Sometimes, in the past, i protested for some comments of Philip Linden, the founder of Second Life. Most of the times i though he was having a wrong idea about the community of residents. Anyway, although all that M Linden is making me miss Philip badly. And we are having M for the last six month, so maybe is time to analize his work.
M said in an interview by Dusan Writer some days ago:
80% of our business is focused on the consumer market — which of course includes content creators. We are putting more than 80% of our investment in the consumer market because a good part of our investment in Enterprise crosses over (shared media). We talk about Enterprise because we are doing new things there. We need to talk more about our plans for consumer because we have many big projects under way there.
Ok, is only me? I don’t see where this 80% is going, and i don’t think it is for LDPW and the roads. Either seem to be for software development, because performance is getting worse in the last months although the “lower” impact of Openspaces now that almost 2000 sims disappeared in the last month.
We still don’t know how many islands will be lost until July next month, when the process of changes on Islands products will change. I just know we are having less “land” to explore and enjoy… and more residents (users hours and residents inworld are peeking), and that produces more problems with servers, so the “excuse” of poor performance to change the Openspace product is just going against Second Life itself.
As you may know Reuters left Second Life recently, Eric Krangel (Eric Reuters inworld) wrote a really interesting article talking about his vision of Second Life and why they left. I think you should read it because his opinion is pointy.
Personally i think all that is due the bad work of Linden Lab, Public Relations must be on holidays, Software development to be too it seems, so we just have M saying in an interview basically “All is good, all is ok.”.
Linden Lab acts like if the residents were citizens of a benevolent dictatorship, where M is the “Emperor” and the Lindens, the government. A dictatorship where they do “the best for the nation and its people” under their point of view ignoring the citizens. But they seem to be forgetting we are not citizens, we are customers! They seem to forget Linden Lab derives its revenue from user fees, not compulsory taxes. They seem to forget Second Life is NOTHING without the residents and their creativity but empty virtual land, where teaching virtual classes or making business presentations, of course.
I’d like to quote here, to end this post, something Vint Falken wrote in a blogpost, something that explains also my feelings with Linden Lab in the last times:
Excuse me my bitterness. But I still feel betrayed: a 2 year relationship, that you _know_ is dying. You still wish to fix everything, mainly because of the effort you put into it, because of you’re used to it and because of the mutual friends you now have, not because the butterflies are still there. You keep trying, attempt to be bedazzled again, but the other party just f*cks it up, each time. Eerrr… overreacting, me?
If the resident had the power to vote for Linden Lab CEO, be sure i would never vote for M.
UPDATE (Dec. 02 2008): Just after posting this M published a post in the Official Linden Blog in the same line “We are better than ever and nothing is happening”.
If 80% of it is going to LDPW, then someone’s getting paid a hell of a lot more than me, LOL!
I liked the post from Reuters, he’s got a good view on certain things.
If there’s improvements to come (accroding to M Lindens post there are some at least) I sure as hell wanna see them before I believe in them.
As for LL: they’ll never learn untill they get out of their fortress more often. It’s like they try to say the alphabet from A to Z, but never seem to remember what comes between F and V, leaving us, with a good start, but a lousy finish…
The Vint Falken quote is genius
You’ve got the point in you title: we ARE customers. But unfortunately we are ALSO residents.That explains our love-hate relationship with SecondLife and why we aren’t leaving en masse (yet). I think many of our “age” feel familiar with Vint’s description
I can only wait and pray that the developments that M is talking about are improvements indeed. I’m doubtful though…
Linden Labs seems to be a little out of control. The hiring of high-priced individuals with big ideas. The new SVP has a passion for education after teaching on 4th grade class…now there is a lot of expertise.
If you are into the Sl “playing” around, and nonsense..stay there and take the heat.
If you are serious about the technology, and the future, immediately migrate to OpenSim. Become a part of the team. Help shape the future.
The OpenSpace situation was a fiasco. Those were sold with 3750 prims. So was there not the expectation that these prims would be used? And the avatar limit..what about it. of the 16 million residents that ever joined Sl, 95% of them are dead and gone for good. Doing the math, it is impossible for there to be that much “avatar abuse” in more than just a hadful of OpenSpace situations. So Linden cuts down, looses close to 2000 islands and growing. Is there a marketing direction at Linden labs. In the process, the educational institutions (and non-profits) are getting screwed and they are the most active in advancing the technology for the good of society. I wonder what the new SVP with a passion for education (after teaching one 4th grade class) has to say about this.
If folks are going to spend some hard to obtain budget dollars on the technology…move to OpenSim. Be a part of the team. Do soem real research.
Greeat post M Linden. Post and run. Close the opportunity to respond or reply. You are too busy pulling the plug on all the OpenSpace (and regular islands) you are losing.
Maybe, I mean maybe, Linden Labs…instead of showcasing the riff raff places to new users, point them to the groups dedicated to education and the proliferation of the technolog for the good of society. You might keep a couple of more residents..maybe 8%.
You all are still not getting that this is a paid service and just because it looks like a virtual world you do not get to vote for who rules this place.
I have been in SL for 4 years. I have been happy, enthused, livid, angry, bitter, indifferent and back.
