Has the buzz about Second Life been annoying you? There's a conceptual framework called the Hype Cycle developed by Gartner that I find useful most weeks at helping me figure out my views on 'hot' technology news.
To be honest, I'm not sure how much rigour is behind it and I doubt that it's useful for definitive planning. It's extremely useful, however, in helping to maintain perspective, especially on new technologies.
The fundamental concept is that most or all technologies go through five phases of development that see the level of hype peak long before the technologies themselves become useful. Between excitement and usefulness there is a period where most people are decidedly underwhelmed by the technology.
If you take the mobile internet as an example, it was developed some years ago as a concept and there was a lot of excitement. This rapidly dissipated when people realised that WAP was really unimpressive and that no-one would be bothered with it. Now, WAP in its various forms is starting to make a comeback as phones have improved and people have found useful things to do with it.
I'd highly recommend reading through the concept and then doing a little search search of the interweb to see what people have posted (neglecting copyright of course).
Back to Second Life - companies that are making PR announcements or set up virtual shops in Second Life at the moment are very much taking advantage of the fact that the level of hype is extremely high. The vast majority of the value gained from these endeavours comes from association with the hype. There will be a severe drop in people's interest and the value to be gained from Second Life before there is any sustained interest from the 'general populaton'.
