I don't agree at all with the binary mindset that resolves all things to either cutting edge or dying. A number of people are doing that with SL at the moment, and it's very stupid if you ask me. About 99.9% of all human interests and endeavours fit between cutting edge and dying.

There's been a change from rooted-in-one-spot and time-consuming to some things being on-the-fly and momentary/ephemeral but not everything needs to fall into the latter category. Ask artists how much interest they have in using Photoshop on their phones. SL is time-consuming for the most part, and that's neither good nor bad, but just a description.

I think something akin to FourSquareSL or FourSquare3d would be fun.

I think optional gamefication of the new user experience would be useful.