LagNMoor: A victim of content theft. Image Credit - Sakura Sands.

No surprise there, really. For all the talk about a roadmap to protect the merchants of Second Life and clamping down on Third Party Viewers, my own blog (and a few others) were bombarded by somebody spreading spam of a new copybot client they’re selling. But that’s hardly the Lab’s fault..

What is the Lab’s fault is the closure of Maxwell Graf’s gorgeous LagNMoor sim which he deleted over the weekend.

The frustration of SL designers continues, and Linden Lab’s lack of effort to help the community is throttling the artistic movement at the neck as sim owners wise up to the Lab’s overinflated prices.

After Filing a DMCA, waiting for 6 days, I was sent the response that “LL has sucessfully and expeditiously removed the content listed from those locations and the inventory of the avatars.” Excellent, right? Not so:

Within an hour of getting this email, I went to all of the locations listed and the items have NOT been removed. 4 sims of my content still sits there, being sold and distributed through vendors, rez boxes, etc. Hundred of pieces of my work – sections form my carriageway house, my garden set, my sculpted prim pack, furniture from my store. One of the houses is even called “maison Rustique.” Nice touch.

So, with some of the removals team members fired recently, it seems they are now limiting the enforcement of the third party viewer policy to merely sending you useless documents to make you feel like they have done something to protect you, when in fact they have not done anything but send you a document saying they have. Im not really up to speed on the legalities of this, but it seems to me that telling me they’ve acted on a DMCA when they haven’t would be against some kind of law. It should be if it isn’t, but then this is typical of the perfect loopholes that exist within the framework of the TOS policy and the DMCA policy that make it next to impossible for you to do business here.

Those avatars still exist in world, despite my filing on them, LL admitting that the persons were found guilty by way of removing the items from them, and despite 2 other people having filed on this person in the past for similar offenses. Just what exactly do you have to do to be removed from second life? I think we all need to ask that question. Supposedly, the 3rd party viewer policy was designed to help them remove people like Skatman and his alts, to give them more authority. From the working end of that policy (which hasn’t stopped any 3rd party viewers from coming to my sim, unlike my CDS which works fine still…) I can say my experience leads me to conclude that it is designed more than anything to make it look like the lab is finally being pro-active about theft. In a word, BOLLOCKS.

~Maxwell Graf

Couldn’t have said it much better myself. The Lab has never and probably will never care much about content theft until it starts hitting them in the bank account. The sacking of several concierge staff makes it even harder for SL users to get any assistance, and in most cases you end up begging an OnTyne to do something.

Join us next time on Metaversally Speaking for more ‘Same Old Shit, Different Day’.

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.

Look who’s back, back again. Philly’s back, tell a friend..

Just when you think it can’t get any worse at Linden Lab, it does. Today saw the news that Mark Kingdon (M Linden) stepped down as CEO to be replaced in the interim by the founder Philip Rosedale (Philip Linden).

Obviously that raises all sorts of questions in what is already turbulent times for the Second Life platform.

The rumours started when Mark Kingdon was absent from making a keynote speech at SL7B with Philip citing an “emergency”. M Linden’s days were already numbered, though in hindsight it makes more sense that he leaves now.

The whole thing appears to look orchestrated – the investors look at the numbers and aren’t happy with what they’re seeing. So they want drastic changes, and a change in the CEO to someone who can take Linden Lab forward, rather than holding it stagnant.

So where did it all go wrong for M Linden?

It seemed that whatever he tried, nothing was working for Mark Kingdon. I like the guy – he’s genuinely a nice person, and he tried. But he was out of his depth when it came to balancing the needs of an online community with making it a successful and growing business.

1. SL Enterprise

Admittedly, this was a nugget that M Linden inherited. I saw immediately that it’d fail spectacularly, and lo-and-behold, it did. Companies have little to no need to fork out $50,000 on a grid when there are several cheaper and easier to use alternatives. This turned out a be a huge flop and the Linden team behind the project found themselves laid off.

2. Avaline

Next up in the line of completely useless services conjured up by the Lab was Avaline – the ability to call your avatar up from a real world phone line. Absolutely nobody could work out why this had any use whatsoever when we already had Skype. Another service hits the scrapheap.

3. XStreet SL

Snapping up XStreet SL was actually a nice bit of business by Linden Lab, but then they did what they did best and alienated the Second Life userbase. By forcing out the possibility to trade freebies on the marketplace (though I still support that idea) they angered a lot of retailers who promptly removed their goods in protest.

