Parmy Olson, Columnist

Remember Second Life? That Could Be Facebook’s Future

A Q&A with Wagner James Au, author of “The Making of Second Life,” on why the short-lived success of the first virtual world has lessons for the metaverse.

February 6, 2022 at 1:00 PM UTC

By Parmy Olson

Parmy Olson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology. A former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and Forbes, she is author of “Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT and the Race That Will Change the World.”

We’ve been here before.
*Photographer: PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP*

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

Parmy Olson: With the plunge in Meta Platforms Inc.’s stock this week, shareholders are focusing scrutiny on Facebook’s decision to re-brand itself and stake its future on the metaverse: a 3D, immersive world where we talk and do things as avatars.

Second Life had all this when it launched nearly 20 years ago, as a virtual world developed by San Francisco-based Linden Lab. You were one of the first people to document what it was like to live in Second Life and now write a blog on the metaverse, https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/. What do you make of the comparisons people are drawing now between Second Life and the metaverse that the big tech companies are trying to build?