Just wanted to throw in my 2 cents opinion here. Now that SL has been acquired by an investment group and by the sounds of things and what I have read, they wish to not only keep it going, but to make it better. So here's the deal from my own personal perspective.
My Mom was in SL years ago, several years ago and she is actually the one who introduced me to SL. We sat at the computer together as she helped me build my avatar. As we put my avi together and went shopping for this and that, she told all about what SL used to be like. When there were 70,000 people online at any given time