Linden Labs has just released a new player for its virtual world, Second Life. This is important because it makes significant moves toward the Web and shows a new strategy: one of integrating into social networks (much of that shift has yet to come, Linden Lab’s CEO, Mark Kingdon told me in an interview embedded here):

http://blip.tv/play/g8sRgcfjTAI%2Em4v

I’ve linked to the new player, a FAQ, and started a discussion on Google Buzz, join us here.

In the interview Mark reveals quite a bit of other info about how Second Life is doing, including how many visits, minutes spent, and other info. It might shock you how well Second Life is doing, even though many people are reacting to my early tweets with messages like “I thought it was dead.”