4. Zindra

Creating a red light district in Second Life was messy, confusing and created an alienation of the adult industry in SL. That’s not really a bad thing, and it stops kids from being able to access the naughty bits without verification, but I imagine it dented the income. Sex sells.

5. Viewer 2.0

As far as the monumental cock-ups go, this one takes some beating. I’ve harpered on for a couple of years on how Linden Lab needs to fix the first hour experience in order to retain new users registering for Second Life. Their solution was to create a viewer which not only confuses new users, but is vigorously opposed by long time residents too. Go figure, the team which worked on this project were laid off too.

6. SLim

An off-grid client which lets you communicate with friends in SL whilst on a computer which can’t handle the graphics is actually a good idea. Linden Lab somehow lost their way with this particular project though and it ended up in the wilderness.. like so many things seem to.

7. Search

There was a (now) infamous blogpost on how Linden Lab intended to make Second Life search more fair and remove the strong influence that traffic had. All they succeeded in doing in the new viewer was create the most impossible search I’ve ever seen in my life. Nevermind that is was extremely difficult to find anywhere, but then they hid the World Map. Finding your way around Second Life got considerably more difficult and as a result, the SL economy suffered.

8. Homesteads.

Hah. Hahahahaha. Hahaha. Hahahahaha. Hah.

9. Avatars United

M Linden always had this fascination about Facebook and how it grew to absurd numbers in such a short time. His purchase of Avatars United was an obvious reaction to this, and implementing it to make Second Life’s community stronger and more integrated between the 2D and 3D web. Yet again, nothing more has happened with this.

10. The Alphabet Linden

This was just more annoying than anything else. We get that you might not want to be found in SL Search so you can be bitched at, but picking out a single letter is a shocking way of going about it.

Wow.. that’s pretty bad.

Well it’s not quite as bad as I’ve made it out to be – Mark Kingdon was hired as someone who’d stabilise Linden Lab and turn it into a viable business. He bought on a load of experienced suits from the likes of Adobe and AOL, and set about coming up with a bunch of ways to increase funds.  The SL brand was seriously lacking in people who knew how to run a business, because quite frankly, Philip Linden has no idea how to.

M Linden did it the wrong way though and started off targeting commercial RL businesses. Too little, too late.. the door had long slammed behind them. The SL Enterprise project was fruitless and Linden Lab then turned its attention to capitalising on the residents it already had.

Cleaning up the Mainland by bringing in Zindra was a good move in principle, but then they ruined it with the Linden Homes scheme – why give up on Mainland and create new “gated communities”? Now the new sims are becoming deserted and the whole thing just looks a mess.

I like the Linden Endowment for the Arts though – that’s a good cookie which I urged the Lab to take up some months back. It seemed to take M Linden a while to cotton on that community was key to Second Life, and the reason most residents continue to use the platform. Again though, too little, too late. For him.

Also worth pointing out – investors tend not to sack the CEO unless things really aren’t working. I don’t understand why they’d lay off Mark Kingdon when he was insisting Linden Lab would see it’s biggest profits this year – unless that’s not a truth. It raises all sorts of questions of what state the Lab’s finances are really in, and how viable they are.

Yay! Philly’s Back!

I want to be happy, I really do. Philip Linden oozes charisma and passion, with his boyish looks and energy. He’s definitely not your average CEO, and that’s why SL’s community warms to him – he’s one of us.

But one of us isn’t going to fix SL’s problems – one of the main reasons Philip stepped down was because the platform was facing problems left, right and centre. The grid was falling apart and crashing all the time, the SL economy was in decline and questions were being asked about the state of LL’s future and finances. It was clear that Linden Lab had grown beyond Philip’s control and needed an experienced heavyweight to guide it along.

So Philip went away and came up with something called the Love Machine. Disappointingly, he didn’t come out with a line of sex toys. In fact, he didn’t seem to come out with any products other than some half-baked idea that he was going to save the world. Or something.

If he’d have gone away and done something which looked halfway productive, or even gone travelling around Asia for a few months to “find himself”, I’d have more confidence, but right now it looks a lot like: “Welcome back to the old boss, like the new boss who was like the old/new boss”. Something like that, anyways..

Philip’s a good guy and he always has the SL community’s interests at heart as this is his baby. He wants to nuture and watch it grow – but I fear he has no idea on how to.

