So in the end, Emerald Viewer project collapsed because Lonely Bluebird refused to step down from the team, even though Linden Lab’s demanded for him to be removed from the team. Though the other two devs gracefully stepped down (Skills Hak and Discrete Dreamscape) after Linden Lab gave the ultimatum, it seems things were getting ugly behind the scenes and in the end, Lonely cut off access to the Emerald servers to several devs working on the project.

Unsurprising that the bratty kids were.. bratty. Still, it’s for the best – Second Life deserves a third party viewer which users can trust, and until Linden Lab ever produce a viewer which is actually competitive (Read: Not any time soon) then it’s time for a clean break.

Jessica Lyons and Arabella Steadham have both already mentioned plans of putting together a team to start up a new viewer project. Out of a crisis can come innovation, and it’ll depend entirely on how a new team (or teams) conduct themselves which will dictate who gains the market share out of this.

This is also a huge opportunity for the other Third Party Viewers to implement some of the favoured features of the Emerald Viewer, and to capitalise on the (large) new userbase that has just opened up.

But for any new team to come out the Emerald ashes, the golden rule to win back trust is going to be transparency. It’ll need to be (Unfractured) crystal clear that the team isn’t up to dirty tricks, that they’re communicating with each other and that they’ve learnt from the Emerald mess before we (and Linden Lab) will touch their wares again.

It’s hardly surprising that the developers of Emerald Viewer have dropped yet another faux-pas. If anybody is in more desperate need of good PR than Linden Lab, it’d be the people of Modular Systems who can’t seem to help but come across as a bunch of bratty kids.

There was the debacle over privacy, and the news that they were harvesting names, as well as the strong links to CDS. Last week, LordGregGreg published a scathing attack on some of the developers behind Emerald Viewer, suggesting that ethics were taking a back seat at Modular Systems. And over the weekend came the news that users of Emerald Viewer (Second Life’s most popular Third Party Viewer with some 25%-30% of regular userbase share) were unwittingly launching a DDOS attack on another website.

Granted that this other website is a developer of a malicious viewer and their own ethics are hardly any better, but the news raises questions on what exactly is going on behind the scenes at Modular Systems. It’s pretty evident that many of the devs have different agendas and have little idea what the others are doing to the code. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be an issue, but as a popular Second Life viewer client, several people are potentially at risk from the actions that a stray dev may (or already has) chosen to implement into the code.

It was the user’s computers, bandwidth and good faith in the Emerald Viewer that was abused in order for this DDOS attack to take place, and what is described by the Modular System devs as a “boast” is simply the bratty kids flexing their claws and showing how much power that the users of Emerald Viewer have given them.

Clearly, it’s time for the users of Emerald Viewer to take away that power, as it is clear that Modular Systems needs to get their house in order before they make yet another faux-pas. This wasn’t some rogue dev as the blogpost on the Modular Systems blog made it out to be, but the main guy in charge of running the hosting for the whole project – Fractured Crystal was the dev who decided to pull off the “prank”.

This was one person’s decision, and was deliberately done for the sole purpose of messing with the owner of the victim site (although I’d hardly call the particular individual a victim). Regardless, the team was pretty disappointed. The one person currently owns all parts of Emerald’s hosting, so it was their decision, albeit a ridiculous one. They don’t take the project seriously, and it’s more than a little embarrassing to the rest of the people associated with the team that this kind of thing keeps happening, over and over again.

-Discrete Dreamscape.

It seems Linden Lab are concerned by the events, with the Security Technical Lead posting on the dev list:

“Crosslinking” drops the context of hiding gibberish requests to a

critic’s website in a hidden frame that will never be revealed to the user. This isn’t a mere hyperlink to another page or naively stealing someone else’s image hosting.

My read (but I’m no lawyer) is that this looks like 2.d.iii of

http://secondlife.com/corporate/tpv.php and we’re already having that discussion. If anyone can come up with specific reasons why this might have had legitimate reason to be there, or how this one could be yet another oversight or mistake, that would be helpful. I sure haven’t heard any to date.

–

Brian McGroarty | Linden Lab

2. You must not use or distribute features or functionality that deceive, defraud, or harm anyone or that violate any Linden Lab policy or the law.

d. iii. You must not launch Denial of Service (“DoS”) attacks, engage in griefing, or distribute other functionality that Linden Lab considers harmful or disruptive to Second Life or the Second Life community.

