I have been in SL for about a week, and it kind of reminds me of the old Palace site. Better graphics and crafting tools, an economy and ownable land, but essentially the same kind of chatting activities. So in a way it is a more tactile version of the web, sitting somewhere between the pure documents format of the web and the real world. There is something kind of interesting of how you can do a risk free 'test' of something in SL while still deciding whether or not to go with it in real life. (whether it is trying out that T-Shirt or haircut to see if you like it, all the way over to playing around with cross dressing.)