I guess this is why he’s the interim CEO until someone better comes along. People keep screaming “He’s gonna be like Steve Jobs!”. He’s really not, because Steve Jobs actually did something during his time away from Apple before being rehired – he grew up and learnt how to be a businessman.

Roll on the next CEO. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

There was something of a brief scare today on the Second Life Lindex after the Linden Dollar’s sell price jumped over 15% from the previous day’s rate, sparking fear of a run on the currency exchange as the best buy rate rose to L$300/1USD$, up from L$264 the day before.

Retailer confidence in the market started to waver as some stores started to ask questions about product prices, pondering raising them to match the lower value they were getting when cashing out.

The large shift in the value of the Linden represents the biggest change in the Lindex noted, and some think is a reaction to the recent layoffs at Linden Lab, instilling a lack of confidence in the future of Second Life.  A change of more than 10% in the Linden value is rare, and triggers a halt in the market trading, though it is unclear if this happened today.

Summer in the Northern hemisphere is generally a slower period for the Second Life economy anyway, and the current poor exchange rates in the Euro and British Pound against the US Dollar do little to encourage buying of Second Life currency.

As a result, the lack of demand in buying Linden Dollars means the value of the virtual currency drops, and anyone who is buying will get more Lindens for their money. While this is good for those who are purchasing, it poses a problem for those who are trying to cash out, as they will struggle to get as much money for their Linden. If the Linden Dollar is weak, they get less real life currency when they cash out, and that leaves them questioning their product prices, as the US Dollar cost of tier stays the same regardless of the in world economy.

The market took a turn for the worse when the number of Lindens for sale greatly outweighed the number being sold – this leads to volatile imbalance as others start to question if they should be keeping their money in world or joining the crowds and getting out while they can still get a decent return back.

Rumours started to push that parties were purposefully manipulating the market by putting large amounts (in the millions of Linden Dollars) on for sale at inflated rates, only to cancel the orders later in order to encourage a run on the market.

The Sell price of the Linden Dollar has stabilised back down to around L$260 so it’d appear the run has failed, though speculators are trying their luck and still have orders placed at inflated rates.

Though it’s unclear what happened today at the moment, but the fact the Lindex has settled down suggests it was only a blip. Whether one of SL’s major land merchants has pulled their Linden cash reserves out or someone simply wanted to play God with the Second Life economy, it’s certainly a reminder that if you have a few million Linden Dollars to spare, you can certainly have an impact on what happens.

Today’s press release from the Lab contained a lot of bad news for some prominent Lindens – ones that are no longer on the Second Life Search are:

• Anna Linden
• Brent Linden
• Callen Linden
• Chiyo Linden
• Christy Linden
• Claudia Linden
• Cody Linden
• Cogsworth Linden
• Crimp Linden
• DJ Linden
• Dough Linden
• Drub Linden
• Gayathri Linden
• George Linden
• Gisele Linden
• Harmony Linden
• James Linden
• Jarv Linden
• Jay Linden
• JessieAnn Linden
• Jules Linden
• Karina Linden
• Katie Linden
• Kristi Linden
• Liana Linden
• Meredith Linden
• Mia Linden
• Pastrami Linden
• Periapse Linden
• Pink Linden
• Rakesh Linden
• Rika Linden
• Rodney Linden
• Scott Linden
• Sejong Linden
• Siz Linden
• Socrates Linden
• Storrs Linden
• Theeba Linden
• Twilight Linden
• William Linden
• Zero Linden

Teen Grid maverick Blue Linden has also been let go, and LL Developer Whump Linden tweeted his shock at being layed off. Up to 30% of Linden Lab’s employees have been laid off, and additional others moved into new roles.

So what of the new direction that Second Life is to take? Well it appears that CEO Mark Kingdon gets it – the fad that has grown in the past few years has been social networking and mobile technology, both of which SL has previously failed to utilise. But nobody can ignore the huge growth of Facebook, and it’s marketing potential – EA recently announced that FIFA Superstars would become a Facebook game, allowing them to capitalise on the platform’s 350 million users, as well as lead an opening to their full games on PC and games consoles.

A Second Life app which allows a sneak preview to the virtual world is one of the Lab’s better ideas, even though several others had the idea first. A simplified “taster” of SL which allows people to whet their appetitie for 3D worlds and then offering them the chance to download the full client makes sense in approaching new users. Unity Viewer is the obvious choice, and I still maintain that, like Flash Player, Unity will gain widespread popularity in the coming future.

