The return of Philip Rosedale to the reins of Linden Lab was met with rapturous applause by a sizable majority of Second Life users, but quiet scepticism from a notable minority.
I think everyone across the board likes Philip as he’s the one who made it all happen – he’s heralded with nurturing SL into a leading virtual world platform and creating a strong community spirit within the grid. Yet just two years ago, residents were angered at the downturn in the Second Life economy, the failure of Linden Lab to capitalise and grow on the hype it received and the lack of protection for content.
In the two years since Philip left the Lab, none of those things have really changed at all. The grid stabilised and various technical issues got fixed, but in the grand scheme of things, nothing significant happened which saw residents cheering for joy.
Until Philip Linden returned.
Suddenly, everyone seems to think everything is going to be okay, and Second Life’s problems are all going to be solved. Okay, not everyone thinks that, but there is a sense of optimism that the guy in charge cares about the residents.
One of the key reasons that Mark Kingdon was bought into Linden Lab in the first place was the re-establish the Second Life brand back into the public eye. Big money corporations had lost confidence in Philip Rosedale which was the primary reason someone who had a business head was needed, and businesses generate news, which generated new users, which generates money.
A sizable chunk of SL users don’t seem to understand that, and think the current userbase is key to Second Life’s existence. But that’s not how it (or anything on the internet) works – everything is a fad. People discover a new shiny toy, play with it obsessively and then get bored of it when something new comes along – users need to be given a playground to play in, but new kids are needed to replace the kids who grow out of the playground.
By tapping into corporate brands, you’re adding credibility to your own brand and driving in new customers which they have access to. However, the Second Life brand is still badly tainted by various news stories of online sex, paedophilia, and the continuing “Sadville” stigma. No company wants to touch that.
The problem with Rosedale is that he is the guy who’s associated in Silicon Valley with being at the helm when all that happened – he was at the helm both when the brand skyrocketted, and when it fell back down to obscurity in a loud bang. With Rosedale at the helm again, no business is going to want to touch Second Life. And that means zero growth. Again.
I got comments suggesting that I was wrong for saying LL hadn’t done a nice bit of PR in reinstalling Philip Linden back as CEO. But what the Second Life residents think is worthless – the crowds aren’t going to think “Oh wow – Philip is back! Let buy a sim!”. They would’ve (or wouldn’t have) bought a sim regardless. The real PR change that is needed is the media and public’s perception of Second Life. What Second Life really needs is a bit of PR wizardry which wipes its hands with the negative image of the past which plagues its progress, and reinvents itself.
When it comes to PR, Linden Lab is Second Life’s worst enemy – they’ve got a horrendous track record with both the media, and with its own users.
Fact of the matter is that Second Life has a bunch of people who are weird, sick, twisted, freakish, deranged or completely disconnected with reality. And this is the aspect of Second Life which the media loves, because it gives the public a chance to look down on others, and people love nothing more than to feel superior, be it to a bunch of lowlifes messing around on a computer fantasy world all day. It’s that image which sells newspapers.
The good news is that this isn’t the last roll of the dice, as Philip’s just a placeholder (or so we’re told). Second Life is going to continue to be stagnant under his leadership because nobody who can really push the Second Life brand has the confidence in him to take it forward.
What happens next will depend entirely on who the new *real* CEO will be – if they’re a PR heavyweight, then Second Life has a chance to compete in the market in the future. If Linden Lab screw this up, it’s Game Over for Second Life.
jaco on June 26, 2010
First i don’t know if the PR is the main key, secondly i am not sure, if the big business is a key feature in SL. It possibly will be the only moneysource for LL if they plan to compete with Facebook and the like. In that case they will need somethink like an appstore and such, to get advertisment business in.
Yet, that is not what made SL the fantastic place many of the elder Residents remember, they look back on community times, with happenenings in a virtual world with an actual society. Those places are mainly gone and keep going though, leaving SL more and more as a boring and sad place, where you can spend virtual money in an “endless” number of more and more equally concepted malls.
For the simple Residents who built up all the great interesting entertainment and communities, there is a simple question to ask. Why buy a sim, when i can have a free one under my own rules on one of the several Open Source grids?
