload. Very cool, but be careful if you have work to do – time flies when you’re inside these things :) Check it out in-world.

Cory Ondrejka, former CTO and co-founder of Linden Lab, has posted his predictions for 2009. Amongst them is a rosy outlook for growth in our virtual world.

“By shockingly good, let’s say 50% growth in concurrency and James’ measure of active users.  Why do I expect SL to rock 2009?  A few reasons.  First, world-wide recession makes SL more valuable as a source of income, cost effective collaboration tool, substitute for expensive travel, and educational resource.  Second, the same recession — combined with Lively’s demise — means competition will remain non-existent.”

Check out the rest of his predictions on his Blog, collapsing geography.

CNN has been experimenting with ‘citizen journalism’ with their  iReport project – tapping into user generated content by allowing anyone to submit RL news stories. Now you can try out your virtual journalism skills by filing iReports from Second Life, too.

Hop on over to iReport Island, pick up a notecard and some virtual press credentials (a hat, mic, and press pass card), and start spreading the word about what you think is important and interesting in Second Life.

You can also check out what others have to say by visiting the SL section of the iReport page. This is an interesting way for CNN to begin experimenting with virtual worlds, and it’s always great to see some positive press on the mainstream media.

An example of a recent SL iReport