There’s a great post and conversation at:

http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2008/06/possibility-of.html#more

by Bruce Damer asking whether we are approaching a “New Virtual World Winter”.   I’d encourage you to read the questions and join the conversation, as we’ll use these as the basis for some upcoming meetings including the annual “Future of Virtual Worlds” panel on Oct. 27.

My personal response is below:

What a great set of questions you have posted - that’s what it’s all about.

I’d like to chime in that my un-researched opinions in response, they really got me thinking.

Basically, there has been more and continued Balkanization and silos - due to the fact that these VW’s are competing businesses built on programming and intended purposes that may be simply incompatible on the most basic levels. These “proprietary islands” remain disconnected for the same reason Office Depot and Office Max are proprietary islands. So, it sounds blasphemous amongst fundamentalist open sourcers, but there’s no savior “browser” or ubiquitous interface coming.

As businesses, new open-ended worlds will generally have to answer the basic question of “what’s this for?” or face extinction. Everyone knows (but for some reason no one wants to admit) that SL is the flagship (non-game) platform. SL is the center of almost every VW discussion and despite all the silly criticism - all the wild outrage amongst users comes at times when they can’t be logged in 24×7. Old media entertainment brands would pay any price for such umbilical loyalty.

If you consider them VW’s inside of games (Wow, Halo, etc.) then by virtue of this I’d say the avatar based interactive online medium is definitely mainstream now. Amongst probable “serious” business users though, or in the areas of adopted collaborative tools, I feel more of a “Trough of Disillusionment” hangover, following a “Peak of Inflated Expectations” party as a result of a solid 2.5 years of aggressive PR and hype.