To me it seems that the simpricing is more and more driving the simowners into the need of a mall or any other moneycow, to get their expenses back.
Hopefully Phillip is aware of that problem, at least as much as M Linden was not aware of it. If there is no return to more focus on a community rather than plain business orientation, i dont see any CEO succeed in bringing the ship back on course.
Crap Mariner on June 26, 2010
“Fact of the matter is that Second Life has a bunch of people who are weird, sick, twisted, freakish, deranged or completely disconnected with reality. And this is the aspect of Second Life which the media loves…”
As a former member of the media, I was expecting you to say “because they feel right at home.”
-ls/cm
Tateru Nino on June 28, 2010
That was my initial reaction. I’ve only ever met one person like that who was ‘a native’.
Ignatius Onomatopoeia on July 2, 2010
Amen, Crap.
“a bunch of people who are weird, sick, twisted, freakish, deranged or completely disconnected with reality.”
That’s also academia. These are my people.
At the same time, the post hit the nail directly on the head. Even the name “Second Life” is a problem.
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Scarp Godenot on June 26, 2010
This cynical view that the big corporate ‘business world’ is somehow more adult and capable than any small business is just a load of PR from the business schools.
What is going on is this: SL already HAS a successful business model that makes them millions every year. The primary investor in LL has dreams of being in the billionaires club, so continuing the existing model wasn’t good enough for him. Hence the unsuccessful attempts to ‘become huge’ by whatever shotgun measures they could think of.
Well, surprise surprise! It turns out you cannot take your installed customer base for granted. They WILL leave and HAVE left to get what they want and/or need. And they will rightly feel disrespected and will not spread the love they once felt as well.
The goose that laid the golden egg was in danger of dying because it wasn’t being fed. This is what is going on now: a refocus on the core business that makes the investors millions. Let’s not forget the hugely increasing amounts of inworld sales of virtual goods that are happening still to this day. This is where the money will be in future VR worlds and hopefully they see this.
Anyone who looks closely can see what is going to happenwith VR worlds in the future. They will multiply exponentially. This will happen when ‘surfing’ with inventory intact safely becomes a reality, which it inevitably will.
So in the long term, the ONLY solution for SL is to be the absolute best of the VR worlds. This is their core mission. This is their only hope for survival in the long run.
Let us hope they have finally realized this.
Jura Shepherd on June 26, 2010
I’m not sure that negative stories from SL’s past are a hindrance so much as rl biz not having a clear picture of why they should even be in SL. I’d even go so far as to say that, for all but a tiny fraction of them, there is no reason.
Even so, there are some companies that can both, benefit from SL and be embraced by residents. To your point though, I think LL could help move things along if they positioned the brand as less of a gatekeeper, and more of a platform provider.
Any brand that could thrive in SL, doesn’t need LL to protect it from all of us “weird” residents. They’ll want to be part of us and be involved.
Mouse Mimistrobell on June 26, 2010
“When it comes to PR, Linden Lab is Second Life’s worst enemy – they’ve got a horrendous track record with both the media, and with its own users.” This statement is unfortunately too true. LL needs to catch a clue – hire a competent PR person AND LISTEN TO THEM. I don’t agree with everything you have to say though. I think that the majority of users are not saying that they are the key to LL’s success. I think they just want to be treated with respect. I can take a lot of pain with the way the client works if someone will at least look at the tools that they’ve provided to me to solve the problem. Isn’t it sad that the only way you learn something is being fixed AND/OR broken is through rumor and innuendo?
Jack Flash-Magic on June 26, 2010
Mal sez: “Fact of the matter is that Second Life has a bunch of people who are weird, sick, twisted, freakish, deranged or completely disconnected with reality. And this is the aspect of Second Life which the media loves, …”
Mal, that is almost exactly word for word what they said about the Internet in 1995 or so. The path from quirky ARPAnet toy and !bang addresses, through BBSes converted to HTML porn sites, to early adopters, AOL, & dot.com addresses first showing up on bulletin boards, and then finally an IPO boom, was at LEAST a decade. And the Internet, well, seems to have done OK.
