Scoble, quoting his son today, said about the truest words I have read in a while. He said that Second Life is addicting.

Man, is it ever. After I had my own little temper tantrum this past weekend brought on by my inability to figure out how to build a suitable home in Second Life, I ventured back into the Second Life world. Six hours later, I was all fixed up.

With a nice, big house in an active area, with a pool, a plasma TV on the wall and a radio that plays classic rock music for anyone who happens by. My old house, in a quiet residential neighborhood, is up for sale.

It took some time, but I had no choice. I got hooked. At dinner Sunday night I found myself thinking about buying the land next to my new crib. Not since Civ. III has something like that happened.

Second Life may or may not be an OS, but it is, for many, the future of online interaction. It’s not Microsoft that should be quaking in its boots- it’s Myspace, et al.

As soon as enough people figure out how to get set up and do cool stuff in Second Life, I believe it will take dominant control over the interactive space. It’s what Sims Online should have been combined with what many of the social networking sites are trying to become.

There is certainly the potential for an insider crowd or crowds to develop in Second World, but that’s to be expected if it is to mirror the workings of our first lives. For example, I see all kinds of cool stuff being done by Eric Rice and others, but I have no idea how to get involved in that sort of mega-private development. You can buy a private island, but it is very expensive at over $1000 for the land, plus $195 a month for maintenance. But like anything else, if I want to know bad enough, I’ll hang around the action and ask questions until I figure it out.

In the meantime, if anyone wants to visit my Second Life house, it’s called Rancho DeNada and is located at Sibine (138,79). There’s a pool, a dance floor, a couple of hot tubs and some music.

And, with any luck, that’s just the start.

I’ve been spending a little time in Second Life, and have written about it here, here and here.

I still think it is a brilliant business plan (I’ve already spent around $100 there, without even trying), but I have seen some areas that need improvement.

I’d love to set up a major Newsome.Org or perhaps Err Bear Music presence in Second Life. Maybe get a little exposure for my music, etc. Maybe even do a Second Life concert series.

But as of the moment, I’ve concluded that it would be far too hard to set it up.

Here are 5 things Second Life Needs to do now:

1) Make Building a Lot Easier.

And I mean a whole lot easier. I bought a house and tried to add to it, but it was completely impossible, at least for me. In fact, I accidentally picked up my entire house and couldn’t even get it back on my lot (which is pretty small). My placements were either unlevel or more often over the lot line. Granted, I’m sure there are a lot of people who can build stuff as easy as I can play a D chord, but it was impossible for me. I ended up just putting my lot back on the market and returned to the streets. With a house in my pocket.

2) Make Finding a Compatible Neighborhood Easier.

When I was looking for a place to buy, I found all kinds of land and houses and businesses for sale. It seems to me that, just like in the real world, neighborhoods in Second Life have particular characteristics. The last thing I want to do is buy and house and move into a neighborhood and find out that all of my neighbors are college kids or opera (either one) fans, or worse. I need to know where the middle aged tech-writers/musicians live. How about a Memeorandum street?

3) More Information About the Commercial Areas

And what about all those islands and commercial areas? How do you buy a condo or office somewhere? I finally gave up trying to get a place over by Scoble on Slackstreet. It’s OK if all of those places (which by the way are ghost towns with nary a person in sight) are off the market or unavailable, but I wish I knew why. I don’t know him, but Spin Martin seems to be the Donald Trump of Second Life.

4) Easy and Short Tutorials on Doing Stuff

I need to watch some very dumbed down tutorials on how to set up stuff within Second Life. For example, I’d love to set up some sort of radio station or public music player with some of my original songs on it, but I can’t figure out how to do that. Stated another way, I’m sure there are all kinds of cool things you can do in Second Life, but I don’t know how to do any of it. It gets frustrating.

5) I Need a New Name

I mentioned this before, but why are there limitations on character naming? Lots of people would probably like to take their internet presence into Second Life, but the naming conventions won’t allow it.

I imagine that if I had all the time in the world, I could figure most of this out. But I don’t, and I expect a lot of others don’t either.

