All Out by 2009?

True, but if SL did turn into the burning bag of dog poop on the porch, I wonder how many of the casual, entertainmnet users would just go do something else, maybe giving up on the Virtual World idea totally. Maybe even...*gasps* leave the house once in a while.

I wonder if Governor Spitzer has seen that one.

So more lip-service and PR type speeches by King Phil on the horizon ...

and meanwhile SL as usual.

Lets not go overboard here.

Could we see the return of Dan Linden?

I find it funny that they would say SL is to graphicly advanced to play on most corperate computers and then turn around and tout newer worlds that will be coming out in 2009+ that no doubt will have much higher minimum specs needed to run them.....DX11 anyone?

He never left!!

He's been in a safe, undisclosed location.

LOL SL requires far too much of a computer to run, but at the same time it isn't advanced enough for us.

Oh yes. The Witless Protection Program.

I found that remark Broadly Offensive!!!!!!!!

...not to mention it's, well, SONY. Anyone in gaming will laugh at the idea of Sony being a threat.

I think it is clear that at some point there will be a 3D internet. The business advantages and potential over 2D are clear.

LL themselves have pushed this idea and used it as a way to avoid involvement in in-world disputes etc., by taking the stance that they are just a platform and service provider and not responsible for content and issues--like the web.

When the business week article of 2006 came out, the hype became huge. Counting unhatched chickens seemed to be happening. IMO opinion they should still be in Beta and they made major error in how they created it, biggest of which are charging absurd amounts of money for Sims, pushing Open Source and abdicating responsiblity for in-world issues.

Not long after, LL allowed the free accounts. Soon they were showing huge numbers, as though they were the next World of Warcraft.

There was alot of hype in gaming magazines. At that time World of Warcaft users, already conditioned to living in a virtual world, were awaiting an expansion pack and so there were millions of bored Warcraft users. During that Warcraft lull many people decided to check out SL en masse, so the numbers of accounts soared in a few months. Then once the expansion pack was out, many forgot about SL. I had a large friends list and all but maybe 3 people never log on today. They left SL although the list is still there.

In the meantime the corporate world lured by Business Week and other hype stories got into it to see what it was all about and quickly discovered it was not viable in it's existing form and would have to look elsewhere for the future of the 3D internet.

SL changed drastically at that time of the hype and LL, I think was overly optimistic and over reaching and had a big head because of all that glowing hype. Growing too fast and not tending to basics, is a common cause of business failure.

I liked SL as a fun place for a while, but no way was I going to put any real money in it for business purposes if it was going to be so flakey. I didn't mind spending $140- $200 a month on it, but that was just entertainment money and frankly, the entertainment value died away after 6 months. Reading the forum is more entertaining---and that's not saying too much.

It frustrates me that such potential has been mismanaged and that the obvious legal issues that would come up with SL becoming mainstream. have been dealt with so slowly. They should have kept it small and intimate until they had learned how to correct the issues which in many ways will require a complete redo. I'm sure others watching SL will have learned from the mistakes, even if LL hasn't.

I think LL could get real numbers by making a few big changes. but I'm not holding my breath on that. I think they painted themselves into a unviable corner and even if they see their basic mistakes now, it might be too late.

The Gartner article makes some good points regarding the challenges facing Linden Lab and Second Life, but after reading it, my conclusion was that they were trying to use the popularity of Second Life to promote their upcoming symposium. Any competitors (challenge three) will also have to deal with challenges one and two, and I don't see anybody doing any better at the moment.

The sky is far from falling, unless the majority of the 10,000 + sims is owned by corporate interests. As far as I know, this is resident-dominated and corporate/nonprofit usage is miniscule in comparison. SL never was dependent on corporate interests beyond the support that IBM gives. IIRC, IBM owns approximately 40 islands.

That's ok, because the people who make the decisions in big corporations are just about the same. They need people who explain what's going on with the world outside to them in easy words. And - allways remember this - those guys don't think in the same terms as we "normal" people do.

There's loads and loads of decisions that are made not because they're the best or most effective solutions, but because there's "political" reasons for them...

The internet is like a series of tubes.

Um ok ... if you say so out there in flipflappyflippyland.

I've seen worse typos than that, believe me.

Our Forutune 500 company has used Gartner quite a bit. We don't believe *everything* they say is gold, but they are one of a few good sources for getting some external vision on products and services. Not always right, but they do have good points and when they talk people (especially companies) listen.