Joanne Giza on June 27, 2010
praddles, praddles – getting rid of Kingdon is the best thing to happen to SL in the last two years – he was utterly clueless about what makes the heart of SL beat- and everyone he appointed was in the same boat — having Philip back can only be a good thing even if it’s interim – sl was and still is his baby he just needs to put someone in charge from the early years NOT some marketing whiz kid – the key to sl is keeping things personal not corporate – but it should be an interesting half year…..
Sharptongue Chronisch on June 27, 2010
Prad, if “Fact of the matter is that Second Life has a bunch of people who are weird, sick, twisted, freakish, deranged or completely disconnected with reality” does mean, we are strange, innovative, full of dreams – then i am damn proud to be one of that bunch for years^^
Sharp
Sharptongue Chronisch on June 27, 2010
And, btw. it’s that kind of people that keeps the world going, sometimes bad, of course. Otherwise we were still sitting in caves. And that is something bean counters like M. are unable to do.
Welcome back Phil. I have missed that spirit from the old days – but: PR and the money, you should’t forget about it, that’s true. I hope you have learned some lesson.
Just my 2 cents
Sharp
Annyka Bekkers on June 28, 2010
“Fact of the matter is that Second Life has a bunch of people who are weird, sick, twisted, freakish, deranged or completely disconnected with reality.”
You say that like its a bad thing.
Do you think it was an accident that it was only AFTER Linden Lab began to systematically distance themselves from this demographic that growth began to stagnate?
The real fact is that the media loves the sordid, freaky side of SL because its far more interesting and fun than the sanitized, family-friendly office park vision of SL will ever be.
Linden Lab’s great PR mistake is that they have chosen to shove the freaks, perverts and weirdos into the closet instead of embracing them as this world’s most important resource.
Prad Prathivi on June 30, 2010
I’d sooner not condone paedophilia, bestiality and other *illegal* things, thanks. I’d rather the Lab didn’t either.
Dale Innis on June 28, 2010
What a n00bcake!
Everyone’s already scolded you for the “eew, SL is full of preverts” thing, so I’ll scold you for this bit of, um, confidently-expressed error:
“But that’s not how it (or anything on the internet) works – everything is a fad. People discover a new shiny toy, play with it obsessively and then get bored of it when something new comes along – users need to be given a playground to play in, but new kids are needed to replace the kids who grow out of the playground.”
Do you have any actual evidence that that’s how everything on the Internet works? Or might there be businesses that make lots and lots of money from regular repeat customers? Amazon.com, for instance? Ebay? You know, places that provide *actual value*, rather than just “oooh, shiny!”?
In fact it looks to me like assuming that everything is just a fad, and what you have to do is reinvent yourself every five minutes to keep new people coming and to heck with the existing user base, is a really good recipe for failure, on the Internet just as much as everywhere else. Sure, it may get you on the cover of some clueless “Internet magazine”, and it may get you a Trending Topic on Twitter for fifteen minutes; but that’s not exactly a business model…
Prad Prathivi on June 28, 2010
I swear to God, Dale.. someday you’re gonna learn how to read and stop trolling with drivel.
And you just named companies which regularly reinvent themselves and their products, branch out into other services and make themselves more exciting to their customers. As opposed to a company with a single product (a sim) which is makes a point of not interfering with.
Also, reinventing works for Madonna. As does cosmetic surgery, I’m sure.
Dale Innis on June 29, 2010
Sure, those companies (Amazon, EBay, etc) do do things to make themselves more exciting to their customers. Which goes against what you said that I was disagreeing with: you claimed that since everything is just a fad, and your current customers are going to get bored and go away, what you have to do is ignore your current customers, and figure out how to rope in new ones all the time. And that’s just wrong.
Gwyneth Llewelyn on June 29, 2010
I’m split in this. As most of you know, I do happen to run a business providing content in SL to other businesses. So I was glad to hear that LL was pointing SL towards the direction of attracting businesses and enhancing SL’s credibility as a valid platform for business.