And mobile technology will be the new frontier, as products such as the iPhone, iPad and Android phones become popular. However, I’m unsure of how popular accessing a virtual world would be on your phone, and I’m not convinced this approach is benefitial to the SL brand.

So what else is going to change?

The SL Enterprise looks to be dead in the water, which is fine as I had no faith in it anyway. Very few companies are interested in their own private virtual grid at this stage, and with an initial USD$50,000 price tag, it’s not a cheap investment. It’s still unclear what the future holds for Avatars United, but I imagine the Lab will push with integrating it into the SL Dashboard. At the moment, it’s a complete disconnect, and largely irrelevant to the majority of SL users.

And, in the short-term future, the layoffs put SL7B into jeopardy with three of the key LL liasons – Blue, Sejong and Mia – all recieving their marching orders, and several voluteers rumoured to have upped tools and disappeared. Of course it’s not the first time the birthday celebrations have been subject to chaos (SL5B, anyone?) but it’ll be interesting to see how things pan out.

And then there’s the money question – who’s watching the pursestrings, and how necessary was firing over 100 people to the future sustainability of the company? M Linden assured everyone the company weathered the recession without much of a dent to the cash cow, but scrapping so many people is going to send the alarm bells ringing that someone might have recently checked the bank balance..

When starting a blog back in 2008, the hardest part was coming up with a name. But I only really had one criteria – it must not contain the word “Second”. This was before the Lab got all anal and declared they owned the word – it was when every Joe Avatar was bandying around their blogs with the word “Second”. It had fast become a cliché.

And then, of course, the Lab hired a lawyer who decided that they could (and would) own the rights to the word “Second” as well as a bunch of other words. Co-incidently (Actually, it really wasn’t) my blog immediately lost the by-line “News, Thoughts and Humour from Second Life”. Which now I’ve written that out, I need to add in a Registered symbol, but I can’t remember the shortcut key for that.

So as not to suffer the wrath of the Overlords, I’ll refrain from mentioning their brands. Instead, I’ll simply refer to them as They-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. They-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named (Yes, I have already put that on my Copy+Paste) say you can’t use their name as a generic noun or verb, and never use it in the plural or possessive form. I’m guessing most people are completely ignoring that, but if someone (i.e. Me) were to write something that They-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named does not like, then they can release the lawyers, who’ll scream foul of possessive plurals and “doing words”.

They-Wh0-Must-Not-Be-Named are no longer alone in General Linden’s (Possessive! Kill him!) censorship policy, as this week, They-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named joined them by announcing their own set of restrictions.

My favourite part of They-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named’s policy refers to Messaging. Maybe I’ve missed a trick or something, but are they seriously restricting They-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named’s brand name from being used in user-to-user chat? That does seem to be overkill..

CEO: Hey, what are you guys working on at the moment?

Legal Dept: Ummm.. *ruffles papers*. We’re looking at the brand protection at the moment, sir.

CEO: Oh? Is the brand under threat?

Legal Dept: Well… yes, sir. A music group has stolen part of our brand, and we’re drafting wording to..

CEO: THEY’VE WHAT?! WHO?!

Legal Dept: A band in England are calling themselves “Blue”..

CEO: Didn’t they split up years ago?

Legal Dept: You’re missing the point.. we’ll draft a 200 page memo for y..

CEO: Never mind.. just do what you need to.

Oh didn’t I mention that? They-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named now own the word “Blue”. It’s like virtual world companies actually want to make it as hard as possible for blog authors to write about them.

Here’s an idea – stop being so pathetically worried over your brands when all you’ve done is stick together two commonly used words.

Time and time again, we’ve seen it happen where the subject of the negative post has come out with guns ablazing and ended up in a worse light than they otherwise would have been. So when is it right to come out and defend yourself, and when should you just not say anything?

Here’s a little flowchart to give a bit of guidance:

In 2002, an online roleplaying game was launched which would revolutionise the internet, and create one of the most valuable and important assets of what we now define as being “Web 2.0″. It was a game that was built on the principles of social interaction and creation of objects and places. The online environment had it’s own economy and currency, and encouraged a sense of community to allow users to take pride in it’s virtual world. But I’m not talking about Second Life.

Flickr.

Wait, what? Flickr is the world’s largest repository of images – not an online virtual platform!