Oh that’s right – Modular Systems claim that they never launched a Denial of Service attack. This was just a prank.. or “Shenanigans” as they call it.

Here’s hoping they get struck off the Third Party Viewers list, because regardless of how many Lindens they’re going to bring on to make it look as though they’re turning a new leaf, it’s clearly evident that they need to take a long hard look at what it is they’re doing.

In the meantime, if you’re looking for alternative Third Party Viewers, then I’ll recommend the following:

• Imprudence Viewer
• Kirsten’s Viewer

As the cost cutting continues at Linden Lab and revenue continues to be flat, it seems to be grim days for Second Life with many wondering just who is left in the office running things behind the show. Yesterday’s announcement of Display Names confused a number of people who don’t see why LL are announcing new features when there so many other things which are unaddressed.

But in true Linden style, creativity overrules productivity, and fixing things is somebody else’s problem. And this would be perfectly fine if the left hand was talking to the right hand, but the various departments in LL rarely seem to have contact and keep up to date with what’s going on with one another. So Linden Lab, here are 5 things which should be sorted out as a priority according to your userbase, rather than messing about with these new features which are going to cause even more problems to us.

1. Grid Stability

There’s really simple stuff which infuriates new users, that us seasoned Second Lifers don’t even notice anymore. Like sim crossings – it’s a bug that’s never been fixed, but it’s be awfully pleasant if somebody would care to take a look at it. Teleports still fail regularly and rezzing a Mono scripted item still cripples sim performance. And then there are the issues with crashing from the grid and having a ghosted avatar remaining in world, and having to wait until the sim decides to boot it out before logging back in. This is all really basic stuff which should be at the top of the priority list of being sorted out, and yet the problems continue years after they were first pointed out.

2. Search

My God, Search. Residents hate search, because it just doesn’t do the job. I’ve no idea what happened to Search in Viewer 2.0, but if there was ever a lesson in what to do with a sledgehammer after you’ve let the bull into the china shop, this would be it. How exactly Linden Lab managed to screw it up so badly is beyond me, but navigating across the grid to find something is far too difficult. And what is the deal with the search window closing automatically after you teleport? If I Google something, I open the search results in a new tab – I don’t go back to Google and search the same keywords over and over again – use a little common sense.

Search needs to be fixed immediately, and no – showcase and classifieds are not a substitute for it. Give us our search back, and let us rediscover the grid.

3. Group IMs

Your most basic instant messaging program can open up a group conversation and reliably send messages in real time from the various participants. The fact that AOL messenger can do this, and Second Life can’t is quite frankly disturbing. One of the basic functionalities of the entire Second Life experience is being able to chat to other users – why Group Chats regularly fail upon opening or don’t send messages/send messages with long delays is unacceptable.

4. Content Protection

Whatever happened to the Roadmap for Content Protection that was going to be rolled out to protect merchants and their products? Second Life is completely reliant on users creating content, and the economy is reliant on that content being traded for currency. If that content isn’t adequately protected against theft or fraud, then there is no motivation to keep creating. Which in turn will harm creativity and production in the virtual world. And what is the deal with DMCAs being abused to take down genuine content creators? That definitely needs to be looked at.

5. The First Hour Experience

Second Life is an odd concept for new users as it is – enter a virtual world where there are no specified goals or aims. Simply do whatever you like – it’s daunting and confusing to most people. Add to this the issues of lag and aforementioned issues, and it’s little wonder that 90% of new registrants log off and uninstall, never to return again.

Viewer 2.0 was supposed to make Second Life easy to understand and simple to use. In reality, all it has done is confuse the existing userbase and increase the popularity of third party viewers. A steady influx of new users is necessary to keep Second Life growing and replace those users who leave. Without new blood, the metaverse becomes stagnant and growth will stall.

—–

This post is a call for Linden Lab to stop building new features and to fix the basic essentials required to use Second Life.

On paper, it’s a good idea. There are plenty of users out there who have registered onto Second Life with their cute Yahoo! handle “sexychick1984″ or “machoman123″, spent a few weeks looking around and then realising that in comparison to their fellow residents, their name is pretty silly.

If you were good friends with the right Linden, you could get minor changes made to your name, but other than that, you were stuck with whatever unfortunate name you’d picked out for yourself.

Linden Lab today announced the Display Name feature, which will allow Second Life’s users to choose their own name that will appear above their head in their tag. Note that this won’t replace the original name that you picked out for yourself, but simply masks it. Sort of like that kid at school who wrote his name down wrong on his notebook and had to get some masking tape to rewrite over it.