After two years, I didn’t see much of a difference really. Of course, we also went through something new and unexpected which was unforeseen by M: a financial crisis. But the big question is, would anyone else be able to steer LL to become even more attractive to businesses? Or, putting it into a different perspective — is “business” (in the sense of the corporate market) really what will give SL its push?
I know, I have changed my mind since 2007 or so. I happen to change my mind often, and I’m ready to admit that I was wrong in the past. In this case, I rather think that SL will remain a residential market, and the corporate market will just use it marginally. But it’s a residential market worth almost three quarters of a billion US$ annually (even though LL just gets a small slice of it). So it’s not really “peanuts”!
The big question is how to successfully harvest it. I have no idea. In my mind, only two people really succeeded: Anshe Chung and Stroker Serpentine
(well, and to be honest, a few thousands of content creators as well, but not all of them became millionaires). The question for me is if this is all that SL is able to provide, and if nothing can be done about it to make it appealing for the corporate business…
In 2007 I thought very fervently “yes”, and I was guided by the similar examples given by the Internet or the World-Wide Web. But today I’m not so sure any more. Maybe it wasn’t M that was to blame; perhaps SL is simply the wrong “thing” to sell to corporations.
So Philip sort of announced that LL would go “back to residents”. And perhaps he’s not that wrong. Residents sustain LL’s operation and create this huge virtual market. Corporations only give marginal revenues — a sim here or there, one or two SLE boxes, and little else. Residents also stay for years and years — at least the core residents, which are the ones that make the economy really work — while corporations engage in limited-time projects to “test the waters”, and later either use SL just for internal purposes (closed to the public) or simply move on to mobile phone or Facebook applications, who have much better media coverage (and far lower return
).
Frans Charming on July 1, 2010
As Gwyneth, I’m split as well for the same, I too happen to run Dev company providing services to other businesses.
I think a large part of the current users came during the Media hype, which was fuelled by business,education and entertainment jumping into Second Life. So it seemed a good thing to focus on them, but that didn’t pan out, and partially related, the residents became dissatisfied with the platform.
What we have to look at now, is not PR, hype or business use cases, but what we have to look in to is which Education,Business and Entertainment came in Second Life at the first place and why, which caused the hype . What made them be the avant garde.
The only answer I can see is that they came because of evangelising by the residents of that time. People who believed in the vision and working on making it come true. Having a dissatisfied users base is warning sign of any organization to step in to SL. You would not likely use a product that you only hear complains of.
So the focus on the residents seems to me the right thing to do. If LL can turn the page and have the users become more satisfied with the product, the users themselves could turn in their strongest marketing tool again, and then business, education and entertainment sectors will take notice once more.
Wol Euler on June 29, 2010
“weird, sick, twisted, freakish, deranged or completely disconnected with reality”
Really? Where do they hang out?
I have never met any “wierd sick etc” people in SL, but I could introduce you to a dozen of them in ten minutes on foot in my RL neighbourhood.
Are there such people in SL? Yes *of course* there are. Are they the majority? No. Are they a plurality? No. Are they even a sizeable minority? No.
This is itself the contentless sensationalism that you decry, this is “ooh shiny” at its most reprehensible.
Arthur Jaymes on July 6, 2010
I do think that RL business can thrive in SL… but the problem is that they have to “get” SL.
Until not too long ago I worked in IT for Wal-Mart. During a “lunch and learn” session about 3 years ago, they brought in a rep from IBM to talk about “web 2.0″. During their presentation, they highlighted SL as being the way of the future.
They demonstrated their vision for corporate presence in SL with the wonderful example of the Circuit City store sim and the Sears store sim. If anyone doesn’t remember the Circuit City store, it was literally a virtual “store”. They had prim representations of items on the shelf and the idea was that you would click the item to buy the RL equivalent. It failed miserably. The IBM rep went on to tell us that the reason it failed was because there wasn’t enough SL content to it (half right). She went on to show us the Sear’s site which was better because (yes she really said this) it had couches in the lobby where people could sit and chat.