You really need to put into context your feelings about SL. You can not get attached to SL. That would be like falling in love with Word or FireFox because they lets you read and write things. Do you go boycotting Microsoft for all the horrible things they did to the MS Office UI? Do you bug Firefox about xyz changes they made to their client? No you don’t. Then why is that users of SL constantly fall into the same trap, the same fallacy that makes them think they have rights in SL.
You don’t have any rights in SL other than those outlined in the TOS.
Believe me I have done my share of the bitching, moaning, passive aggressive guilt tripping, etc. LL is immune to all of this, they simply do not care, because they’re business. Never forget that they’re a business.
I have given up on trying to be heard by LL and I try to avoid what they have to say too. I stay in my own island, create my own things, and ignore what’s happening around me because that’s the only way I can keep my enthusiasm to create new things.
As long as LL is out sight and out of mind, I am happy in SL.
I suggest you also find your own peaceful place in SL and use SL for what it is….ENTERTAINMENT.
Take care.
Troy Vogel
He recently left Pixar? (you must ask yourself why anyone would leave Pixar to go to Linden Research)
He was part of the Tivo team? (if that UI is indicative of what this guy has in mind – pffft!)
A SGI guy from way way back.
SGI = Failure!
M Linden and his “cheers” is just more of the same BS we’ve come to expect from these clowns. M – want some advice? Fix your organisation, sort out your Goverance Team and whilst your at it – pull your head out of your ass with regard to this commercialism speak you put out on the 2nd Life blog!
Thanks everybody for sharing your thoughts, but i’d like to comment something in answer to Troy Vogel:
Troy, first of all i have the right to protest about a service i’m paying for and i consider is not right, don’t need permission in the TOS to do it.
In this blogpost i was not considering SL as mine, even as ours, just was expressing what i consider business mistakes of Linden Lab and what i consider failures on their customer service. Is sad they don’t listen their customers and i think is something they should fix, it’s only that. Thanks also for sharing your thoughts about this issue.
Troy,
If you have your own island, and stick to yourself, and not really care about what enyone else is doing…save your money on your own island. You are the perfect candidate for OpenSim. And if your abilities go beyond the general Sl stuff, then become a part of the OpenSim team. it is where the future will be.
TiVo – well I heard that are adding the ability to orde pizaa through the unit. If Howard implements this, I would say he has been successful.
“Do you go boycotting Microsoft for all the horrible things they did to the MS Office UI? Do you bug Firefox about xyz changes they made to their client?”
Troy, I’m sorry but I beg to differ. I am boycotting MS Office because the new UI for 2007 is horrible – thank you OpenOffice. And if I have a problem with a change to Firefox, well – its open source. I can either go in to the code and change it back, or shoot an email to the developer’s list stating my opinions.
M Linden has made it perfectly clear through his words and his actions that he is aiming at a commercial market. While Linden nurture their sex industry and hide behind the false impression of supporting education, they are driving good, honest people out of Second Life in a fury at losing their small investments and their time and effort invested in their own community. Its despicable the way that this corporate American truffle hunter sweeps out the good and honest folks along the way.
I hope they die soon.
while i agree with a lot of your view, i do differ on some. to me (and this is just my opinion) it seems that SL is running better. i never crash, i never lose stuff, i rarely get laggy. to be fair i have a nice pc but also realize that sl is a sharable 3D application. so it’s always going to be balancing how pretty the graphics can be with the reality that a lot of peeps have older machines
as to island contraction and less land to explore – some of the decline is cuz of spaz land owners just dumping their sims (as a multi sim owner, i am part of the group and was shocked at how quickly lots of peeps just said “screw it, I’m outta here”) so lots of OS sims were abandoned. but lots are getting converted, with 4 OS becoming one full sim, it is a reduction from 4 to 1, but the converted one has the resources of four os.
don’t get me wrong, i was miffed with the HUGE price increase and was one of the 30,000 new accounts created on openlifegrid that same week
LL is a private company and they can do what they want. i am thankful for the very easy opportunity to start a business (i mean grow up, i don’t even have to set up any invoicing or bookkeeping, it is really easy and low risk to get started isl)
just my two cents and just my opinion, i certainly may be wrong, but love the opportunities we have to speak our opinions. thanks for the post, i do agree with a lot of what you said and value your perspective
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@ Spacexcape: Well, thanks a lot for sharing your point of view, but wishing death to then seems to me quite a extreme position.
@ iliveisl: Thanks a lot, i really appreciate the exchange of opinions. I’m not being so lucky as you, my performance is really bad in the last couple of months, and is not a question of my ISP, is just textures need a century to appear correctly and some bugs in the client are difficulting one of my main occupations is Second Life (photography). Anyway my expression of anger is not only related with the peak of “bad performance” of lately, is specially related with what i consider a “a bad work” in LL specially since M came, and i’m not the only one, big companies in SL like Rezzable are in the same state of mind.
mmm my coment will be very short..
from a noob like me in all this things..
from a simple viewer..specialy coz i dont even have a land..
SL is made BY costumers/citizens…and with a managment like this one…they are playing with the ones that really make of LL a big bussiness..
its a shame coz seems the beggening of an uncontroled SL
The Daily Telegraph reported last week that Second Life has now lost over 64% of its British users. They may not be quite dead but they are seriously diseased!