Should-be-better-known fact: Second Life dominates virtual worlds and MMOs on the #1 photo-sharing site in the world, Flickr. A quick search with filters off currently shows "secondlife" gets 686,037 results, while "world of warcraft" only gets 35,068. Even other avatar-centric entertainment gets much fewer matches, like "sims 2" at 5,477. ("sims" as a general word that lumps in other results like last names gets 46,373.) "google lively" has a scant 359.
You can also watch the growth of Second Life groups on Flickr via Nitens' great Group Trackr — a good place to start is the very biggest Second Life group, at over 7,600 members and with a pool classed as "very large".
The point of this is not to brag, but simply show that valuable "user-created content" extends far outside of the virtual world experience. 100,000s of Second Life snapshots are uploaded to Flickr, many of them meticulously post-processed with diverse beauty. (It's not just strength in numbers.) There's a lot of fashion, abundant landscapes, and random wackiness. I tend to go for raw shots sent via postcard, but need to emphasize: there are many Residents from various walks of first life who bring further expression to their avatars through photography.
And yes, I said photography because it works. Some will debate that, but such words quickly drown in this sea of visual beauty.
(Videos are another story — to be continued.)
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I'm a member of Koinup and I'm quite sure that SL is the most popular virtual worlds also over on Koinup……
If though also people from IMVU, The Sims and World of Warcraft are kinda numerous and active……
http://www.koinup.com/in-second-life
http://www.koinup.com/in-imvu/
http://www.koinup.com/in-world-of-warcraft/
It might be worth noting that World of Warcraft call themselves WoW. In fact, terms like: avi, avatar, character, char, SL and WoW confuse the issue, as they are used differently. Plus, which photo sharing site is more popular: this just shows that Flickr is used by SL and not WoW.
If we use Google Image search (whole web, not a photo hosting site) you see this, using these terms:
WoW char 195,000
SL char 732
WoW avatar 2 million 680 thousand
SL avatar 560,000
"Second Life" 4 million 160,000
"World of Warcaft" 4million 850,000
avi (avatar) is a SL or Second Life term, char (character) is a WoW or World of Warcraft term, for uninitiated.
Both communities have their own 'ecosystem' or subcommunities. There are thousand of guild forums for WoW, Second Life has thousands of blogs, both have highly sophisticated Machinima and creative video sub-communities.
Not that we are comparing apples with apples here
@Silvy: Good observation!
@Laurel: Thanks for your findings — problem is, "wow" and "sl" are both used in numerous other contexts. Plus, Google image search is somewhat slipshod and scattered: since it doesn't use tags to focus on specific content like Flickr, there are lots of irrelevant hits.
Google images also don't allow for community participation like commenting, which places them outside of social context.
Looks like you have some — make that *many* — great posts on your blog and I'm going to peruse deeper, soon!