So in the news today, Second Life - the MMORPG (if you actually want to call it a role playing game) - got $11 million in funding from Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Pierre Omidyar (founder of eBay) and Mitch Kapor (Lotus, OSAF, Mozilla). Now, some people call that great news, others are more sceptical about it. I must admit I’m on sceptical side for a few reasons.

I tried Second Life for a while and I’m sorry to say I didn’t like it that much. Not that it’s not well executed, because it is - particularly the avatar creation tools are amazing. It’s just that something seems weird when people spend their time in front of the computer, controlling an animated avatar that talks to other avatars (themselves controlled by other people) and builds stuff for others to spend (real money) on.

Now, there’s obviously a good side to this: second life does have an amazing scripting tool that’s getting people into developing things (even if for use in the Second Life environment) by themselves - and admitedly anything that stimulates development and creativity is a great thing. Is that worth the $11 million dollars? Maybe not. Is the community worth it? Maybe it is. I guess it was the novelty and the world of possibilities when people are building a whole Second Economy. Lets see how they play the game.

Further reading: Scoble considers Second Life an OS, Dave Winer asks if Microsoft will port windows to run inside it. Fun ensues.