Once upon a time Second Life had a Twitter level of hype. Even those without a cartoon version of themselves couldn’t plead ignorance due to blanket coverage in newspapers and magazines.

Second Life is a virtual world started by the US firm Linden Lab in 2003, in which users design an avatar to live their “second life” online.

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Virtual worlds have had some real problems. Google (GOOG), for instance, recently shut down an animated environment called Lively only five months after it was announced. And Linden Lab, whose Second Life online community was once front-page news, has neither reached many mainstream consumers nor created an important meeting place for corporate users.

But the San Francisco company is far from backing away. The latest bet: that users will pay real money for things that only exist “in world,” as Second Life fans call it.

Linden Tuesday night announced that it has purchased two small companies–Xstreet SL and OnRez–that act a bit like Amazon.com (AMZN) in providing one-stop shopping for virtual goods from other merchants. One component of their strategy has been to make it easier to buy goods through the Web, not requiring users to enter Second Life to acquire the items they may use there. Financial terms are not being disclosed.

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In what tech pundits at Gartner Research (IT) call the curve of hype and gloom, Linden Lab’s virtual world, Second Life, has officially entered the gloom stage.

In October, Reuters pulled its full-time Second Life reporter Eric Krangel, who had written daily news stories about the virtual world’s economy for a year and a half, out of the virtual world. Krangel, who now blogs at Silicon Alley Insider, wrote that Linden Lab needs to recognize that “Second Life’s reputation is now a liability,” and that hanging out in the virtual world was “like watching paint dry.” In November, Google (GOOG) seemed to echo the bearish mood toward virtual worlds when it shut down its own online microcosm, Lively.

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Second Life may be getting more real by the day. In a post on the Second Life blog on Monday, Jack Linden describes the Linden Lab plan to better regulate the Mainland, the section of virtual land that’s managed directly by Linden Lab itself. With the implementation of a Department of Public Works, Second Life residents were alerted to a Linden Lab that wants to be more involved and regulate more of the user experience.

The new plan is still vague, but seems to center on the concept of zoning. One of the most frequent user complaints is the proliferation of ad farms in-world where a virtual world parcel is filled with nothing but ads for other in-world businesses, and the post suggests that Linden Lab will take steps to control what is viewed by many in Second Life to be akin to an adult bookstore moving in next door.

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Here’s the metaverse mystery of the week: This strange new private island with a very familiar name recently emerged on the server grid of virtual world Second Life. Spotted yesterday by Second Life blogger Tateru Nino (and confirmed when I checked the world’s dynamic map today), we have to assume it’s an official Nintendo property. When someone buys a virtual island from Linden Lab, they also get to name it. Given Linden’s DMCA enforcement policy, it’s unlikely they’d let just anyone dub an island “Nintendo.”

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