Does anyone still use Second Life?

In its eulogy of the once high-flying website, BBC Magazine's story begins, "Once upon a time Second Life had a Twitter level of hype."

Only there was no once upon about it. It might as well have been yesterday when Second Life was on the tip of everyone's tongue. Though it launched in 2003, the site only really got off the ground in 2006 (check out former Yahoo! Tech blogger Dory Devlin's coverage here), and here at Yahoo! Tech we collectively wrote dozens of stories about the place over the next few years. Hell, I wrote something only two months ago.

But after that 2006 launch and a wave of hype that crested in 2007, it feels like it was only a matter of months before Second Life suddenly went quiet.

Sure enough, the virtual world seems to have become exactly what the naysayers have long since said it was: A flash in the pan, a fad that would soon be forgotten once people wised up and realized how utterly useless and un-fun it was.

In 2008, traffic fell by 40 percent, and the vast majority of businesses which opened virtual shops at which virtual people could buy virtual junk have put up virtual "CLOSED" signs. My favorite quote from the linked piece involves American Apparel's decision to shutter its Second Life store within a year of opening it: "It isn't a subject we like to revisit."

The reason for Second Life's decline is pretty clear: Hype drove its 2007 uptake, with curious users and businesses trying to figure out just what this virtual world was all about. And it didn't take long for them to answer that question: Not much, mainly just a bunch of people engaging in often lewd animated sex acts and the rest of the world's residents bent on "griefing" them. Meanwhile, everyone involved complained about performance and the quality of the experience.

Ultimately, I expect many dabblers in Second Life never got the point of the thing. There are no quests, no levels, nothing much to do except "wandering around talking to weirdos," as one SL quitter puts it. Some might argue that that's no different than what MySpace is... but Second Life has always been an awkward and time-consuming world to navigate, and it is one that costs $10 a month and up if you want to do anything beyond the most basic functions.

Who weeps virtual tears for Second Life? It's clear that a minority of users are extremely vocal about the site and will stand behind it no matter what, but its days of headline-making and magazine covers graced with its animated denizens are far, far behind it.