If you have not tried it, Second Life is “the place” in the emerging virtual worlds arena. (The “other” company in this arena, There.com, somehow failed to get traction or press attention.) Perhaps the best writeup of the Second Life phenomenon and the virtual economy that has developed can be found in this Business Week article.

So while I don’t often use my account, I was pleasantly surprised to run into Rebecca MacKinnon of the Berkman Center, who is about to join my former department at the University of Hong Kong.

I’m still not convinced Second Life is going to be a widespread phenomenon. Some of the avatars are downright creepy. Many of the fancier ones look odd out of context. The other day, one that looked like Anubis, the Egyptian god of death, happened to stroll across my path. In my first experience with Second Life, within minutes of teleporting in, I was approached by an overweight pimp with a fur coat, cane and cowboy hat, asking if I wanted to see some girls. Hmm…

Other successful virtual worlds in Asia, for example, have moved away from “realistic” to “cute” and “stylized”. Witness Cyworld.com and MapleStory where the characters have big cartoonish heads, and stylized bodies. Call it the Hello Kitty influence, but it’s the norm in Asia, and if you think about it, it makes sense – why with all the computing power and digital technology would you want to make avatars that looked exactly like characters in real life? Also, being cartoonish makes the characters less threatening even when jazzed up with different clothes and shapes. (Of course, having characters look like folks in real life is probably why in Second Life, there is so much sexual content.)

So back to Second Life – Rebecca is concerned that Chinese language is not supported for chatting. It’s worse than that – the “last names” you’re supposed to choose for your character are all Euro-centric and irrelevant to half the world’s population. Second Life better improve on this if they’re going to appeal to more than just geek niches.