TAMPA, Florida—The current and former CEOs of Linden Lab are pinning their hopes for Second Life’s future on usability improvements that will drive huge increases in resident population.

Linden Lab CEO M Linden, noting that SL residents currently collectively log some 35 million hours in-world per month, said: “I’d like to see that go up another 100 million user-hours.”

M Linden and company founder and former CEO Philip Linden took the podium jointly at a Saturday morning breakfast with some 300 residents attending the Second Life Community Convention here. In presentations with little in the way of news, both were upbeat about SL’s prospects even as they acknowledged the technical and competitive challenges ahead.

Without naming specific other virtual worlds, Philip Linden said “Some of the competitive products have have come out demonstrate how hard it is [to create user-friendly virtual worlds].”

Philip Linden, who stepped aside as CEO earlier this year to “get back to primarily being an innovator and an inventor and an explorer,” said he’s been experimenting with the use of 3D cameras to create a “Minority Report” interface that might enhance the SL user experience.

Philip Linden said he’s also interested in efforts to help residents of third-world nations benefit from the economic and educational opportunities Second Life offers by expanding the availability of broadband and high-power computers. “That’s a pretty inspiring thought,” he said.

Philip Linden said he believes that over the next few years, more and more human activity will move to 3D worlds because of their advantages over the two-dimensional Web. “The Web has isolated us across language boundaries, but the 3D version of it won’t,” he said. ‘The presence of living people in the space means that we can cross language barriers.”

Responding to critics who express concern about the potential for anonymity in virtual worlds, Linden said he believes virtual worlds can empower people to achieve real-world goals. “Who you are in the virtual world is very likely to be a better representation of you than the version sitting in this room,” he said.

M Linden said Linden Lab is focusing on improvements in three major areas: relevance, usability and reliability.