All Out by 2009?

Not sure why you chose to mispell America, instead of Corporate. Maybe you have other reasons.

If I hated Korporit America, I'd cancel my Linden account and burn my Dell computer to make a real statement, rather than mispell the name of the country where these 'evil' technologies were developed by 'evil' people working for these 'evil' companies.

Not to mention that LL is "Corporate Ammurica" as well.

If I may, I would say the big downfall of SL will be the downtime or halfassed*untested updates to the software, often, and in my case now.. leaving SL usless. I have not been able to use the new release canidate for 2 days now, no response to a support ticket from LL... *sigh*

lack of support for Vista as well...

Good point, Chip. Are they going to get everyone at the office a PS3 to play Home together? Or will normal PC users be able to access Home? I'm curious to see how the beta release will look.

The Gartner article is good, but doesn't really provide anything new. The main point that I got out of it is that they want to make sure everyone knows that SL is too young and too unstable to be worthy of substantial corporate investment. Companies have been finding this out the hard way for over a year now. Maybe Gartner was catching some heat from companies that failed in SL and wanted to put out a little disclaimer?

Well I'm sure the analysts at Gartner think highly of you too Chip

I think the point is that, accurate or not, it's Gartner's influence on industry which will be the telling thing.

I know you'll take this hard Chip, and I know it's madness, but business decision makers believe what Gartner says and unfortunately don't really know who you are.

I don't think RL business was always a major target. It seemed to me that the original dream was something close to what we have, a huge playground for people to imagine and interact. Then businesses started taking an interest, possibly because of the sheer number of people who signed up when free accounts came about, and LL saw dollar signs before their eyes. I may be wrong on that, but the corporate stuff seemed to suddenly become much more prominent soon after I joined.

Frankly I don't see SL being a useful RL marketing tool in the foreseeable future even if it was stable. I suspect it will be a long time before people start thinking of SL as a place to RL shop. The ordinary internet is quicker, easier to use, and I cant really see that SL offers anything more than a webpage would when it comes to selling RL products.

SL ended each time.

We are in a perpetual dead/alive loop like in Premonition.

OHHHHH that was a good movie

I think the idea of what LL wanted SL to be changed substantially around the time they decided to add unverified accounts.

I think that was a conscious decision to "Open SL up" so that it would be more attractive to business.

It was probably a plan in response to Investors who were looking for a way to make money off this platform.

I couldn't give a monkey's backside what "Gartner" - whoever they might be - have to say about SL, because they aren't the ones in here for hours a day knowing how it all works.

Corporate america doesn't contribute anything much to SL, never has, probably never will. I don't think many of us - apart from people like ESC - would mourn their passing.

Reducing tier prices, making land more accessible to the residents to whom money matters, is the key to SL's success, because we're the ones that create the world - not a bunce of faceless bureaucrats in a boardroom somewhere trying to figure out how to exploit us for their own benefit.

There are a couple of companies out there that have somehow snowed Corporate America into thinking they are experts at something.

Its kind of amazing when you think about it.

Erm... isn't SL developed in Europe and Australia with offices, plus the hordes of open source contributors around the world in many different countries contributing to the programming ... not to mention the 70% of the playerbase contributing to what makes SL what it is that are not in the US either.

It may have 'started' as an american company - but I wouldn't really class it as one any more. It just happens to have its main base there.

Hi Colette,

I do think that the investors are the key stakeholders in this. As far as I know (and I admit I don't know much), LL never attempted to grow SL organically, they went to the investment community as soon as they had something viable.

In my experience, investers never "share the dream", they only go in if they are sure that there is a profitable exit.

I try to imagine the LL pitch and I'm not sure how that pitch would work without business customers as a key target. I do the sums and I can't figure how LL makes a profit and pays the investors their return if they stick to the consumer market alone.

Welllll, now, no need to be snippy! *slaps Stephen lightly*

Gartner hires a fair number of junior people, but they are generally prevented from making really stupid statements because they rarely release something like this without running it by the company in question ... in this case, LL. The fact that the statement about Sony stayed in may mean that LL decided that Sony (as Chip observes) was a less credible competitor than many others ... or the fact that this went out at all may indicate that LL dropped the ball wrt Strategic Communications (handling the analysts) ... or ... we just can't know.

In any case, Stephen's basic point ... it doesn't pay to ignore Gartner, if you're a venture-backed company ... is gospel. LL should do SOMETHING to respond publicly.
.

SL has been "ending" ever since it left beta.

From Gartner's perspective, I'd say they are absolutely correct in their suggestion that it just isn't a viable platform for business purposes - for all the reasons he gives. I've always believed that the future of SL was as a social platform. We'll see what happens when when Havok4, Mono and Windlight roll out on the main grid and things (hopefully) stabilize....

Kinda. The ones too short-sighted to have their own research teams are doomed to take at face-value the pronouncements of Gartner (and/or Forrester, Yankee Group, IDC... pick your poison). Every organization I've ever worked for, though, uses the input from these sources as hints of where to direct their own research, and clues of what their stupider competitors will do.

