So what's changed? Absolutely nothing. Everything described above continues to occur, with a truckload of evolutionary steps undertaken. The only difference is that the innovators and educators have got on with doing the do, while the majority of the mainstream media moved on to the 'next big thing'. Second Life has grown exponentially over the past four years, although it has reached a plateau over the past year or so. Part of the reason for that is the emergence of other worlds where content creation remains king, such as the open-source option OpenSim or emerging Second Life competitors like Blue Mars.