So these things need to be easier. A lot easier.

I like Second Life, but candidly the hard is starting to outweigh the cool.

OK, here it comes.

The more I fool around with Second Life, the more amazing I think it is- both from an immersive experience point of view and from a business plan point of view. I found myself itching to go back there while I was trying to get some work done this past weekend. And I have never even talked to anyone in the game.

I just walk (or fly) around and look at stuff. I even bought a little land this weekend.

That’s where the business plan part comes in. You can create an avatar and participate in the world for free, but if you want to own land (for a home or a business) you have to upgrade to a subscription (less than $10 a month). Plus, you have to buy currency to buy things you need.

Smart. Smart. Smart.

There are a couple of problems that I feel compelled to point out (paging Pathfinder Linden):

1) While the help files are good at getting you started on the basics, it is very, very hard to build stuff. I wanted to add some walls, etc. to my newly purchased house and I finally gave up. It may be easy once you do it, but it’s hard if you haven’t.

2) There needs to be more obvious help in setting up a business space. I finally found some houses for sale and bought one. But I really wanted to set up shop in one of those highrise condos not far from Scoble’s building. Most of them were empty and perhaps all of them are owned, but I couldn’t tell one way or the other. And I saw not a clue how to buy one. And those old building beside Scoble’s building. Are those owned by someone or for sale? Granted, I didn’t spend hours trying to figure it out. But if I’m going to set up a Newsome.Org office over there, I need some fancy digs.

3) Why are there limitations on the name of your avatar. Granted, you have to filter out bad words, but why can’t I use whatever name I want. I want to be Billy Pilgrim, not Ezra Snickerdoodle.

Otherwise, it’s scary how compelling the Second Life experience is. Even for an old man like me.

Eric Rice has posted the first installment in his series about Second Life. I posted a little about it the other day.

Since then I have been back a couple of times and done a little more exploring. I haven’t tried to build anything yet, but I did make a little money (by dancing and then sitting in a chair by some slot machines). Of course I spent what I made and more on the slot machines, which was the idea.

I have only barely scratched the surface of the application, which is part game, part chat room and part virtual world. The first two don’t really interest me, but I am intrigued by the third. The more I look around Second Life, the more impressed I am.

One thing I want to do next time is explore Second Life’s music aspects. Fred Wilson found some good music stuff there.

And I still want to know if Second Life is related to that deal that AOL (or maybe it was Compuserve?) launched or almost did 10 or so years ago? See my other post for more details about that.

After reading about Second Life at Scoble’s blog and elsewhere, I gave it a try tonight. My thoughts later, but first a question.

Is this related to that deal that AOL (or maybe it was Compuserve?) launched or almost did 10 or so years ago? A long, long time ago I was a beta tester for something very similar. I can’t remember what it was called- maybe something “scapes?” Anyway, I was a beta tester along with a ton of other people, which meant we had many months of free service. It was pretty amazing by the standards of the day. Once it went live, I didn’t want to pay for it, so I never signed up. That spelled the end of my great avatars, Fritz the Cat and Shakes the Clown.

Anybody remember what I’m talking about?

So tonight I sign up (Ezra Snickerdoodle) and create a cyber-Kent/Ezra and wonder around the place a bit. Again, this is very, very similar to that deal I talked about above.

It is a pretty cool deal, but I really need to go when someone I know will be there, since I’m not much into the chat scene and am probably about 100 years older than the next oldest person in there.

The one problem I had, which is what made me stop playing Doom back in the day, is that I start feeling motion sick when I walk or fly (I had that dream as a kid) around.

I don’t know that Second Life has much appeal for me, but I can sure see how kids would dig it.

In addition to myself and Shane Ede, Doc Searls nodded approvingly at the Second Opinion concept yesterday, as did Dave Wallace (the LifeKludger).

Dave and Mike Seyfang talk about expanding the conversation in their latest podcast. I listened to it last night and the discussion is interesting and relevant.

Anyone else want to give it a go? How about some of my fellow Wagon Train members?

As an aside, are there any bad blogs in Australia?