Elevating a comment regarding Virtual Worlds

I received this set of very intelligent comments and I wanted to respond (but not now). I think I'll devote some time to this on next week's Across the Sound podcast and possibly post the clip here afterwards, but in the interim here are the 2 comments:

From Kelly:

I'm sure you've read all the coverage recently about the Gartner research that states "80% of active internet users will have a 'second life' before 2011 but not necesarily in Second Life" so where you do see the virtual world market going if not towards a 3D imersive world like SL? I'm an experienced gamer and began my career in PR for PC game companies and I have a tough time in SL...the lag is crazy and the only acitivy I ever come across is swinger clubs or drug binges...I now work for a company that operates a virtual world as well, but we are 2D based and offer a lower barrier of entry but yet every day new companies like Coca Cola are launching initiatives inside SL worth millions of dollars...but where is the ROI? I've also read SL's acutal population of active players is lower than 200,000 so if that is the case how can you justify the millions of dollars spent on these initiatives to only reach such a small audience?

From Rob:

Kelly makes a good point. As enticing as Second Life seems, it's practically impossible to know the type of results in can produce. This lends even more credence to the original post. The fact that many advertisers are advocating SL without experiencing it themselves is a dangerous game. I'm not suggesting that every busy ad exec spend hours a day crafting their virtual avatars, but I wonder how much would it cost to hire some independent testers to explore the site on their behalf? The idea is sort of like beta testers for video games.