Philip Rosedale, founder and chief executive of Second Life creator Linden Lab, is stepping down and will become chairman once a replacement is found, the company said Friday.
"My passion for Second Life is undiminished, and this appointment will enable me to be more closely involved in the evolution of the company's products," Rosedale said in a statement.
In the virtual world of Second Life, users create avatars of themselves that live, work and play in its three-dimensional landscape. Many users make and spend real money on land, clothes, real estate and even weapons they use in the virtual world.
Gaining in Popularity
The online community has attracted real-life businesses too, but some have had to grapple with virtual vandals messing with their 3-D storefronts. While Second Life has nearly 13 million users, only a fraction of them log in regularly.
Rosedale, who built his first computer when he was in fourth grade and started a software 
company in high school, served as the vice president and chief technology officer of RealNetworks (Nasdaq: RNWK) 
before founding Linden Lab.
He was not available to comment Friday but said in a blog post that, as the company grows, the role of its CEO will increasingly be to expand its workforce.
'Not Going Anywhere'
"I believe that we can hire a fantastic person in that role, and also give me the ability to totally focus myself on the job that I do well," he wrote.
Rosedale said he will continue to be "100 percent" involved and full time at Linden Lab.
"Second Life is my life's work, and I am not going anywhere!" he wrote.
Linden Lab's current chairman, Mitch Kapor, who will stay on as a board member, said the job change was Rosedale's idea and there was no particular trigger for it.
"This is actually the typical case [with technology startups]," Kapor said. "We expected that it would happen."
Time of Change
There have been rumblings of an IPO (initial public offering), but Kapor said that's not the plan right now.
Rosedale is changing jobs three months after Linden Lab's chief technology officer, Cory Ondrejka, quit amid strategic differences with Rosedale.
Corey Bridges, the cofounder of another virtual world, Multiverse Network, said Rosedale has brought a lot of attention to the virtual world industry.
A Trendsetter
While Second Life hasn't become the mainstream or corporate destination its creators have hoped for, Bridges said, it got a lot of big companies experimenting in virtual worlds.
San Francisco-based Linden Labs is private and doesn't release financial information such as revenue figures. Second Life has 12.8 million registered users. In the past 60 days, about 1.1 million of them have logged in.
© 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
© 2008 ECT News Network. All rights reserved.
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