History of Second Life

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Second Life (SL) evolved as an idea by former Linden Lab CEO and founder Philip Rosedale (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 LindenWorld.

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 beneath shows how the world looked back then and how users could interact with it.

LindenWorld 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, which might be a reference to the Big Bang of the virtual world. Da Boom, as well as the other early region additions were all named after alleyways in San Francisco. This was a nod to Linden Lab's original location on Linden Street. The original San francisco regions, from November of 2002, included Clara, Clyde, Da Boom, Federal, Freelon, Hawthorne, Minna, Natoma, Ritch, Shipley, Stanford, Stillman, Taber, Varney, Welsh, and Zoe.

While population and land slowly grew, Linden Lab released Second Life in June 2003. Back then, it had neither a currency nor where Residents 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 themselves.

During all this time, Second Life was only open for Residents older than 17 years. Beeing 17 or younger resulted in a ban. On February 13th of 2005, Linden Lab offered "amnesty" for the under-aged, in case they'd be beta testers for their new Teen Second Life (TSL). The Residents were transfered to the so called Teen Grid (TG), which is exclusively for teens and were no communication with the Main Grid (MG) is possible. However, the Teen Grid was only open within the staffs office hours. On January 1st, 2006, the TG opened 24/7.

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 becoming an Real Life (RL) millionaire due to Second Life business. This story brought great media coverage and pitched the population growth further.

The client was open sourced in January 2007 and Residents were asked to take part in the Architecture Working Group (AWG), to be able to influence it's development. The AWG had it's first meeting on September 13th, 2007.

On May 21st, 2007, the windlight rendering were announced and became part of the regular release in client version 1.19.1 on April 2nd, 2008. With the introduction of this feature, the graphics of Second Life improved dramatically.

Philip Rosedale announced to step back from CEO in mid March 2008 and introduced new CEO Mark D. Kingdon (M Linden) one month later.. Philip is still an integral part of the company and became chairman of the board.

First Grid TP on July 8th, 2008, start of the Open Grid Public Beta July 31st in the same year.

Mono was launched in August 2008 as part of the 1.24 Server deploy

On January 20th, 2009, Linden Lab announces that it acquired the SL online marketplaces OnRez and XStreet SL in order to merge and integrate them in the SL service.

Related Links

• Wikipedia: Second Life
• Wikia: Misc History Articles
• Wikia: Historical Firsts