Well, Forbes, Wired, who's next to pick up a bat and try to knock some candy out of the Linden Lab pinata?

Part of this one has to lay at the feet of LL and LewisPR.  LL have been total media whores for the last year-ish.  This is based on the idea, I suspect, that they need to get big enough to be *the* hit destination for virtual worlds.  Think of it as the Amazon syndrome, for those who remember when Amazon had competition.

But the hazard of building this kind of buzz is that it comes to that tipping point when the folks in the press who consider themselves to be savvy realize that their peers are subject to this PR push, this irrational exuberance -- and hey, maybe they've been subject to it, also!

That's the point we're at now.  The self-styled thought-leadership folks are deciding that SL couldn't be as cool as hyped, and so it must be cool to take LL and SL down a peg or three.

It's no more true that SL is doomed, or LL is doomed, than it was that they were an unassailable hit.  So it will be a couple more months before some of the analysis goes the other way, actually analyzing quantifiable issues, actually talking to people in the community and such who understand the environment, and decide that the rumors of SL's demise are greatly exaggerated.