In a guest article at Terra Nova, The Digital Space Commons president and CEO Bruce Damer has speculated that we may already be seeing early signs of a virtual worlds downturn that could be as severe as the "winter" experienced in 2000-2003.

Damer poses several questions which he feels are important to consider when following adoption and business curve trends for virtual worlds platforms: "Is the fact that our business treats as normal the building top to bottom custom browsers and servers a clear sign of an immature industry? Would the continuous beefing up of Flash or Adobe's new AIR platform 'eat the virtual worlds medium' by creating a single ubiquitous front end?"

In addition to hinting at stalled growth for Second Life and emerging virtual worlds platform balkanizing an already limited usership, he predicts that failing venture-funded online world enterprises could deflate expectations and pull down the whole medium, similar to the effect housing foreclosures have on a neighborhood: "The media will capitalize as easily on the stories of the failures on the way down as they did with the stories of the successes on the way up."

Damer plans to continue his forecast and the discussion in a second, upcoming piece covering how to head off or reduce the slope of this potential new downturn: Ways to Cross the Chasm While Avoiding the Big Belly Flop.