Second Life

Second life is a virtual world, it was invented in 1991 by Philip Rosedale. When a user signs up to virtual world, they can make their own looks, adjust their hairstyles and clothing style. One key feature of Second World is the ability to become and entrepreneur, setting up your won business, whether it be selling property or furniture, clothes etc. At this present time, 9.8 million people use Second World worldwide.

There is the opportunity for big money makers to use Second world to either sell their products or advertise them. Also there is an opportunity for new entrepreneurs to make their million, literally. Anshe Chung owns her own brand of clothing, furniture and properties which has enabled her to be the first person to make over $i million in real money. Second world uses a whole different currency that can be exchanged into real money, and vica versa. It uses the Linden dollar which 500 LD's can be exchanged into £1.

Other virtual worlds include World of Warcraft and a new Lord of the Rings: Shadows of Angmar, there are more and more of these virtual worlds emerging.

The main way in which Second Life makes money is through the selling and renting of various properties. A lot of the transactions made are monthly rent, whether it be for an office, a club or your own virtual properties. One example of one of these businesses is River Run Red, this virtual business sells things office and shop based, then converting their Linden dollars made into their won, real life currency.

A huge amount of money has been invested into virtual worlds, $40-50 million to create these massive multiplayer games (MMO's). This shows that people believe that the virtual world, especially Secong Life, will create more money than real life. It is difficult not to believe them when Secong Life has a stronger democratic economy than we have back.

advantages and disadvantages of social networking

advantages of web 2.0: allows the users to converse with their friends for free e.g. comments on bebo or "pokes" on facebook. users can control how much personal information they give out and whether or not their profile can be open to public views, if a user takes the necessary precautions, using web 2.0 is a good way of communicating with friends and relatives.





disadvantages of web 2.0: it has been used extremely inappropriately by a number of people, this is shown in the investigation by Italian police over the murder of Meredith Kercher. one of the suspects, Raffaele Sollecito, has posted a picture on his weblog with a large meat cleaver. this shows that web 2.0 has been used to publicise violence and also for stalkers hunting their victims. this has happened when videos of the murdered 11 year-old, Rhys Jones, emerged on youtube. these kind of problems are occuring more and more, maybe because of web 2.0.

web 2.0

link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2

Web 2.0 refers to a second generation of web-based communities such as social-networking sites.

"an improved form of the world wide web"

e.g. myspace, bebo, facebook

it democratises media, everybody has a say.