So anyone who screwed up their name originally now has the chance to rectify the error. And the rest of us?

Cue the largest single abuse of an aspect in Second Life since copybot became a client.

Linden Lab say that you’ll only be able to change your name once a week, in order to prevent abuse of the system. Why on earth they think that’s going to deter anyone, I have absolutely no idea.

I have no doubt that there are going to be certain people in Second Life who are going to find themselves targets of griefers who will register/change avatar names to whatever they choose simply to. And seeing as it’s incredibly difficult to get hold of a Linden inworld now that most of them have been fired, I don’t hold much faith in the Abuse Report system to get it sorted.

However, you won’t be able to walk around like you own the streets with the name “Linden”. Neither will you be able to infringe on trademarks or impersonate celebrity names. And no being vulgar or rude – but again, I imagine all of this will take the Lab some time to get on top of and fix.

And then there’s the fact that you will only be able to see these Display Names in the new viewers. So if you’re not happy with the Viewer 2.0 interface, then you won’t have any idea why some people are being called a different name who what their actual name is. And that’s just confusing.

And once again, the Lab are harpering on about their fascination with social networks:

This feature is an important step on our social media strategy that will ultimately allow you to connect your inworld identity to other social networks, on an opt-in basis.

It’s still going to take some convincing for most people to link their Second Life avatars to their Facebook profiles. Yeah – seeing as the public still think SL is a haven for sex-mad barbie dolls, that’s totally going to be a popular idea.

And then there’s the whole aspect of meeting someone for the first time in Second Life. I tend not to add everyone I see onto my friend’s list, but if I want to look somebody up later, the name I’ll search for is what appears above their head.

Under the new Display Names feature, Search will only pick up their current display name and their username. So if they’ve changed their name in the time between seeing that avatar and you searching for them, you’re not going to find them. Which is silly.

So what had the potential to be a nifty little feature is actually going to turn out to be one which is going to suck up a lot of resources in dealing with ARs, ruin a lot of resident experiences, and cause more confusion than its worth.

Here’s a better idea:

• Switch the ability to change your name to once every three months. Nobody needs to assume a new identity each week – that defeats the purpose of having a name and just encourages troublemaking. And if we want a particular name, then there are alts – and believe you me, Second Life residents sure know how to register an alt.
• Add an extra star (*) onto the end of Display Names – I’d suggest a different colour, but other third party clients have already taken that idea. Something which will inform other residents that the avatar has a different name to their actual name.
• Consider a monetary penalty for users who abuse the Display Name system to defame other residents.

Oh, and fix Search. ‘Cos my God..

In the least surprising move of the year, Linden Lab Interim CEO Philip Rosedale announced in his keynote speech at Second Life Community Convention that the Teen Grid is to shutdown in yet another cost cutting measure being implemented by the Lab.

The reasons to scrap Teen Grid simply outweighed the reasons it should stay – the grid had become a hotbed for copybotted content and became a ghost town after a Linden Lab error meant teens outside the USA could not register to join the grid.

Some staff (including Blue Linden) who had clearance to enter the Teen Grid have been dismissed in the mass-layoffs, and TG just didn’t make sense anymore. I’ve spent the past year lobbying Linden Lab to do something about Teen Grid, and it seems this is their solution.

And it smacks of “No money to invest in it”. Pretty much like with everything else Linden Lab have scrapped recently.

But then everyone is pretty aware that the Lab is cash-strapped and things are in panic-stations mode.

Question is how the integration of residents from Teen Grid to Main Grid will occur. Anybody who is Under 16 will have their accounts suspended (there are some rumours that they may be terminated, but that’s unconfirmed) and those over 16 will be moved to the Main Grid.

This was a natural move which was obvious ever since the Zindra announcement that all adult content would be moved over to its own continent. It set up the way for Linden Lab to have a little control over the sex and “naughtiness”.

And lets not kid ourselves – I don’t doubt several TSL users don’t have main grid alts. Fact of the matter is that these kids probably act a lot more mature than most the adults do. In reality, the only difference is that it becomes official that Under-18s will be on the grid.

So should these teens be labelled in the profile? Would such a label make it clear to those who don’t want to associate with children that they should avoid those users, or will it highlight the teens to targeted abuse?

And how long before the media grabs a hold of their much-coveted “Child-Grooming” story?

