SL has a way to go; it can be intimidating to start, beyond the interface problems, the new users is lost in advertising, acronyms, unwritten rules, and most regretfully, predators. It is like real life in that way, since it is full of people and that brings all those problems. The new user problems I describe are the similar to the problems anyone faces when on the first day at a new job.

It is not a FPS, there is no flag to capture or rating to achieve, so I don’t even know if it needs a true game engine. The closest thing to a goal in SL you can hope for is to make a few friends. I don’t see it so competitive, and I think Linden Labs has been smart not to make it one.

For business, it may have an advantage over other social media. The members seem to be older, move a bit slower, and be more critical thinkers. If you want to build a relationship with a customer, it maybe is better. It takes time and effort to craft a second world business that stands out from the crowd, to construct an avatar, whose look is more than just cut and paste. Again like real life, players can judge the quality and care you put in. The more effort you put into you presentation, the more effort you may put into your products and customer service, and they are more willing to spend time learning about you and the product.

I think the biggest problem is that Linden Labs tend to want to be your complete social media experience, and have not done enough to integrate their world into the real world, the other social networks. Sending email in and out of SL is not easy. Twitting should be embedded, allowing you pull your real life friends into the game through a tweet, and stay in touch with real world friends from the game and allow them to reach your character in the game from the real world.