The original metaverse brand Second Life is set to be revived 20 years after the desktop debut of its clunky avatars.

In a post to the community web forum, the developer Linden Lab shared a YouTube video with details of a Second Life mobile app that will launch later this year.

In truth, Second Life never died. It still has a small community of loyal fans, but reports suggest the current base is at most 900,000 – even though 73 million accounts were created in the lifetime of the virtual world.

Second Life was way ahead of its time. It launched on the desktop web in 2003 and pioneering the idea of letting users control digital avatars in an open virtual world. Two decades on this concept has become much more mainstream thanks to the activities of Oculus and then Meta.

Though these new iterations of VR and metaverse have struggled to break through, there is still residual brand value in Second Live. Linden Labs must think so anyway. Its new video suggest that version for iPhone, iPad, Android phones and Android tablets are on the way. It also includes footage of new mobile character models and environments.

This new mobile version represents Linden Labs latest attempt to breathe new life into its brand. It previously worked on a sequel called Sansar, but ended up selling off the rights in 2020.