Is commercialization killing Second Life?

Second Life was hailed by many as a panacea of online life, the coagulation of years of sci-fi into a grand distributed game that's not really a game. Business Week's May 2006 cover story on the economy in the Second Life universe made many people step up and take notice, including a healthy cross section of big name First Life companies. That rush of popularity may have done more harm than good say some, still others argue that all communities are destined to take similar turns. What's for certain is a rush of corporate presence has changed the virtual world in serious ways over a rather brief period of time.

Are all online communities destined to suffer from similar decay once the corporate interests move in? Youtube, Myspace and others have all met with similar challenges as their scope and scale made them impossible to ignore. For Second Life those changes may be felt by users in some unfortunately pervasive and disruptive ways.

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