Second Life, like the internet as a whole, is pretty much anarchy. Except there is somebody at the top who’s allegedly keeping an eye on it all, but it’s sort of like that absentee father who drops in once every couple of years just so the kids don’t forget who daddy is.

Honour’s blog post raised some interesting points of how some users seem to see Second Life. Yes, it is an online community, but first and foremost, it’s a business. And if the business part isn’t being run correctly, then there’s no point in trying to grow a community.

I have the same opinion as Honour – why the hell would Second Life be a democracy?!

But when you think about it, you realise that actually Linden Lab have produced the perfect gameplan. It’s as if they owned an art gallery and put up a lot of blank canvases, and invited the public in to paint something pretty. And then you sell it and they take a healthy cut of the profits. And they charge you for the paint. They also charge you to keep the painting in the gallery and a bunch of other charges which soon total up to you thinking “Wow, this is getting pricey!” But it’s far too late by then.

Linden Lab’s whole business model is based around user generated content, which means we – the users – are the only thing standing between Linden Lab and their profit margin.  Surely that entitles the users to some sort of voice, understanding their key importance to the survival of Second Life?

And then you go back to that “It’s just a freakin’ game” argument, where anyone on the outside thinks the idea of a democracy in a virtual world is absolute craziness, and you realise they might just have a point. I mean, it’s not like democracy is the saviour of mankind in the real world, and I certainly can’t imagine it working in the virtual world either. Give the residents the chance to vote and they’ll pick some ranty, dyslexic and incoherent freak as their favourite blogger. That alone should send alarm bells ringing of how bad democracy would be for Second Life.

But the primary reason democracy would be completely impractical in Second Life? Because that means we’d only have ourselves to blame when things get screwed up, and that just wouldn’t do. We could never blame ourselves – we need someone else to blame. We need a CEO to hang and burn effigies of. Because despite the fact that we created this place and we have the power to do with it whatever we wish, we’ll never accept any responsibility for it.

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 Old SL Profile. Image Credit - Science Roll.

Anyone who joined Second Life before mid-2007 may remember the Avatar Rating System, which allowed you to rate other users on their Appearance, Behaviour and Building skills. The system was dropped by Linden Lab to relieve the load on the servers.

The system was supposed to separate good avatars from bad avatars, but it inevitably jut became a popularity contest and only really showed you how long someone had been in Second Life to accumulate so many “rates”. Each rate would cost L$10, and each time you rated someone, it would show in the final field. Just in case anyone thought you might be stingy..

Well the guys over at Modular Systems are thinking of putting it into the Emerald Viewer! Playing with the new beta, I got a tip off that the code contains this little snippet:

// NOTE: This is here as a sort of load indicator if we decide to reimplement the long gone
// Ratings feature. Should remove before release.
// We hash the key to pacify paranoid people.
// We also use POST so that the logs show nothing.
// (if you think we’re going to log every single profile view, even if we wanted to, you’re insane.
// 85k users * how many profiles a day?)
#if 1
void LLPanelAvatar::sendAvatarRatingsRequest()
{
LLMD5 hashed_key = LLMD5((unsigned char*)mAvatarID.asString().c_str());
// Have to take this slightly obtuse approach because LLHTTPClient::postRaw will delete the data when it’s finished.
char *hex_cstr;
hex_cstr = new char[MD5HEX_STR_SIZE];
hashed_key.hex_digest(hex_cstr);
LLHTTPClient::postRaw(“http://emeraldratings.appspot.com/profile”, (U8*)hex_cstr, MD5HEX_STR_SIZE – 1, new LPanelAvatarRatingsDownloader(this));
hex_cstr = NULL;
}

Interesting, no?

It’s just a load test to make sure things don’t start blowing up, and I assume the developers are just exploring the idea at this stage, but I’m interested to see if Second Life’s users are ready to see the return of the avatar rating system in the platform’s most popular third party viewer.

According to the inworld group chat, Emerald Devs are also considering implementing the L$10 charge to rate another user, and pocketing the money to cover costs for maintaining the database. As well as that, they’re working on an API so other viewers can also take a cut of the revenue if they choose to implement it in their own viewers. This has the potential to be a huge money spinner.

But then there are many questions about whether users want this system in their profiles. Perhaps the option to be rated should be Opt-In, so people can’t start rating you or vice versa unless you say so. But would that not defeat the point of the whole system?

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.