History of Second Life

Second Life evolved as an idea by former Linden Lab CEO and founder Philip Linden, who wanted to create a 3D virtual world with user generated content, where they could interact with each other in real time. Linden Lab was founded in 1999 and began the works on Second Life in 2001, which had the internal name Linden World.

In this early state, Second Life wasn't open to the public, very gun focused and it's avatars were made out of prims (so called Primitars). The video shows beneath shows how the world looked back then and how users could interact with it.

Linden World was renamed into Second Life.

"Originally, during the Alpha period, the grid was known as Lindenworld. As we were getting ready to launch the Beta, we decided we needed a name that would convey the expansiveness, involvement and complexity we hoped would characterize this world as it grew. We started by debating the merits of a 'place' name versus a 'descriptive' name. We believed a place name would give people a sense of destination, and possibly some added layer of meaning. And we thought a descriptive name would help people understand this new concept of a shared, 3D collaborative space.

We had a lot of ideas for place names --- one of my favorites was Sansara, which was not only euphonic, but had an interesting meaning in the original Sanskrit, meaning roughly 'ever changing world'. Ultimately, though, we chose to go with a descriptive name, and looked at many derivatives of Terra, Viva, and life. We kept coming back to Life2, and then landed on Second Life as more interesting, more evocative and more what we hoped the world could become as it evolved and grew to be as big as life.

And that's how it came about!"

– Robin Linden

On March 13th, 2002, the first Resident (Steller Sunshine) joined Second Life and the public beta started seven month later in October. The grid consisted of 16 regions, the first one beeing called Da Boom.

While population and land slowly grew, Linden Lab released Second Life in June 2003. Back then, it had neither a currency nor where users able to teleport. It was in the end of 2003 when the Linden Dollar was introduced and the LindeX currency exchange followed about two years later.

In order to restrict simulator usage, a tax system was introduced which required every Resident to pay a weekly fee, depending on the prims they had rezzed inworld. This system was easy to trick, by just packing all prims into the inventory on pay day, and rezzing them again one day later.

The first trailer of Second Life was downloadable in 2003 and is shown beneath.

While in the beginning, the whole financing concept of Second Life based on payed memberships, the focus was soon shifted to land sales. Residents became able to acquire and rent land, which became also a business model for some Residents themself.

The grid was split in the so called "Teen Grid" for Residents between 13 and 17 years of age and the Main Grid for everyone 18 and older. (WHEN?)

On May 1st 2006, Second Life Resident Anshe Chung was featured on the cover of the U.S. magazine BusinessWorld and reported to be the first person becomeing an RL millionair due to Second Life business. This story brought great media coverage and pitched the population growth further.

The client was released under an open source license and Residents were asked to take part in the Architecture Working Group, to take part in the developement. (WHEN?)

With the introduction of windlight in (DATE), the graphics of Second Life improved dramatically.

Topics to cover

• rating system
• telehubs
• life time accounts
• First Private Region (which and when?)
• 2004 - First Burning Life event
• Split in Teen Grid and Main Grid (when?)
• Opensourcing the client (AWG) (when?)
• Mono
• First Grid TP (OGP) - Gridnaut
• Philip steps back from CEO and announces new CEO M Linden.
• Linden Lab aquires OnRez and XStreetSL
• maybe ruth, hippo

Related Links

• Phobos (217, 166, 33) - SL History Museum
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life
• http://secondlife.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Misc_History_Articles

• http://secondlife.wikia.com/wiki/Linden_World
• http://secondlife.wikia.com/wiki/Da_Boom