Developed for personal computers and owned by the San Francisco-based firm Linden Lab, it launched on June 23, 2003 and saw rapid growth for some years; in 2013 it had approximately one million regular users.

They can explore the world (known as the grid), meet other residents, socialize, participate in both individual and group activities, build, create, shop, and trade virtual property and services with one another.

One of the principal developers, Cory Ondrejka, was forced to resign as chief technology officer in December 2007, with Rosedale citing irreconcilable differences in the way the company was run.

Likewise, unlike a traditional talker[vague], Second Life contains an extensive world that can be explored and interacted with, and it can be used purely as a creative tool set if the user so chooses.

A Premium membership (US$11.99 monthly, US$32.97 quarterly, or US$99 annually) extends access to an increased level of technical support, and also pays an automatic stipend of L$300/week into the member's avatar account, and after 45 days that resident will receive a L$700 bonus, making it L$1,000 for that week.

This stipend, if changed into USD, means that the actual cost for the benefit of extended tech support for an annual payment of US$72 is only about US$14, depending on the currency exchange rates.

Boellstorff describes this mentality as being in direct contrast to the one held by other mainstream social media websites, where anonymity is shunned and users are encouraged to make the link between their online and physical presence clear.

[56] Virtual goods include buildings, vehicles, devices of all kinds, animations, clothing, skin, hair, jewelry, flora and fauna, and works of art.

Services include business management, entertainment, and custom content creation (which can be broken up into the following six categories: building, texturing, scripting, animating, art direction, and the position of producer/project funder).

Customer USD wallets obtained from Linden Dollar sales on the Lindex are most commonly used to pay Second Life's own subscription and tier fees; only a relatively small number of users earn enough profit to request a refund to PayPal.

[60] There are now several mature third-party viewer projects, the most popular being Firestorm, that contain features not available in the Linden Lab 'Official' client, target other platforms or cater to specialist & accessibility needs.

Since 2008, the University of San Martin de Porres of Peru[82] has been developing Second Life prototypes of Peruvian archeological buildings, and training teachers for this new paradigm of education.

[101] The Egyptian-owned news website Islam Online has purchased land in Second Life to allow Muslims and non-Muslims alike to perform the ritual of Hajj in virtual reality form, obtaining experience before actually making the pilgrimage to Mecca in person.

[110]Relationships in virtual worlds have an added dimension compared to other social media, because avatars give a feeling of proximity making the voyeur experience more intense than simply a textual encounter.

Second Life can be a real-time, immersive social space for people including those with physical or mental disabilities that impair their lives, who often find comfort and security interacting through anonymous avatars.

[115] The movie was rumored to feature Sacha Baron Cohen as protagonist Plastic Duck, a zany Second Life resident who drove founder Philip Rosedale bonkers.

It was possible to perpetrate denial-of-service attacks (DoS) on other users simply by scripting objects that spew screen filling characters from anywhere on the grid to another avatar's location, thereby disabling a clear view to the virtual world.

Linden Lab offers no compensation for items that are lost in this way, although a policy change instituted in 2008 allows accounts to file support tickets when inventory loss occurs.

Criticism of quality assurance of Second Life states that Linden Lab focuses too much on bringing new features to the production environment instead of fixing long-standing bugs that, in the worst case, cause financial loss for the users.

[152] Computer hardware and Internet connections capable of smoothly rendering high quality content in other MMOGs may perform poorly in Second Life, resulting in low frame rates and unresponsive controls on even minimal graphical configurations.

[citation needed] On September 8, 2006, Linden Lab released a news bulletin that revealed their Second Life database had been compromised and customer information, including encrypted passwords and users' real names, had likely been accessed.

[153][154] However, it was later revealed that the hacker had in fact been focused on trying to cheat the in-world money system[155] and their access to personal information was believed incidental, although a full alert was still raised for safety's sake.

Common forms of fraud taking place in-world include bogus investment and pyramid schemes, fake or hacked vendors, and failure to honor land rental agreements.

In May 2009, Linden Lab announced they were "grandfathering" Openspace sims (now rebranded as "Homesteads"), after a protracted protest movement[168] caused a major amount of negative publicity and funded potential litigation.

The USA has attempted to pass several laws forbidding simulated child pornography; however, each one has been struck down by the US Supreme Court as an infringement on the First Amendment right to free speech.

In November 2006 controversy arose over a tool called CopyBot, developed as part of libsecondlife and was intended to allow users to legitimately back up their Second Life data.

[186] In 2006, attorney Marc Bragg sued Linden Lab, claiming that it had illegally deprived him of access to his account[187] after he discovered a loophole in the online land auction system which allowed regions to be purchased at prices below reserve.

Although most users and commentators believed that Bragg would have no chance of winning, a number of legal developments occurred as a result of the case, including a court ruling that parts of the Second Life Terms of Service were unenforceable, due to being an unconscionable contract of adhesion.

Many of Bragg's legal arguments rested on the claim, advertised on Linden Lab web site, that virtual land within Second Life could be "owned" by the purchasing user, which was removed shortly after the settlement.

[207] It notes trends within the SL innovation to date, including the provision of realistic settings, the exploitation of pleasant simulated environments for groups, and the links with other learning technologies.