The Washington Post has written up an article about Second Life, namely the money being generated by users in-world and interviewed host Robert Bloomfield as part of their story.

The article discusses many of the common ways people make real world money in Second Life, which generated over $500 million dollars in user to user transactions last year. The land barons, the small percentage of people who own the largest amount of land in second life, made over $12 million dollars split between only 25 people in 2009.

From the article:

“The Second Life economy really starts with the idea that people want to socialize,” said Robert Bloomfield, a Cornell University management professor who hosts a popular financial talk show in Second Life called Metanomics. “People need a place to do that. So the foundation of the economy is land.” Sound familiar?

Robert Bloomfield, a professor at Cornell University, created Metanomics in 2007 and has hosted almost 100 episodes.