Why SL cannot succeed - a personal opinion.

I've only been in SL a little over a year, but it continues to get worse. It's not too long ago that people could shout things like, "fix the teleport", and "fix the friends list". But those times seem to have gone. There are just too many things wrong now, that things like that are only small parts. Even the websites are majorly faulty, and those are totally seperate parts. I'm coming to the conclusion that Linden Labs are not going to be able to make things work, and here's the reason why I think it.

They don't have the right brains there to make it work. They have excellent brains for some things, like creating the SL system, but they don't have the brains that are capable of deciding the best things to do. So far, they've added, and added, and added, and any bug fixes have been secondary to that. They've been more concerned with adding new features, simultaneous logins, and population increases, than with making a good, stable system. Even now, so soon after Philip announced that they will concentrate on stabilising the system this year, rather than on adding new things, they are asking for suggestions of what to add to the voice system. They are still looking to add, and add, and add.

With thinking like that, I give them very little chance of success in the long term. They just don't have the right people to make it. I said in another thread that a startup won't be able to oust LL, but I have to change my mind about that. If LL doesn't employ a good decision maker, or if Philip doesn't learn to do things right, SL will be easy to topple, simply because it will never work properly. If good, stable systems arrive, even without all the features, SL will become a laughing stock.

I don't know what the differences between Cory and Philip were, but I think it may have been that Cory wanted the grid to be open source, so that other grids could develope and interface, and make the concept a viable system for the online future, and that Philip's preference is to keep it all for LL. If that's the case, then I really don't think that LL can succeed, simply because such an online future is too big for one company.

Wow, Phil, you are dead on right. Only thing I might disagree is at this point I think it would take a start up less to overpower SL. All they need to do is provide slightly more stability but far more customer service and people will be leaving SL in droves.

Linden Lab has proven to me that they do not care for or listen to their customers. They must all be rich enough that this is just a game for them. Otherwise this just doesn't make sense.

Doubt it. According to Joe Miller 3 days ago (VP Platform and Technology) in Information Week, open sourcing is still on the plate for 2009, along with other technologies to open up the grids.
http://www.informationweek.com/internet/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205918468&pgno=2

2009 seems to me reasonable, given the development that clearly has to take place to allow interfacing 3-rd party sims to LL's shared servers.

Wrt your main point, that LL won't be able to do what they need to, I'm not willing to hazard a guess. If I _had_ to bet, I would say that LL is so far ahead in terms of market dominance, that even if a better platform came along, they will still be successful.
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Yes, they are addicts.

coco

I guess it depends on how we define 'success'.

Second Life has had issues that annoy their subscribers for years. Yet people stay anyway (yourself included). The common argument why is that SL is the only option - if there were other options, SL subscribers would evaporate.

But really, that will only happen if there were *better* options. Even after 5+ years, no better option has yet emerged. Comparatively speaking - SL seems pretty 'successful' to me

o rly?

Tell that to Atari. Oops. You can't.

LL and Philip in particular are in danger for being known as the company whom in 20 years time people will be trying to remember their name for developing that ground breaking project that they couldn't quite get to work. You know, sitting in a bar with friends and saying "Linden Lab, Second Life, that was it. Great concept, shame about the delivery".

They appear to be awash with technical folk but in dire need of customer support folk. The sort of people who say "Hold on a minute, don't you think we should resolve this issue before rushing into a new untested venture".

The sort of people who realise that your product can't survive without customers. They need to stop treating this platform as their own personal play thing. Bring in some people who will put their foot down and demand customers are put first.

They kinda swallowed the "voice -> ??? -> profit" thing hook, line, and sinker. And then integrated some VoIP technology that works well for a game, but lacks all the features one would want for business applications. Oopsy. So now somebody's gotta build those features. One hopes this project will be the Vivox folks mostly, not LL engineers.

No idea on the Philip / Cory thing. Seems odd to me that today they went ahead with a server upgrade while the network was still b0rked, so I get the feeling there's some, uh, "organizational coherence issues" at the moment.

Ermmm.... SL gave me 2 years (my break excluded) of great fun... And you say they didn't succeed? Sorry, they already did that.

Morwen.