But there are a *lot* of stupid competitors out there. And a case like this can easily be a self-fulfilling prophecy: Being the last corporation to pull out of SecondLife is not a smart move, no matter how misled the competition's withdrawal may have been.

Possibly worth noting: most likely, somebody paid Gartner to do this analysis. Yeah, these firms sometimes do stuff like this "on spec," but (especially at Gartner) billable hours are everything. So, one wonders who is so interested in this topic, and why.

Please note that the gartner group is forecasting 21 months into the future...the end of 2009, basing it on what Second Life is like today...a very bad policy, for several reasons.

First, they make a big issue about video cards...that there is a limited number of video cards supported...well that number and variety is growing as time passes, and the current defacto operating system shipped by most computer makers is Vista, in one or the other of it's incarnations...which requires a high end video card to run....more and more computers will be shipped with cards sufficient to run sl...or they wont run vista.

Secondly....gartner is forecasting 21 months into the future....let's look 21 months BACK in time...when SL had around a half million residents...half the sims they do now...half the features they do now. Then take into account the progress SL has made in the last 21 months...the growth...the changes to the platform and policy that is Second Life. If Linden Labs stopped developing SL tomorrow...then Gartner would be correct...but they are trying to compare the Second Life of RIGHT NOW, with what SL will be in 21 months...and if past development, DESPITE HUGE growth in the platform size and number of residents, is any indicator, the SL of today will have little comparison to the SL of almost two years into the future.

As for their suggestion that corporate america seek out "other" platforms, actually mentioning Sony's wall garden/loaded with ads entry into the market, Home...an environment created strictly for socializing...not creation, innovation, commerce...or anything else that the SL "your world, your imagination" brings to all of us....I dont see a Sony game console being on the desk of all the folks at Price Waterhouse or General Motors anytime soon.

The gartner group has a history of being wrong...dead wrong on technology that they don't like for whatever reason, and they have a history of slamming SL...just because it's said in print, wont make it true.

Gartner has pointed out what the residents have been complaining about for a very long time now. SL needs to be more stable and reliable if it is going to grow and prosper.

As far as what Chip said, I agree I do not see what Sony's Home could offer business other than a cool way to teleconference. Now as far as casual users who only use it for social networking, Home will probably be a more attractive, and accessable option. SL continually requires more expensive equipment to be used decently yet hasn't become more reliable or stable.

I do hope the report helps LL reevaluate its priorities.

LOL yes that is the magic.

They have convinced companies to pay for their advice.

Literally made an business out of a product that wouldn't normally be profitable.

That is the part I am amazed about.

I just thought of something that COULD save LL's corporate interests... wait for it...


the CORPORATE GRID. Yep. Just like the teen grid you can just cordon them off in their own little lala land of simplified clients and better uptime. I think that the Gartner report doesn't really speak to a corporation looking to advertise itself to the residents of SL or else they would have mentioned the fact that residents could care less about them. I think they are thinking more of using SL as a collaborative platform for meetings, telecommuting, that sort of thing. That's why I think LL needs to make a separate grid based on older stabler technology. They don't need all the fancy bells and whistles as the main grid and they can skip all the sim crashing updates that we normally have. They could also use some predefined building and landscape textures which would be used in any builds. Predefined avatars as well. All textures loaded from the hard drive. Everything designed for the sake of lower system and bandwidth requirements.

LL needs to adapt to changes.

Does that mean we will get to report the corporate clients that sneak onto the maingrid?

hmm thats interesting

I never saw the whole telecommuting/conferencing meeting as that an impressive selling point.

We used video conferencing when I was consulting at Ford years ago. I just don't see the advantage of changing from that to a 3D cartoon.

I always assumed the real place corporations would find would be Advertising and sales. Not virtual items either. Basically like internet sales. You want to buy something online, you can go to their island, they will give you freebie virtual items. You click a vendor and it lets you shop their online store .. Which will be shipped to your RL home.

Just like when you buy things on the 2D web.

Any corporate IT person who took Gartner's advice and looked into Home for more than five minutes would know they don't know what they're talking about. So while that analysis might make a business think twice about setting up shop in SL, if they're hell bent on getting involved in virtual worlds it's still the only viable game in town if they also want a large installed user base and content creation. Virtual worlds as a platform for commerce, training, and similar activities is still in its infancy. I doubt there will be a rock solid VR platform that can fulfill people's expectations and facilitate all the things people want to use them for reliably for another decade.

I really don't get this.

Most big corporations in SL own 1 sim, or a couple of sims. I'm just 1 ordinary guy, and I own 3.5 sims. It is NOT uncommon for us ordinary folks to own whole sims. There are thousands of us.

Just as an example, if I'm remembering correctly (sorry, can't check in-world) I own roughly the same amount of land as Mercedez Benz. The main difference between me, and the big 3-pointed star, is that I spend money like crazy all over SL, whereas I suspect MB spends zero.

What am I missing? Why are big corporations vital to SL?

I'm sure that MB's presence in SL by itself is publicity-worthy, where my presence is not, but "little reason to keep the doors open?" I'm just not seeing it.