The Question LL Asks

I do remember that, but I suppose I assumed that since that initial period he'd continued to spend time inworld, learning what SL excels in providing and what it can't effectively provide.

Guess not, though.

I can't help wondering what other LL execs and staffers make of this. (Not that they'll reveal it while still employed there, of course.)

And despite this, someone still believes that corporations will hand LL cash so their employees can 'work' insided SL? Someone still believes that top executives will be willing to be represented by expressionless avatars who end up on top of the conference table when they Stand?

I've got common sense (you'll have to trust me on that) and I can see plenty of potential in SL as a business platform. Of course, the key word in that sentence is potential.

Think about what entertainment users find compelling about SL. Things like the feeling of presence, how easy it is to form relationships (no, not that sort of relationship), the confidence people get from being able to look however they like. These are all things that can be useful in business. Sure, if you're thinking of a business use as a bunch of captains of industry sitting around a virtual boardroom in their avatars it all seems unlikely. If you think about a business use like a bunch of second level production staff brainstorming with a bunch of second level marketing staff to develop a new product it all looks a little more likely.

All the above said I do think the case that SL is putting all it's effort into chasing business is a little over stated. Things like the web page dashboard, xstreet changes, Linden homes. These all look more focused on enhancing usability rather than favouring any particular use.

They _would_ probably like this, but that isn't quite what I meant.

Let's go with one of your examples, a concert. A concert organizer can advertise the concert on the basis that there will be a band playing there. If the band does not show up, the organiser can blame or recover compensation from the band; if the band is inaudible they can repair the sound system or require compensation from the venue or the sound system manufacturer. The organiser can write "come to our concert and hear music" on their advert in full confidence that they will be able to supply that and that, if they are not, there will be a business process in place for them to rectify the situation.

But they don't write "come to our concert to meet other fans". There might not be other fans. Or the other fans who turn up might be in a clique who don't want to talk to anyone outside. Or they might all speak different languages and not be able to communicate with each other. If any of those happens, the concert organiser is high and dry. They can have a deal with the band that they will show up and play, but they cannot have a deal with the attendees that they will be receptive to meeting new people.

So while people do go to concerts to meet other fans, the concert organizer can't exactly take responsibility for them doing so, and can't really advertise it. Without the band, the concert wouldn't be much of an event. And what LL want is for SL to find its "band". An experience that will make SL valuable in some way (possibly "entertaining", but possibly not) such that it can be held in place by contracts and business arrangements, rather than having to be a vague social thing where some people will get missed and others will get rejected and communities could fall apart because somebody was in a bad mood and started drama.

Right, and that's why I wrote (in post 9 :


There's no need to make an actual promise that "you will find _______ if you come to SL"... (just as organizers of mixers for Baptist singles don't PROMISE that 'you will find a life partner here'.)




In your analogy, the Band is the provider of content, and the concert organizer is merely the provider of the venue.

And further, the concert organizer can sue the Band for damages if the Band doesn't provide content as per the contract.

But the Organizer pays the Band.

If LL is the Organizer in the analogy, then LL would pay Corporations (presumably the Band). Is LL going to pay corporations to come to SL?

Also: currently, both SL Residents and SL staffers create the content found inside SL (and of course this Band analogy is further muddied by the fact that the Content of SL is not merely Objects, but also [and fundamentally] the programming and hardware that combine to create what we see on our monitors.)

The analogy is muddied even more by the fact that the Residents are not only the Band, but the Audience, too.

I'm just not seeing how a contract with a corporation would mirror the Band analogy, since, really, like Residents, the corporation wouldn't be the Band, they'd be the Audience.

Perhaps we should abandon the Band analogy. (Recall that I wasn't saying 'SL is like a band concert', I was saying 'many people spend their discretionary entertainment dollars with a goal of meeting like-minded people, and demonstrating that SL has many smart Residents might attract other smart people.')

I'm genuinely interested in your view of how LL could persuade corporations to enter into contracts.

What service would LL be providing the corporation, that the corporation would be willing to pay for, since 'advertising' and 'holding virtual meetings' have pretty much been discredited as possibilities? ('Training' may remain...but if you think it through, it remains for only a very limited number of industries.)

(And, yes, I can understand the distaste LL execs must have for episodes such as the NCI upheaval of a couple of months back. But corporations are made up of people, and therefore 'contracts with corporations' is no guarantee that human drama would be expunged from SL, even if all pesky individual-Resident accounts could be eliminated.)