The core problem is that their approach was misguided from the beginning. People don’t go to SL to buy RL stuff. They don’t really go to be reminded of RL stuff at all. They mostly go to be entertained, and to take a step away from their normal lives and get to experience things, albeit virtually, that they don’t get to in RL.
The IBM presentation was summed up for me in the response she had to a question. They had a mailbox outside the Sears store that she told us was connected to a database so that they could collect data about what worked and what didn’t. So someone in the audience asked them what they found out through that research. She said “if you can believe this, what a lot of people are asking for is items that they can use in their SL houses”. DUH!
The “Second” part of SL is extremely important. It’s what draws the people. Yes, sex is wrapped up in that. But it doesn’t stop there. It’s the ability of an ordinary guy to be a race car driver, or maybe just to drive a really expensive looking sports car. It’s the person who’s afraid of heights in RL that gets to experience skydiving. It’s the married couple with 5 kids who get to go dance the night away without leaving their house. And yes, it’s the middle aged housewife who gets to be a stripper, or maybe even an escort.
The only way to market RL items in SL is to provide a tangible way to experience them in SL. Some car makers did a pretty good job with this. The best example I saw was a mazda sim where you could not only test drive a vehicle, but take it on a test track complete with an honest to goodness Dukes of Hazard pond jump. Oh and just for good measure, they had windsurfing thrown in to boot.
Oh I say “some car makers” because BMW had a site that was a complete yawner. No test drive at all… just some promotion of their environmental friendliness. *snore* What is “fun” about that?
Where SL fails is to deliver an experience to really immerse yourself in the world. This is where lag and other performance issues come in. It’s not really fun to test drive a car and float off the world because of a sim boundary. SL’s responsibility is to provide a world that is immersive enough for people to come there. Corporates responsibility is to take advantage of that by providing the people something to see (and something to do). In my opinion, both have failed.
Wayfinder on July 6, 2010
There are so many aspects of potential discussion in this issue.
* Philip Rosedale is a charismatic, thick-skinned and affable person– a site better than Mark Kingdon (who came across as a money-grubbing, doesn’t-give-a-hoot-about-customers profiteer). At least when Philip upped the price of sims by a ludicrous amount (from $195 to $295) he had the good sense to grandfather in existing sims. Frankly, I don’t think Kingdon had two working SL brain cells. That’s not really his fault. It was the fault of the ones who decided to hire someone who knew nothing about SL as CEO. That was a bone-headed move.
* SL problems didn’t start with Kingdon. As accurately stated in this blog, SL was plagued by numerous problems before Kingdon took over; all he did was nail the coffin shut. He did so with a great big hammer, but…
* I think a great deal of the positive reaction to Rosedale taking things back over was more of a “better the devil you know”… and a sigh of relief at Kingdon being dethroned. Will Rosedale bring SL back to greatness? I seriously doubt it.
* SL never was all that great. It is a bug-ridden, shoddily-coded system that has broken about every business and programming rule in the book. The platform was created on a highly questionable “adult” foundation– which frankly turned into a blatant porn/perv foundation, then tried to do a sudden backflip in mid-stride and claim to be a “clean” board trying to invite education and business– while ineffectively hiding the dirty laundry. (One can’t claim to be education-friendly while publicly advertising their XXX perv-continent on the splash page.)
* SL was a buggy, lag-ridden, inventory-damaging, no-backup, mess of a system during Philips rule prior to Kingdon. Are we to expect Philip to pull a magic rabbit out of his hat, change his former ways, and suddenly stop this locomotive’s headlong run into a solid rock wall? Highly doubtful.
* The only real hope we have– is that Kingdon scared both Rosedale and Linden Lab so much that it (hopefully) woke them up. But for Second Life to even hope to become a viable, respectable platform, they are going to have to make so many 180 degree turns that it would seem impossible at this time– at least without a Lee Ioccoca at the helm. Consider just some things that would have to be tackled:
* Prices will have to be lowered across the board to compete with the burgeoning Open Sim systems.
* The texture redundancy issue will have to be fixed– after almost 3 years of NOT being fixed.
* Group chat will have to be fixed (ditto).
* Group notices will have to be fixed.
