philip rosedale the founder of second life on why building it and what its importance is from ted conference. one of the things he mentions that i found interesting, never having even considered it, was that some hundred thousands of people can be on a site like amazon, but you can never interact with them. the idea there is proximity but not able actually interact.
i am of the opinion that an avatar based social network will be the next thing from a facebook or myspace. with the interactions young adopters have with webkinz or club penguin, then older and young adult adopters getting familiar with worlds such as world of warcraft.
if you are on or getting on second life look me up, gavin tellig, i hang around koinonia church where i live out my punk monk life.