In all this discussion, I don't mean to insult you personally. I DO mean to shine a light on the tendency of many LL execs to make breezy, ill-thought-out predictions about supposed selling points of SL to business entities. And (again, apologies for the bluntness of this), statements like "think about...the confidence people get from being able to look however they like" demonstrate a lack of experience (in either business settings or SL) or a lack of 'thinking it through'.



Virtually all "second level production staff" hope to move up out of the second level, some day.

And this is why they, just like those already at the top, will NOT be willing to put in the hours necessary* to avoid looking utterly ridiculous, in order to use a platform that is FAR less effective than is a video-teleconference (or of course, an in-person meeting, but if we're pitching SL as an alternative to air travel, then we should stick to comparisons with long-distance 'meetings'.)

How 'less effective'?

Well, GO to a meeting in SL. Go to one in which all avatars present have spent (at a minimum) the dozens of hours necessary to being able to avoid getting stuck in a wall, walk smoothly to their chairs, and use Voice. What do you have?

You have a picture of cartoons sitting around a table. Sure, they blink and make typing motions...but you have NO facial expressions, no body language, NONE of the clues that ambitious business people use as information in making decisions.

Moreover, those ambitious people are opening themselves up to ridicule and criticism with the vaunted "look however they like" feature of SL.

What would be the result for the career of a second-level marketing person of walking into a RL meeting in a plush fox head, paws and tail?

Even in that tiny fraction of industries that are 'creative', such a move would get some laughs...but the person would NOT be taken seriously. It would be a stunt.

And in the vast majority of business enterprises, the person would effectively have ended his career.

In SL, in all but that handful of creative industries, walking in with a Furry or Mad Max or Vampire avatar is NOT going to enhance the career of the individual behind the avatar.

Even avatars designed to look as much like the person as possible, will open the person up to criticism and ridicule ('hey, Jim, you finally got those abs you've always wanted, eh!?' and 'nice boob-job, Linda!' and the like.)

For the vast majority of business staffers, with regard to their careers and ambitions, there's nothing but risk in SL.

So, basically, a corporation will spend money and time to get to a result that is LESS effective for them. Unhappy staffers, time and money lost, less information in the meetings (due to lack of facial expressions and body language).



*Take a look at the little video (actually machinima) snippet found in the intro material on this site. You see two business people approaching each other and shaking hands.

Now think about all the time (and money) that had to go into getting their avatars to move smoothly, have prim hair and attractive clothing---and most of all, SHAKE HANDS.

Any staffer instructed to make an SL account so that he or she can attend virtual meetings, is going to have to put in many, many hours into getting to the point of smoothness (and specialized Gestures/Animations) that we see in that video snippet. And even if that hypothetical staffer puts in all those hours, will the other person have done so? Isn't it far more likely that the actual subject matter of the meeting will disappear behind a screen of social embarrassment and awkwardness as avatars stand on the table, wink out due to crashing, get stuck in the wall, etc. etc. etc.?

Sure, all this could be solved with hours of training. Special packages of pre-made avatars, complete with Hand Shaking animation, could be sold to corporations.

But....WHY would they bother, when even in the most ideal circumstances, an SL meeting is SO much less satisfactory than a video-teleconference meeting?



I write all this not to rain on anyone's parade, but to point up the fact that if LL continues to go haring off after a nonexistent goal, LL could kill SL. And that would make me very sad.

No, but you have to be able to promise _something_. And if SL is advertised as just a mixer, then it's going into competition with IMVU - and IMVU is likely to _win_ that competition, because it's much cheaper if all you want is talker functionality.



Well, I don't really like these terms because you're starting to fit the example into the SL framewark. The band provides something more important than "some content" - it provides THE REASON TO BE THERE. Pretty much no content creators in SL can single-handedly provide a reason for people to be in SL. That is not their fault, but it's still a problem.



They were _claiming_ to offer them publicity accessible by milions for US$295/month. If that deal had really been avaliable, it would have been such good value as to make it worthwhile. True, they couldn't sue them - but if they're getting such a good deal, why wouldn't they turn up?



Only if you push an SL framework onto the analogy, of "content creators" and "audience". But if you keep with the actual entertainment analogy, with "providers of an entertainment experience" and consumers of same, then you see the problem much more clearly. There are many content creators in SL, but there are very few "providers of an entertainment experience".

Oh, and the Residents being the Band and the Audience isn't necessarily a good thing, psychologically.



