• by Liz Tascio , March 22, 2007

Welcome to First Life, where membership is free, where you can interact with more than 6.4 billion people, and where there’s no server lag … because there’s no server.

“Go outside,” “Find out where you actually live,” and “Access your closet to build your First Life look,” commands the site, a one-page parody of the virtual world Second Life, created by marketer and self-described “technologist” Darren Barefoot.

“I’m in PR and marketing, and I’m increasingly skeptical when PR and marketing agencies open up offices in Second Life,” he says. After all, he wonders, what utopian world would include PR and marketing?

About 375,000 people visited the site in the first three and a half weeks after its launch. Counting T-shirts and ad sales (Google ads point visitors to the actual Second Life site), Barefoot says he’s made enough to go away for a weekend. In the first world, of course.

Second Life has more than 3.6 million members, and tallies members’ spending at over $1.2 million a day.