* The drop-dead, complete lag on teleporting or changing avatars will have to be eliminated.
* People will need to be able to cross sim lines consistently without lagging off into void space and crashing.
* People will need to be able to back up legitimate inventory in a secure and reliable manner (all their inventory, not just things they themselves create). They will need to be able to reliably restore that inventory– without ripping off creators in the process (yes, that is going to take a bit of actual thinking on LL’s part… and they have a long history of half-baked solutions).
* Things they themselves create will need to be able to be backed up and copiable to other grids (face it, the day of multiple grids is here, and nothing is going to stop that. Anyone who doesn’t jump on board that, will become history).
* People are going to need to be granted 100 groups, not an insufficient and miserly 25.
* Linden Lab is going to have to stop making self-serving, profit-oriented decisions that are detrimental to customer welfare and best interests. They are going to be forced to start putting the customer first– or they will continue to lose customers.
* Linden Lab is going to have to create a valid, interesting, new-user experience that will retain visitors rather than losing them
* Lag is going to have to stop. Period.
* Viewer 2 needs scrapped– and they need to do it right this time. (Why does Linden Lab continue to insist on foisting ill-designed, third-rate, malfunctioning product on their customers?).
* Their marketing people need to get their heads out of the blue sky and get back down to earth. WE ARE SICK AND TIRED OF LINDEN LAB PR, SPIN AND PROPAGANDA.
* Leave the coders alone. Let them do their job. Stop figuring out new toys to waste coder time, and let them concentrate on fixing critical bugs. Let them shore up the foundation. Philip says that’s what they have planned. Well then– stick to the plan.
* They are going to have to retain existing users– and make us very happy. We’re tired of the nonsense. We can experience malfunctioning grids elsewhere, for 1/4 the price.
Linden Lab seems focused on bringing in new people, new people, new people… and to an extent that is a valid concern. But of even greater concern is the currently existing customer base– that is paying bills and wages and keeping Second Life on the map. The last two years have proved that new customers are not going to keep Linden Lab floating; existing customers are going to do so.
If the company wants new customers, they are going to have to do the same thing that existing customers are screaming for: fix the core platform, fix the critical bugs, make the existing in-world experience more enjoyable and meaningful. That doesn’t happen when people lag every 2 minutes, crash on teleporting, or can’t hold a simple conversation with their group without that conversation failing.
Philip Rosedale of the past is not the answer to Second Life. A new, wiser, more lesson-learned Philip Rosedale might be the answer (or alternately, a new CEO that has his head on straight and understands that profit should result from happy customers).
In short LL, I will repeat the same thing I’ve been saying for 5 years: Put the customer first, and the money will follow. Abuse your customers… lose your customers.
Xanshin Paz on August 9, 2010
I agree with the points raised by Arthur and Wayfinder. If LL simply tries to find or be the next Farmville, it’s doomed.
Success or failure for SL depends on 3 basic pillars: Technology, community, and of course profitability. Make the tech work flawlessly and invisibly, fiercely protect your content creators, and realize that after a certain period of time all your residents are essentially mentors/ ambassadors / publicists. As Wayfinder says:focus on the first two pillars, and profitability will fall in line.
I believe SL is still in the ‘toddler’ phase, and new input and display technologies will serve to enhance its popularity and relevance.
Put the fork away for now. We’re not done.
Yet.
Morrigan Swords on August 23, 2010
One thing I have learned, while working in Customer Service over the last 11 years, is that it is 10xs harder to get a new client, then it is to keep people who already are your clients.
So, if you were to apply that to LLabs and Second Life, it would be more profitable to continue helping residents who are already in world, and spend more money on that, then it is to spend more on getting new residents.
People who love Second Life, will help promote Second Life. That is one of the things Cheesecake Factory has founded on as well. They do not advertise. They spend NO money on advertising at all. They work on the best customer service, experience and food and it ends up advertising itself.
Everything really truly starts and ends with Customer Service. If you have crappy customer service, you are not getting that client. But, if you do your best to provide the best CS you can, and treat your residents like actual people/family, you will grow in customer base.