It's not JUST major things the NCI upheaval. It's the issue of there being ten million minor things, too. There could be 50,000 people with 1024 houses who have them because they have friends over regularly. If nobody ever came over, they'd start to wonder what they really had the house for. And those friends are just a few random people, not necessarily even talking with each other, of the millions in SL. But there's no contract with those friends, no deal, no arrangement possible. And if, somehow, ALL the friends stop coming over then, wham, that's a loss to LL of (deep breath) US$4.8M!!! a year (50,000 people * US$8 tier * 12 months).

This is where I really don't understand Linden Lab's marketing strategy when it comes to pulling in corporations.

As a substitute for a video-conference, there is no advantage that Second Life has over a video-conference. It's not that a video-conference has more pros and fewer cons than Second Life; it's that all the pros are on the side of video-conference, all the cons are on the side of Second Life.

There are things one can do in Second Life that one can't do in video conference- supposedly- which are simulations of physical events. And I have seen some articles about universities and federal agencies using Second Life for simulations. However, how many businesses really need that simulation ability? Besides that- and I don't know a ton about the physics simulator in Second Life- but the physics simulator is low-end, and object creation is kinda primative in Second Life anyway. What can one simulate in Second Life that one couldn't simulate more accurately and easier (and ultimately less expensively) than in a program like Maya?

Sure Second Life can be used for virtual meetings. Sure Second Life can be used for simulation. The problem is that it cannot do any of these things better or more cheaply than other alternatives already available.

Maybe the question Linden Lab should be asking is, "What can Second Life do better than anything else?"

And we haven't even explicitly mentioned what is probably the kill-deal point for most corporations: the necessity for computers with good graphics cards.

Industries in which workers ALREADY need and have computers with good graphics cards, are probably industries in which workers need no 'contract' with LL...they could just open up free accounts themselves and go in and meet if they want to.

Moreover, industries in which workers already have these more expensive computers are a tiny fraction of all businesses.

99% or better of all businesses to which LL might try to pitch contracts (for private islands, packages of pre-made avatars, etc.) do NOT have expensive comps for their workers. If they don't need machines with good graphics cards and fans, etc., for any other purpose, then are they going to be willing to spend several hundred dollars per worker for SL-minimum machines, for the dubious benefit of being able to hold a meeting inside SL (with all the time-consuming inherent problems already enumerated in this thread?)

No. They are not.










Yes.

And thus we return to the biggest mystery of all: WHY isn't LL asking that question?

WHY is it devoting so much of its focus to haring after non-starters (primarily the 'contracts with corporations' chimera)?

WHY is it giving such short shrift to its actual customers and likely potential customers--the REAL engine for growth and prosperity of Linden Lab?

Because when they DO ask that question, they don't like the answer, and they are trying to fabricate a new one out of whole cloth.

So far, no game/world that depends on social interaction has even grown beyond a fairly middling size, because of the inability to manage it fully.

It isn't a mystery at all. Consider who is in charge now. A corporate marketing stooge used to pandering and peddling to other corporate stooges. It's not that he isn't interested in ASKING that question, but that he isn't even interested in the answer.

I never understood the board's choice of Mark Kingdon, but then I have to remember who is on the board. He's worse than clueless about virtual worlds and their potential, reminding me of the same kinds of people we fought in the adfarmer/extortionist war; make a buck even if it pollutes the entire world. He's much nicer about it, of course, but his position and strategies are more than clear.

I wish I didn't see a lot of truth in those remarks, Dragon. (But I do.) It's very unfortunate for the prospects of continued existence for SL.

I do agree with you that the Social Interaction aspect is prickly. And of course there's not much in the way of precedent to point to as 'here's a way to make a continuing success of a business with so strong a Social Interaction element'.

Not that this means it can't be done; in this as in so much else, LL could be a pioneer.

Linden Lab could have been a pioneer. The leader with a vision stepped down as CEO.

The main difference between Rosedale and Kingdon, I think, is that Rosedale tried to create something of which he could be proud and make money from it; Kingdon is looking to make money without regard to creating anything or even being proud of it. Linden Lab may or may not make money with the latter type of leadership, but it certainly isn't going to innovate.

If there is a bright hope, maybe it's that Rosedale has learned from past failures, and is waiting to try new and better ideas once computer technology advance a little bit, and once the time expires on whatever non-compete agreement he might have with Linden Lab.

It could be, but it's really hard to work out how they can really change anything. If pretty much _anything_ disrupts people's social interaction, they'll complain like crazy; if nothing does, then LL would have no control.

Oh, Linden Lab was most definitely a pioneer. Can't take that away from them. The issue is that they have given up pioneering for homesteading.

I hate that it's possible our only hope of a financially-healthy-in-the-long-term virtual world that will be what SL has been, must wait until that non-compete provision has expired.

That may be the case, though.