"There's no credit crunch in Second Life"

Mark Kingdon became Linden Lab CEO back in May this year when founder Philip Rosedale stepped aside to take a more active role in developing Second Life.

The hype surrounding virtual worlds a year ago appears to have died down in recent months but when silicon.com caught up with him, Kingdon was keen to point out there's still life in Second Life.

What's happened to the hype?
Mark Kingdon: It would be a huge mistake to assume hype and success are interchangeable. Hype is born from anticipation, intrigue and excitement and as such it naturally settles down as any product matures. Take the iPod or the Nintendo Wii as examples.

Second Life launched with a real fanfare of hype too and has now cemented its place as a significant part of popular culture. Sure the hype has died down a bit but I'd gladly trade short-term hype for the continued long-term success we're seeing.

Second Life in pictures

♦  Photos: IBM serves up Wimbledon in Second Life

♦  Photos: Renault F1 races into Second Life

♦  Photos: Second Life business evolution

♦  Photos: Second Life - whose HQ can you view?

I joined Linden Lab three months ago as CEO for the reason that it's a company only now starting to realise its full potential.

Has Second Life use levelled out?
Use of Second Life is nowhere near levelling out. In the last month the LindeX currency exchange saw record-breaking levels of trade in Linden Dollars, hitting 120m Linden Dollars on just one day in August alone. There's no credit crunch in Second Life!

We are also seeing a wide variety of use cases on the [Second Life] grid and a far greater level of resident engagement. All the signs are good.

Are businesses still investing in Second Life?
Businesses are investing in Second Life real estate and engaging with the Second Life grid more than ever before. Check out what the BBC, BT, Cisco, Diageo, IBM, KPMG, Orange, Unilever and Vodafone are doing.

What are they using it for?
What I would say is that there has been a real shift in use by businesses. Initially many businesses saw it as a shop window or a billboard. It was all about the eyeballs. The thinking went if you've got over 14 million registered residents it made sense to get your brand in front of those people.

But now businesses are looking to engage, not just display. So we see recruitment fairs taking place, product demonstrations and companies using Second Life for in-world meetings, training sessions and collaboration.

We're also seeing real public sector interest with universities really buying into the potential to get students meeting, collaborating and communicating in-world.

Organisations are now really...

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