The platform principally features 3D-based user-generated content. 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. Second Life users, also called residents, create virtual representations of themselves, called avatars, and are able to interact with places, objects and other avatars. The virtual world can be accessed freely via Linden Lab's own client software or via alternative third-party viewers. In many ways, Second Life is similar to massively multiplayer online role-playing games nevertheless, Linden Lab is emphatic that their creation is not a game: 'There is no manufactured conflict, no set objective'. Developed and owned by the San Francisco-based firm Linden Lab and launched on June 23, 2003, it saw rapid growth for some years and in 2013 it had approximately one million regular users growth stabilized and by the end of 2017 active user count had declined to 'between 800,000 and 900,000'.
Second Life is an application that allows people to create an avatar for themselves and have a second life in an online virtual world, or metaverse.
