A thought on Linden Lab competition with user-run businesses

I was reading Cringely's ideas of what he thinks are winning and loosing strategies for Microsoft and GOOGLE:

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060511.html

I came across this passage about platforms and leveraging control of platforms:

"Here's a failure strategy for Google. While not intending so much to create a platform, Google has done just that. And once you control a platform, the way to best leverage that control is by sharing the platform generously. Google is right now the basis of much Web 2.0 creativity from third-party firms -- every one of which is afraid that they'll be put out of business next month by Google rolling-out its own version of whatever that ISV has built and proved. That's the Microsoft domination model, so why not? Because it poisons the well, that's why not."

Does anyone else relate this to Linden Lab's habit of competing with user-run businesses by building the user-provided functionality into the SL client?

I'm not trying to restart an old flame war. I'm just wondering if anyone thinks that Linden Lab is "poisoning the well" by competing with user-run businesses. I'm interested in Linden Lab's opinion on the idea of "poisoning the well," also.

I won't comment on SL or LL, but the columnist that uses "the only way to" in regards to business strategy, "read my past column" as a shortcut to presenting evidence (knowing nobody will check on it) and "probably five times larger" as his numerical analysis isn't really going to do much to convince me of anything.

One word.

GOM.


Where else on the internet can you find the name of a company became a verb for 'forced out of business by competition of the platform for which they are dependent'?


- Newfie

Not to split hairs, but GOM chose to cease their operations before the Lindex even opened - they were not forced out of business by competition, they chose not to compete at all.

GOM should really be a verb for "going home and taking my toys with me"

bahaha! troo dat.

Forgive me for being the class idiot. I'm fairly new to running a business as in the past anything I made was just for the hell of it.
Besides the selling of L$ for $... is there some other way LL is competing within SL I'm missing?

They should get to adding more base functionality. Like a built in A/O then we can cry about that.

I've said it before, but I'll say it again.
On the home page of this site it says "Your world, your imagination".
This means that SL needs us to create interesting content and experiences in order to survive. In other words, we are co-developers.
I would consider it a personal success of mine if something I invented was integrated into the client. I'm not here to make a quick buck, I am here because I believe in this project and I want to see it succeed.
The good thing about SL is that it has nobler goals than making someone a quick buck - Philip started this after he had already made his money and reached the top of the corporate ladder. He is a man with a vision and he wants to bring it to fruition. You have to admire that.

Netscape Navigator?

Lotus 1-2-3?

WordPerfect?

Just sayin'.

or maybe, "donating time, energy, and money to provide a service for a community that is largely ungrateful and feels you should continue to work for them despite the fact that you're getting nothing but grief out of it".

Why Ricky I apologize. I didn't know GOM was a non-profit effort to change the SL community for the better.
In fact, having been here long before it started, I thought you were just trying to cash in on the MMOG fad, having only given up when you realized SL was the only place that would protect you from fraud.
Nobody else stopped buying and selling L$. Not Anshe, not IGE, heck, if anything there have been new players popping up in that market.
So I have to reiterate my feelings, previously stated on this thread and at the very moment you took GOM down, that it was a terribly immature reaction you had, like a spoiled child taking its toys home so that other people couldn't play with them.

Oh sure. I've heard quite a few UK techie people use the verb "to Microsoft"

I agree with Eggy simply because I was sooo dissapointed to see two people with so much talent and upside potential just fold up and quit without putting up even the slightest fight. I still remember my shock and disbelief when seeing the sudden and unnexpected announcement by Ricky that GOM was shutting down prematurely, and in so doing, leaving all of their loyal customers to panic and scramble even though it was not their fault. Many of them had been very loyal GOM supporters throughout the entire process, but after it was all said and done, they were not given consideration or benefit of doubt. It was very dissapointing to say the least.

For what it's worth, I do like Ricky and though I agree it must have been very discouraging for GOM, I would have liked for GOM to have handled the situation a bit better.

Even so, I still find it a mistery that GOM hasn't reopened because now that the LindeX has opened, it is obvious that the need for services like the ones GOM offered are desperately needed in SL today. I have no doubt that if GOM were to again open today, it would be greater, bigger and even more succesfull now than it was then.

I still maintain that a service like the LindeX could not have only co-existed with a money market exchange like GOM, but GOM may have been the greater benefactor because of it.

... but we'll never know for sure.

One avenue that I believe it will not take Linden long to investigate is providing an Internet Shop for content providers.

If they choose to charge commission or a flat fee for selling then the existing big shops ( slexchange, slboutique etc ) will not be overly hit - but if Linden decided to make it free (fat chance of that) then the mentioned shops would probably see a lowering of their user base.

As for providing content itself - sorry to say it, but Linden have enough trouble keeping the client running without competing with a chinese army of scripters, designers and builders.

My two cents worth

This is true. But there is zero chance that LL would make this a free service. I mean, they charge for classified adds so we have no reason to believe that a web catalogue service would be free. On the contrary, I am of the opinion that it would be offered with potentially expensive tiered type services not unlike the classified adds model.

More importantly though, and much more applicable to this thread, is that there should be an understanding by SL content creators that there are certain services that would behoove LL to adopt for the good of the SL community as a whole. Is this a painful understanding? Of course it is! But LL is in the business of making a profit. If they find a service that they could implement to improve the whole of the SL community, then they would be remiss to not adopt it. To not do so, would be silly on their part.

So that our tasks as residents, is to understand that LL will eventually implement some of these services for the good of the community, and to improve our services so as to make the LL version look like a watered down offering, or adjust our services to work with the services offered by LL and therefor reap the potential benefit rewards brought by their large customer base.

Opinion:

Are you being sarcastic or do you really mean this?

