I saw a BBC website article on Second Life. Wow! VR Worlds, that sounds interesting. I actually made an Active Worlds account on Fri. 12 Oct 2007. Spent some time in there, then went to look at this Second Life thing. I had a sense of this Hidden VR world that nobody had told me about ! Made my account in the wee small hours of the 13th, then arrived on Orientation Island. I thought that you had to complete all the tasks before you progressed in forward in SL. So I did. Faffed around Help Island for half an hour. Then got dumped at the Korea2 Infohub. Spent 2 days TP'ing around the grid using my "home" infohub and Help Island Public as my homebase.
On Monday, the 15th I typed "Newbie Help" into search and landed at NCI. They actually gave me a clue about what to do in SL. I rented from a few days in, bought land in early 2008. Owned half a sim for nearly 5 years. Sold it due to ill health. In and out of SL for the last few years.
Interesting twist was, that I HAD heard of SL ... In 2002/2003. A documentary about virtual worlds on TV. They mentioned the soon to be launched Second Life. I had completely forgotten about it. I daresay I would have created an account long before 2007 if I had recalled watching the program.