It appears that speculation earlier this week was correct: Linden Lab's VP Platform Joe Miller has confirmed that a thin client for Second Life, to be called SLim, will be launched in beta 'in a couple of weeks'. The client will be a light weight way to access Second Life, providing text and voice chat without the immersive 3D experience.
Lowering the barriers to using Second Life appear to be part of this. Users already understand IM and VoIP relatively well, and so less explanation of the concept of Second Life might be needed if the 3D aspect is viewed as an extension of that core functionality, rather than IM and VoIP being viewed as features of a 3D world. The difference is subtle but I believe that it is significant. It also has enterprise consequences. Miller cites an example of a business meeting where participants don't have to have the full 3D client to be in the meeting- it would certainly be easier to persuade a business colleague or IT department not familiar with SL to use an IM/VoIP client than to use a 3D client. It will also run on much lower spec hardware, still a key barrier to adoption in much of enterprise.
Miller also announced that avatars and groups will be able to have a phone number. In one use case, an avatar could have a phone number which could be used to reach them in-world by someone using PSTN (conventional telephone network). There will also be optional voicemail, so that the caller is not reliant upon the avatar being in-world at the time of the call. This is connected to the shift in emphasis I discussed earlier: by providing core communication features to Second Life, it becomes a much simpler proposition to market to potential users. In a second example, a meeting could be assigned a number, allowing a participant to join without having to even download SLim, let alone the full client. This goes a long way to solving the enterprise chicken-and-egg problem, of it not making much sense to ask your client to a meeting in Second Life if they are not already members.
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