I guess you do. In which case, I'd like to object.

It's Our World, Our Imagination, presumably. No, LL doesn't have to go about getting their profit by getting into businesses that are already perfectly well run by residents. There are other ways to make a profit.

Monopolization (for all practical purposes) and takeovers by the state isn't a wonderful thing, and it is not for our own good.

It isn't even more FUN. Better to have a few viable shopping services (competition; low rates) to choose from than Big Daddy Linden. What is in our own good about LL providing their own embedded and omnipresent shopping service, which they would then take a cut of?

It's not like you can't shop in the world or on the resident sites, which are VERY well known. That is fun. Dealing with the state - just isn't fun.

It is not my job as resident to understand that LL will just naturally take over more and more of what was supposed to be our world, in order to get a cut of it; and it is not my job as resident to then work a jillion times harder trying to do the basically impossible task of making the LL service look "watered down," when they actually OWN the entire inner workings of the platform.

It's very difficult to compete with the State, and according to the State's motto, we shouldn't have to.

Seems to me like LL opened the doors, and invited people in, and those people then set about the work of creating a world. A viable world, one that people would like to come to. They worked at this for a couple of years before I even came along (in February of 2004).

They attracted others to the world, including me. They made the world what it is. And they should reap the benefits of what they made - in my opinion. LL shouldn't step in now and say, "Yea, and the Lord LL saw this and the Lord LL said it was good - and then - took it."

I dunno, I don't like everything centralized and run by the state. I like diversity, choice, and private enterprise. The state should provide the tools - which we then fill in the blanks on. SLExchange and SLBoutique filled in those blanks. It works. Why should LL take it over? Can't they find another way to be profitable besides muscling in on resident businesses and then providing those businesses through the - what do you call it - the omnipresent screen we all look at when we log into SL? (What do you call that?)

And what is next - what business has been thriving and flourishing all this time that somehow it will be for our own good that LL take over and do in the bigger and completely pervasive way that only the people who own the platform can?

You know, it IS pretty messy for people to have to shop around the world for their houses, and take risks doing business with people they don't know, and all that. Wouldn't it be for our own good if LL took over the housing business, too, and provided some sort of quality control? Then the new residents could buy houses safe and secure in the notion that the State was handling it. And those of us who wanted to sell houses would best be served by applying to the State for consideration, and giving them their cut.

Hell no, it wouldn't be better! But you COULD apply that same line of thinking not just to GOM, not just to people selling abandoned and reverted land, and not just to the shopping sites, but to - basically every business people have spent years creating here. Everything there is could be nicer and neater if the state just took it over, wouldn't it?

But then, what of this motto, "Your World, Your Imagination?" The refrain that "Everything you see here was created by our residents?" Does that just apply to connected prims only?

It is a painful understanding, indeed, to realize that it is not really our world, and that LL will take over what they like when they like, after the residents have already built and developed it and made it succeed. I don't want to come to that understanding.

coco

It wasn't in the beginning. We started GOM to try to make a few bucks and see how a currency exchange-style marketplace would translate to game currencies. After a while, we developed a loyalty to the SL community, and felt we *couldn't* shut down because there were so many people depending on the service we provided. Then, we started bleeding cash due to well-documented problems with SL's external communication systems and decided that since LL was going to push us out anyway, better to cut our losses rather than throw good money after bad and tacitly show support for LL.

So, yes, we wanted to make money, and we damn well weren't going to *lose* money on it, so we chose the better part of valour.

Your post is fraught with assumptions, innuendos, and half-truths.

Fortunately, it is only your ...



Which of course, you are entitled to.

Services like slexchange and slboutique are already so deeply entrenched in the market that chances are that no new entrant is going to be able to compete with them anyway.

Since the markets are locked anyway, for LL to join in and take a cut wouldn't have any real impact on residents' freedom to create and imagine. If someone has a wonderful new idea for how to do web shopping, that could compete with SLExchange and co., then the same wonderful new idea would let them compete with LL too, and good luck to them.

It would have an impact on the reward that the creators of these services get for the work done in creating them, and that I think is the major concern, not the "but it's our world" line. Online shopping services haven't been your world for a year or so, or anyone's world other than the people who run the big three - not withstanding, as I mentioned, someone coming along with a fantastic new model, but that could compete with LL also.

Opinion:

Yes, I was a fool to ever believe that line. And I really did.

coco

Just for the record, we're not resting on our laurels. Keep your eyes peeled for some major new features (think big, like Havok 2 or the new renderer would be to SL!) over the next few months!

Regards,

-Flip

Our worlds our Imagination... not really.. we can all complain about LL competeing with residents.. but at the end of the day.. they can simply decide to go home and take the ball with them as it were.. essentially its in residents interests that LL maintain a growing profit.. it makes improving the world easier and more worth it..

IMO the lindex is a god send to content creators.. more residents buy linden.. so spend more.. more money for you the creator no? other things they may choose to integrate into the client essentially outing a resident run company will also make the client easier to use and more marketable.. more residents again more money for content creators..

but I guess its easy for me to be cold about it seing I wasnt pushed off to the side

Flip, i don't think comparing your new thing to havok2 in SL is a good idea. Unless you are now in the vaporware biz. Perhaps you will just tease us with the goodness for 2 or 3 years? o_O

and to the topic at hand...

Fact:
This game has to grow. If LL stop moving forward for fear of stepping on someones toes then it's not going to.

Observation:
Cory Linden makes a motorcycle (sorta).

Demand:
I DEMAND it be removed from the database. It's cutting into my sales!

Lunch:
17 whoppers and a diet coke. no ice.

See this is exactly what I'm talking about.

Go Flip