The actual origins of Flickr lies in an online roleplaying game called Game Neverending, which amusingly ended in 2004 when the makers of the platform decided that the spin off – Flickr – was a much more marketable and lucrative project. Users agreed, and the popularity of uploading everything from photos of pets and holiday snaps to some of the most iconic images of the past decade have made it onto the website.

Flickr had the problem of many internet start-ups in that they gained popularity, but needed to work out how to make money.

Start ups tend to do that – get investment, become popular and then try to work out how to make money. In the case of Flickr, they opted for the Freemium model.

It’s a very simple model – you offer a free service which is often complimented with adverts and has restrictions based on it. Then there’s a Premium service which allows users to remove the adverts and the restrictions, and throw in some extra neat toys like statistics, categorising and a shiny new car. Flickr’s appeal is that the service only costs a measly $25 a year, which is peanuts. And adds up to a lot of profit.

And everyone’s at it – Skype, LinkedIn, Spotify, Pandora and even Facebook are looking into Freemium models. Although they should probably sort out their mess of a privacy policy before they even think about charging people.

And of course, Second Life offer the freemium service. Sort of.

Second Life’s Premium has always been a bit of a puzzle to me. In the early days, you had to pay a monthly fee to use SL until they decided to open the doors to free accounts. Free accounts created many benefits in that people who wouldn’t be prepared to pay to use a virtual world got the chance to experience it, get addicted to it and then whip out their credit card as soon as someone releases a hot new clothing line.

The thing about Second Life Premium is that it doesn’t offer much that you can’t already get from a free account. The weekly stipend makes the subscription almost pay for itself, but then why not just buy the virtual currency yourself?

And Linden Lab are running the “Free Linden Home” train to death – we get it. You can live in what is essentially a gated community because you screwed up Mainland and now you want to ignore it. But the initial hype surrounding Linden homes died very quickly, and many of the sims have just become ghosttowns. Which was really predictable.

And last week’s login screen amused me – Linden Lab are promoting Premium accounts by saying it’ll get you access to Second Life’s Adult areas.

“Pay us and you can get laid!”

So side-stepping the fact that Linden Lab are now publicly advertising themselves as being pimps, I’m not sure they have quite understood has the Freemium concept works. There’s nothing offered and improved for becoming a premium member, and without a rethink, I don’t think the Lab’s push to get people to subscribe is going to work.

So what about other revenue streams?

The Lab circulated a questionnaire recently to see what users think of having adverts coming up on the login screen and Message of the Day  (which they’ve already trialled). I’ve little doubt that Linden Lab could easily target adverts to particular avatars based on their activities in world and by picking out keywords.

And how long before the viewer comes incorporated with sponsored adverts? Or sim owners are offered tier subsidies for hosting a Linden Lab billboard?

And naturally, all of this will magically disappear when you become a Premium member. And you get a shiny new car for subscribing.

Edit: Yes – this entry was an April Fool’s Hoax, and I’m surprised at how many people got caught out! Well done to those who spotted it, and remember to never trust anything on April 1st!

It came as something of a surprise when Linden Lab rolled out Viewer 2 so soon after releasing it on public beta. As well as that, the Lab also rolled out a new registration and orientation process to make it easier for new users to use the virtual world.

It’s long been recognised that one of Second Life’s drawbacks is the long learning curve to use the metaversal platform, but with previous betas such as Windlight, the viewer stayed in beta for several months whilst bugs were ironed out.

So why did Linden Lab opt to release the viewer so soon, and push out the new user experience project before expected?

Rumours are rife inside the Lab at the moment of the prospect of a takeover which will see News Corp. adding Second Life to their already wide-spanning media portfolio. The inside scoop is that the new viewer and new user experience had to be rolled out quickly as a condition of any deal, as the potential new owners want to be sure that SL will not suffer from stagnant members, as News Corp. found after their acquisition of MySpace.

However, MySpace does boast a healthy music community, and I can see the close tie-in with Second Life after CEO Mark Kingdon declared the platform’s killer app to be Live Music. Perhaps we could see MySpace musicians playing live concerts in the SL grid very soon?

There are negative impacts that may occur too, after News Corp. recently announced their decision to make The Times Online a paid-subscription only website. The general direction of Rupert Murdoch’s empire seems to step away from free content, and it wouldn’t surprise me to see parts of Second Life become premium only. And for Zindra to be shut down.

This is all conjecture and initial thoughts at this point, but check back and I’ll update as the Lab leaks more.

Tact. The Lab have none.