My girlfriend is a Myspace addict.  Not a day goes by that she does not get on.  All of my friends are Myspace fanatics.  Yet, not a single one of them are on Second Life.  A few have tried and they all got bored because, quote "There's nothing to do on there."  My rebuttal to them, “If you didn't have any friends on Myspace, what would you do on there?  Because whatever you do on myspace, you can do the same in Second Life, and more.”

What people do not see in Second Life, or any virtual worlds for that matter, is that it most represents the beginning of a new form of social network.  Why have a page on Myspace or when you can own a house on Second Life?  Why post pictures of yourself or your friends on Facebook when you can frame them up in your living room.  Why post messages on boards when you your friends can congregate at one location and talk amongst each other?  One of the reasons not many people get on SL is because they do not have the hardware to support the program.  Once the hardware starts catching up with the software, I have no doubt that my network will grow to include more of my Real Life friends.

But it doesn't end there.  Second Life takes people beyond their circle of friends and beseeches them to extend their network to strangers.  It eliminates some of the negative attributes that undoubtedly constitute people's social behaviors and perception, be it consciously or not.  At one point or another in our lives, we all have made premature judgments on people we don't know based on insignificant factors such as race, gender, wealth, or disabilities only to find out that we were dead wrong about them.  But not in Second Life.  There is no such thing as racism in SL.  You can't really be prejudice against a fire-breathing dragon.  When a customer talks with or contacts us about a problem, we don't make any premature judgments based on how much they have with us or how they look.  Everyone at our bank gets the same treatment, whether they have 100L or 1,000,000L.  

We all start with a clean slate.  Everyone can befriend strangers without sub-consciously worrying about their shortcomings.  How we are perceived by others is based on who we are, not what we are.  That saying might be a cliché, but nowhere does that hold true to its form more than in Second Life.  If you lack friends in Second Life, it is not because you lack the material wealth or desired physical attributes, but it's probably because you lack the inner characteristics required to be a friend.  In that essence, Second Life really does offer what everyone wants:  a Second Chance.

-Arbitrage Wise

Robert Bloomfield aka Beyers Sellers (A Professor at Cornell) recently wrote a blog "What in the world is a Fictional Securities Exchange? " and asked me to comment on it.  Here is my comment:

While I think that the SL Exchanges should be a means to help raise capital, I do not see that as the primary goals of the current exchanges. As Robert pointed out, the fact that the listed companies own close to 90% of the businesses offers little value to the investors. What I see these exchanges doing is a providing a means to create artificial value for the owners.

For example, Company A wants to go 'public' and issues 1mil shares in IPO at 1 Linden per share, while having 10mil shares outstanding. Odds are, the IPO will be successful because of most investors' lack of due diligence in examining the IPO. They simply want to put down a small risk to see if it will pay off, and possibly just have some fun trying their hands in the stock market. If the IPO is successful, this company can now claim they have a market value of 10mil Lindens. But what is there to support this value?

Now, assuming that the business does have a sound model and someone is interested in buying them out. Does Company A really expect that the person to pay the current market price where the value was artificially created overnight? Let's not forget to add in the fact that there is very little liquidity in these markets, so the owner of Company A can simply go out to the market and buy more shares himself to further inflate the value. So where does it stop?

While the idea of an exchange can be noble, one must first examine how the exchange operates and ask, what is the intent of the exchange? Who are they looking after, the companies or the investors? Are their policies set to help incubate developing businesses that have favorable value propositions, or are they merely colluding with businesses to make money for the owners?

I would like to end this comment with one suggestion to the exchanges: Your customers are the investors, not the companies.

Are you business minded?  I've recently read an article an enlightening article about entreprenuers on Strategy+Business.  

Some of the things it highlights are:

1) A lively stock market, in itself, is perhaps the first ingredient an emrging nation needs to create a proporeous, self-sufficient economy, because entreprenuers need investors to back their risky ventures
2) Entreprenuers "succeed as agile seekers looking for many different ways to identify and capture opportunity."
3) Entrepreneurs are "Capturers of Opportunities"
4) Individuals with more varied backgrounds were more likely to become entreprenuers
5) The economy as a whole becomes more dynamic when entreprenuers "act on the 'Eureka!' moments that signal a new idea.
6) A good life is one with a "career of challenges and personal development."

Even though these concepts apply to everyday real life people, it's impact should be more pertinent in Second Life.  With Second Life still in what I believe is it's infant stages, there are so many more opportunities for entreprenuers to develop all kinds of businesses within the virtual world.  But before anyone can be an entreprenuer, he first has to think like one.  

-Arbitrage Wise