SHOCK! Sky News Closes Second Life News Bureau!!!

by Alphaville Herald on 18/04/09 at 8:04 am

by Sigmund Leominster

The Prophets of Doom can wallow in the demise of yet another major newscorporation's exit from the Second Life virtual world. Britain's Sky News has announcedthat it is formally closing down its SL island and moving to a "new'Immersive Workspaces' platform in Second Life where employees meet toexchange ideas and do business."

News will still be delivered to these workspaces via "News Pods," a essential a screen with streaming video.

Obliquelyreferencing the departure of other news providers, Sky News says that"life, even Second Life, and technology, move on. In Second Life,increasingly, the trend has moved away from corporate islands like theSky Newsroom."

Virtual world Cassandras can eagerly point tothis as being further evidence that "the end is nigh," whereas moresober commentators will simply point out that the economics of newsreporting and delivery in Second Life is very different from real life,and spending lots of money to have virtual world analogs of real lifenewsrooms doesn't necessarily make any financial sense.

[reprinted by permission from sigmundleominster.blogspot.com]

9 Responses to “SHOCK! Sky News Closes Second Life News Bureau!!!”

  1. Corona anatine

    Apr 18th, 2009

    a sky channel closes = no great loss

  2. lol

    Apr 18th, 2009

    Like it’s said,the only ones using sl now are furfags

  3. Urizenus Sklar

    Apr 18th, 2009

    Gosh what a loss for Second Life. They broke soooo many important stories.

    It is just classic old media to come into SL and think the first thing you have to do is buy an island and pay someone to construct a monument to you on the island. I guess it never occurred to them to try actual reporting.

  4. mootykips

    Apr 18th, 2009

    ah yes, the perils of legitimate journalism in the metaverse 2.0 e-virtual reality world place application software innovation simulator SL. i can just imagine a traditional publication with deadlines and requiring weekly content attempting to “report”, with headlines like “babyfur angry at other prominent babyfur, sends heated message that will not be delivered until the player next logs on”, “shocker: island has inflated traffic values”, and “innovation in sculpted genitalia soon to hit the market”. it would be somewhat like a CNN reporter being dropped in the middle of the Sahara Desert, eventually becoming so delusional through dehydration that they resort to interviewing cacti.

  5. Alyx Stoklitsky

    Apr 19th, 2009

    >Gosh what a loss for Second Life. They broke soooo many important stories.
    >I guess it never occurred to them to try actual reporting.

    You’re under the impression that there’s more than a tiny handful of stories in SL that are of interest to more than an equally tiny handful of people.

    Given that the majority of herald articles are drama pumps and plugs for whatever ‘virtual world’ (read: videogame) pix decides is going to take down SL next, it’s not hard to see that the vast, vast majority of SL ‘news’ is about rival groups of perverts and trolls doing things to piss eachother off, and content ‘creators’ (read: people who recreate everything Ulorin Vex and Emilie Autumn are ever photographed wearing) crying about copybot.

    Please tell me, Uri, what ‘important stories’ they could have reported that more than a few hundred to a few thousand people would have given a shit about.

  6. Spacetard

    Apr 19th, 2009

    SHOCK – HERALD PRINTS ARTICLE, NOBODY CARES, READERSHIP NUMBERS PLUMMET.

  7. Darien Caldwell

    Apr 19th, 2009

    Aren’t they the ones always making up fake news? Oh wait…

  8. Orion

    Apr 20th, 2009

    Just goes to show that in the grand scheme of things a world full of gamers dominated by immature and childish attitudes really doesn’t mean all that much.

  9. Two Worlds

    Apr 20th, 2009

    mooty, I like the cut of your jib.

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