True, but I can point to Microsoft. There were operating systems from undergraduate projects that were better than DOS.

Small things tip the scales in these sorts of battles. Like I say, I'm reluctant to go with anyone's, including my own, crystal ball here.

I look at the corporate relationships LL has, tho, and the maturity and richness of SL ... particularly with the Opengrid sims eventually augmenting it ... and I think a competitor would need more of a differentiator than just "we're more reliable".
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OMG!!! You're right!! Doomed! DOOMED, I say!!

Better leave now. Can I have your stuff?

I agree with that, but by "succeed", I mean as a serious online system for the future. LL have succeeded in many ways, including making money, but they haven't succeeded in making a stable system that could be used as a serious online future, and they don't look like doing it due to how their decision-makers think. Imo, this type of system IS the online future, but LL will be bypassed if they don't learn how to do it.

I'm with Travis - define succeed.

They are in the black and growing at a modest pace.

Most businesses call that success.


To paraphrase someone else a while back - let's compare SL to all the other virtual worlds streaming live with predominantly user-created content...

Oh wait....there aren't any.

I'll say this:

In retrospect, its regretful LL decided to take Second Life out of 'beta' status in 2004.

If this continued to be "Second Life™, Beta" today - I'd think expectations would be better lined up better with reality. Of course, if I'm not mistaken, much VC capital was dependant upon leaving beta status.

Amazing the difference one tiny word would make, though

We're all just crystal balling here of course.

I think LL's corporate relationships are crumbling as we speak. It's become no secret that their numbers have been gross exaggerations at the very least and for the most part outright lies. For in world conferencing within a corporation things may be doing well, but there's been very little success having corporations reach out to the public via SL. This has been a major failure on their part as well, IMO. They should have ensured corporations had the support and knowledge provided by LL to ensure success within LL in reaching out to their client base.

I'm not a hater of SL at all. I hope they someday get their ass together and make this thing work. Maybe having a competitor come along will be the kick in the ass they need, but I'm concerned by then it will be too late.

They got lucky with Dos.



Easier to use, more reliable, those are the key factors, LL aren't so far ahead of the game that they can rest on their laurels. Time doesn't stand still in this game, IBM once believed that their name and power would help them dominate the PC market and of course then someone went and reverse engineered their bios.

Hmmm.... donnu know. Everquest is still there, while people screamed at the servers going down. Ah, even Ultima Online is there.... with all it server reverts. Shall we talk about login into a busy WoW server?

Personally I think (I am not expert) I think as long people are really wanting to be part of it, a stable environment is not the most important.

Morwen.

I've heard of WoW but not the others, though I imagine they are all just games. SL isn't a game. As far as I know, it's intended to become a serious system for the online future, just like the web is the online present. If the future will wait for LL to get their act together, ok, but if money sees this type of system as the online future, and there's every indication that it does, then LL's system will surely be bypassed, imo, simply because they don't have the mentality to do the right things in the right order.

I think you need to separate SL from LL. An online world where people buy prim penises and dress their avatars is not a serious business platform, but the underlying technology could be, if LL can get others to agree that the standards of that technology become the norm.

They have Sun on board, Java, whilst far from perfect, would assist with cross world standards. LSL won't achieve that.

Damn! Took the words right outta my mouth!

The way I see it- the Internet started in 1969. Home Computers didnt catch on till the 80s. Then it was around 1995 the world got "on the World Wide Web". So who knows? It might be 20 years till things are stable & working.

The average Ultima Online player would PK you for calling their world just a game.

Anyway, again as not a expert, I don't see SL as some complete Internet future where we all move around or so. There is big difference as I use the Internet for my work (I am a business woman) and SL.... One is serious, the other for me to relax.

Morwen.

Please frame your supposed answer in the form of a question.

they succeeded as people spend their hard earned cash here and don`t leave, like you


don`t get me started on the rest tho...

From my perspective, it appears that most or all of the money being made in SL is from content creation, renting land, basically people playing Barbie and Ken online and buying the stuff needed for that.

I have never understood the connection between that (game) and the whole online future thing that everyone talks about. If SL turns into the "future of the web," then I, and the money I've invested, won't have any reason to be here. I'll leave, and go find the latest game where I can just go build stuff again.