Facebook vs. 3D Virtual Worlds

A few months ago I wondered whether the two-dimensional social networks the world has adopted were only waypoints on the road to a three-dimensional Internet. (See the blog post here.) I took a look at Second Life and thought, hey, maybe this will be the next big place for people to hang out online--it just needs better graphics and less stigma. But a recent Wired article soundly refuted my arguement.

I'm okay with that, especially because the author--Mark Wallace--acknowledged that he was of the same opinion in 2006. He wrote a book about it. But now he sees differently, and I think he's right. The gist of his arguement:

Facebook’s near-universal appeal — and virtual worlds’ near-universal failure — has as much to do with presentation as anything else. The very concept of a virtual world works against its acceptance. If I’m your great-aunt and I need a place to post pictures of your cousin’s bat mitzvah, I don’t necessarily mind joining a network in order to do so. But do I really want to join another world?

Yes, Facebook often feels like the downmarket version of the original internet dream. In term of the free exchange of ideas, it is more of a nightmare. And it was not Zuck who brought us a new kind ofinterconnected commerce. But being downmarket about the dream (instead of demanding and exclusive) is what brought critical mass to the new mode of social connectivity in a way that virtual worlds were never going to do.

It's cool that I asked a question on my blog a few months ago that was relevant enough to the global tech conversation that Wired happened to address that very question soon after. My initial hypothesis was probably wrong, but who cares about that? This is an iterative process, right?