In an interview with ‘The Next Web‘ Ebbe Altberg (CEO of Linden Lab) says that a beta of ‘Second Life 2’ (no official new name yet) is expected to be launched in 2015 while the final version should be ready in 2016.

To achieve this Linden Lab is hiring 40-50 new people.

Ebbe feels that with the current state of technology, market interested and available hardware and software available, this is the time to try something big.

Second Life 2 should offer the users more and better tools for creators, games, designs, good, and of course all the things SL has now will be part of the new world.

Linden Lab hopes that the users who tried SL in the past and have not stayed, to return and try it again.

It is time for the SL community to grow, time for SL to go mainstream.

You can read the complete interview here.