Pure and simple they are on track for much of what was said. Being in corporate IT and also being involved in SL personally, I see SL as being a pure toy (unless you can build, design or are good with land sales) Its good for some to make $ but not the greatest investment for most RL companies. Perhaps there is some value in showing the SL world that you are forward thinking by pulling up a few SIMS and getting your name in there, but beyond that its a drain on the bottom line and in an ever challenged economy I wouldn't be surprised to see this playing around coming to an end quickly.

The idea of SL is very cool. Its just not mature enough and as long as LL has a hold on it all it will never grow to the potential it could. Support issues are obvious, and the point about the reliability of outages is dead on. Lets see Amazon run their business with a web provider that reboots randomly and can't stick to their outage schedule. Not going to happen.

The internet was built upon a much better distributed environment. I believe this is going to be one of its biggest eventual downfalls. When? Who knows. Who cares... when SL 2.0 comes along by someone else who can do it better more power too them. Most all of us would benefit by a little competition in this space.

Absolutely!

SL has removed barriers to many online activities for non-tech people.
1) SL has given a non-tech interface for people to create online content.
2) SL enables Micropayments

The two are not necessarily linked, but some people would appreciate getting some tangible benefit from their creations. I love building for the hell of it. I'm getting better at it. I love seeing some of the wild stuff that others make. I am in awe of some of it.
Many might just want to make things - for their own enjoyment or to share or to share for reward. For that, SL has no competition.


Corporates can buy creativity and platform rental to promote themselves. It's just a business expense.
Mom/Pop/Bro/Sis/JohnDoe have a brick wall of tech and banking systems to contend with.


SL is a killer app for 'small people' (as in non-corporates)
SL is not a mainstream production business platform for corporates. Given the limitations of avatar_bums_on_sims, I'm not sure that it will ever be a great mass-promotional platform for business.

If LL were to capitalise on that, then maybe both they, their investors and their core customers would be a lot happier.

Exactly....

What is kind of strange about this is that the amount of money a rl business CAN spend to establish a presence in SL just isn't all that much in big corporation terms. They buy an island, hire people to develop it, stage events, whatever. How can it come to more than petty cash compared to their overall marketing budget?

As far as not being able to reach every single person who's still connected to the internet via a 1996 Best Buy $250 computer and dial up modem, so what. Technology is advancing and more people have better equipment all the time.


I agree with Rebecca's whole post.



This is what I've been thinking too. And I think that businesses with on line catalogs should probably be thinking about it too.

Maybe SL isn't going to be The Big Thing of the future but something like it will be and getting ready to take advantage of it will probably be a good thing for some businesses.

I think one thing Gartner is hinting as isn't just consumer access but corporate access as well. Many companies have standards that they need to stick to in order to reduce support costs. Fancy graphics cards are likely the first to go in a business-class PC or laptop. No company is going to re-standardize on a new PC or graphics card simply based on the idea that SL supports it. I doubt most companies are going to want SL running through their networks either, so thats probably an even bigger issue...

If a company is asking consumers to come check out their SL island they are now asking their helpdesk to field all sorts of support calls that LL is certainly not going to handle. If you can't assume 99.9% of current PCs can get too it as is there is a problem that will involve cost, time and possibly reputation.

On stability and compatibility: These issues haven't prevented Cisco and IBM from using SL effectively. Cisco used SL last week when they released their new line of routers. The week before, they opened Palomar in SL. I usually have a lot of respect for Gartner's reports, but this one makes no sense by saying stability and compatibility problems may prevent corporations from accomplishing in the future what they are ALREADY doing in SL.

On future competition: At this point, who knows? In 2007, Gartner predicted Apple's share of the computing market would remain flat. This year, Gartner predicted Apple will double its share of the market by 2011. Predictions are tough in this business.

Where the report fell short: Gartner didn't mention customer service, but this will be a significant issue if a viable competitor to SL emerges.

What's good for corporations in SL is, for the most part, also good for educational institutions, individuals, and any other category of users. All of us need a reasonable amount of stability, compatibility, and service.

I find that SL is much more stable than it was when I joined a year ago.

And it is growing and prospering as far as numbers go. Their main income is tier and that is growing every month since I have been here.

I see what you mean but even inside the company they will be upgrading eventually and maybe the time will come when being able to log onto SL or something like it will be cost effective.