[Animats]

It's amusing to see this while building in Second Life. The Second Life build tools are a 3D CAD system with real-time collaboration in virtual reality. Several people can be editing the same set of 3D objects simultaneously. Others can stand around and watch, from different viewpoints.

Doing this for text is trivial by comparison.

[freeall]

Your comment led me to figuring out if Second Life is still really a thing. And I can't really figure it out. Apparently Linden Lab has over 200 employees so there must be some revenue on it. But is the user base growing, and how big is it?

[Animats]

The user base is flat, but the revenue keeps coming in. About 250 employees, down from a peak of 350, and about $66M in revenue.

Linden Labs is developing something new, called "Sansar", for virtual reality users. It's closer to a video game than a simulated world; it's a platform for "experiences", which are essentially third party games. Whether that works out depends on whether VR gets any traction. Second Life also might get a boost when the new Amazon "Snow Crash" series airs. Second Life is the closest thing to the "metaverse" of Snow Crash.

Second Life is interesting because it is an Internet system that isn't the World Wide Web. It's not HTTP based. It doesn't use HTML or Javascript. It's a huge system of its own. It has a social network, with members, groups, and text and voice chat. Strangely, about 40% of avatars never move; they just use the chat functions.

There's a whole world in there that is totally independent of Google and Facebook.