Second Life

I first heard about the term "Second Life" in my Bus188 class earlier this semester. My teacher explained that it was a website where people could walk around a mall and go into different shops and buy various items except it is done on a computer. People do not even have to leave their homes in order to go shopping. They control a person by using the mouse and keyboard and they can walk around a virtual mall and actually buy items. But I thought that this was pointless because people go shopping online all the time on different websites. Also, it seemed similar to a video game called "Sims" in which the player creates a person and does various activities. However, this idea of "Second Life" has grown tremendously over the past few years. According to the article found on the following link, http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_5545786?nclick_check=1 there are more than 5 million members. One of the reason for the huge growth is the money generated through advertising and buying and selling large amounts of goods. Large corporations pay for advertising space so that consumers will see it as they walk through the virtual mall.
The article focuses on the educational use of Second Life. Stanford has used it to create a "virtual museum" to show a professor's work. It is great that people around the world are able to enter the museum from their computer and see the artwork from Stanford. Without Second Life, people would only be able to view it in real life. I think that Second Life will continue to become more popular as more people learn about it and understand how useful it can be.