Writing an Article
One that (hopefully) I can sell to a publication.
I haven't been focusing on my blog lately and I really need to catch up on my blog reading, but I've been occupied with this project lately. My friend introduced me to Second Life, one of about 30 Virtual Worlds that are popping up on the internet. I started reading about them and comparing the top five (according to Wikipedia, which means they're probably not the top five). But, I found after checking out the others that they aren't as popular as Second Life and pale in comparison when it comes to features. I decided to just focus on Second Life now. So I've been going on at different times during the day, conducting interviews, doing research, exploring it, and now I have pages and pages of notes.
About a week ago, I did several google searches and found that I'm probably the only one who hasn't written or blogged about it yet. Reuters even has a reporter on there for any late-breaking Second Life news. This really disappointed me and I was ready to trash the whole idea, but then I found a new angle that (so far) I haven't seen anyone else write about. Right now, I have to keep that a secret though.
Second Life is a 3-D environment that's part virtual chatroom (everyone has an avatar) and part free-market Libertarian society. It's a user-created world and if you own the land, you can make your own rules or laws. So far, the only things Linden Labs (the company that owns Second Life) has banned are gambling, banking services, child porn, and bestiality. It's a place where people conduct business, such as buying and selling virtual real estate or designing clothes and other things for avatars. One of the things that draws people is the money-making opportunities, which gets a lot of hype from all the major magazines and newspapers (Time, The New York Times, BusinessWeek). Virtual money (called Lindens) can be exchanged via PayPal for real cash. There's one land baroness who reportedly made $85,000 in a year by selling cartoon land for people's cartoon characters. It's like The Sims taken to a whole new level.
I'm fascinated by Second Life. Sometimes I have fun on it and sometimes I find it boring. Other times I just find it depressing. There are many people who aren't just using this as a second life, it has replaced their first life. One person told me that he missed three days of work that month so that he could spend time on Second Life. Through my interviews, I found that there's a fantasy element to it that can be addictive. For example, a young girl who has no chance of becoming a model in real life can become a super model through her avatar persona, but at a high price. It takes a lot of money to build a supermodel avatar and there's a lot of competition in that virtual field.
I'll still be blogging and reading blogs, but right now I'm busy putting this article together and learning about the business side of freelance writing. It turns out that submitting an article to a publication isn't going to be quite as easy as I thought.
