Second Life called a Pyramid Scheme

[mandy]

Linden Lab's virtual world -- a much-hyped online amusement arcade of cartoon porn, avatars of IBM executives and frog bands -- has an annual GDP of about $220m, according to Fortune Magazine's David Kirkpatrick. That's only the size of the economy of Guinea-Bissau, one of the world's poorest countries, but pretty impressive for a virtual economy, no? No. Many transactions within Linden Lab's environment are circular, more akin to stockmarket volume rather than GDP. One would have to take the Benchmark-backed economic ecosystem more seriously if some of the online sexchat workers and other Second Life entrepreneurs could show that their accumulated virtual earnings could truly be converted into real currency. But, as this financial consultant explains, anonymously, withdrawing money from the Benchmark-backed vitual world is about as hard as cashing out of a pyramid scheme...

full article: http://valleywag.com/tech/second-life/vi...230813.php