Second Take at Second Life

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    Until last week, I’d finally forgotten about Second Life. I'd felt elated that the flurry of news reports last year had dissipated into a quiet murmur of infrequent follow-up stories. The pooh-poohers (and you could count me as one of them) smugly exclaimed that they were right: it was nothing but a fad, and it was time to move on.

    But after being sent this article in the Wall Street Journal that reports companies are interviewing prospective job candidates in the virtual world, I'm forced to take an agonizing reappraisal of the situation. In fact, I came away with the realization that Second Life might matter for business, after all.

    Even so, I still harbor some serious concerns about accepting it as a place where commerce is conducted with any kind of accountability. And a quick scan of news reports and blog postings reaffirms that suspicion:

 

  • Since real money does end up changing hands in Second Life, it was only a matter of time before we saw the first lawsuit emerge as we did this week. The only problem: the person initiating the suit doesn’t know who in real life is behind the avatar he's trying to sue.

 

  • While some people are really geared up about the idea of meeting in fancy hotels in Second Life to conduct business, how safe would you feel chatting about private company information with an avatar bearing no physical resemblance to the person you know in real life? 

 

  • As Salon Staff Writer Farhad Manjoo shows in his analysis of a report by MIT, body mannerisms in Second Life might make it easy for avatars to lie. As he aptly notes:

 “Eye contact is an important real-world cue. When someone holds your gaze, you tend to assume a certain level of engagement and credibility -- there's no

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