Exclusive Interview with Mark Kingdon - LL CEO

Here's an interesting interview with Mark Kingdon (M Linden) about his work at Linden Lab and the future direction of Second Life. http://www.massively.com/2009/11/05/exclusive-interview-with-linden-lab-ceo-mark-kingdon/

He alludes to all sorts of things in the article from making a concerted effort to deal with lag, integrating more of the web with SL and Viewer 2.0, amongst many other topics.

Do you like the direction the company is going? If not, and taking into account the responsibilities of a CEO and their accountability to the Board of Directors and its investors in growing a company, what strategic direction would you suggest Kingdon take to ensure the future success of Linden Lab?

TY for the link!


For me, lag is the biggest threat to SL right now. Being in SL sucks and is painful. My PC is plenty fine - talking about sim performance over the last 6 months.

Although lag is mentioned in the context of "upcoming big push!" he just mentions it in passing.


No. I think LL is clueless.

They happily plan to torture us with that crapware blogrums, they ask about what features we like in 3rd-party viewers (and one popular answer turns out to be: "emerald devs fix bugs and does things we ask for", they try to tell us that the adult content mess was something we asked for. The list goes on and on.

/me quotes you again..

The answer to this will always be the same as the answer to: Do you think LL is in touch with their current customers?

I'll just add my name to Meade's post. My answers would pretty much be the same.

Me too, although I am prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt on the lag thing. He mentions it as the next thing to be tackled after grid stability. I frequently grumble about everything else he's "achieved" since he's been here, but downtime has decreased dramatically.

I don't believe he goes inworld exploring and chatting to residents on most days, as he claims. Has anyone actually bumped into him on their wanders? I suppose he'd use an alt for his own safety though.

Is that picture really him? He looks like a completely different person from other images I have seen. Chubbier for a start. I notice he's dressed down too. I bet somebody told him to.

Alarming that he only mentioned content theft in passing.

I don't know where SL is going (down the pan?) but I don't think I trust this bloke.

That was a nice article. Thanks for the link.

He reads blogs! There is still hope, Prok.

And I want to know where he shops.

Background info is interesting...I had not read a bio before. One hopes that the connection to art creation will provide empathy/insight to what an artist goes through here, with managing content.

I was pleased to see that "commerce" was still listed as one of the draws/aspects of SL, because to be honest, some days it seems as though that aspect might be shuffled out the door.

Thinking about this a lot, lately, while I fumble with a less than optimum performing computer (although not a sub-standard computer by any means:



Live events and group gatherings have been entirely out of the question. Shopping inworld is difficult. Exploring is difficult. Feels like walking in mud. This computer is probably equal to what most people operate on, or better. Fortunately, I know what the experience is like from a better machine.....but most people will not, and be discouraged, or unimpressed. Most would not purchase a top-of-the-line computer, simply to access SL. And missing live events and group gatherings takes away a huge aspect. Definitely look forward to the lag/functioning issue being addressed/worked out. Surely, some population is dropping out because of this.

He does? I wonder when they'll get started on that then, since grid stability has been their #1 priority since well before he arrived.

Translation: We'll tell you more when we know what we're doing.

So what happened? He didn't like what he saw and decided to derail it?

The interview is decent enough but the guy seems to have a forked tongue.

It was interesting to read a bit more about he human side of M; but with that said, my feelings mirror Meade's and Brenda's. It feels like LL is more focused on Pink's silent millions who have yet to join sl, and that in the long run, current residents are somewhat disposable.



I saw M when RightAsRain was displaying his "Grand Odalisque" sculpture at the Black Swan sim. I think he was there, oh, less than 60 seconds: he tp'd in, took a few photos, and was gone. He didn't speak a word, nor did anyone to him from what I could tell. Whether that experience is typical of him I have no idea. He does have a flickr stream documenting his travels in sl, though my hunch is he and other executive Linden's spend most of their inworld time on the Lindenworld sims in meetings.

Maybe I'm the only one, but so far I'm not too crazy about the browser style address bar in the upcoming viewer, as it's sure to take up a bit more screen real estate. Though if it was collapsable like the OnRez viewer's address bar was, that would be fine

I'm going to edit my post to include the following:

Do you like the direction the company is going? If not, and taking into account the responsibilities of a CEO and their accountability to the Board of Directors and its investors in growing a company, what strategic direction would you suggest Kingdon take to ensure the future success of Linden Lab?

If I were a stockholder and had a seat on the Board, my advice to Kingdon would be to stop chasing non-existent pipe dreams (big companies "clamoring" to get on the grid with us.... "if only there was not so much porn", pay attention to his *real* customers - the ones who are doing more than just waving money in his face, provide real training for G-Team members so they can be consistent and effective, and do away with free, anonymous accounts.

If I could only tell him one thing, it would be, "for God's sake! LISTEN to your customers! Your *real* customers - the ones that are HERE and NOW!"

LL is privately owned so no stockholders. I guess the problem he faces is keeping his current customers happy, while growing the business with more users and increasing his revenue to appease the venture capitalists.

My answer remains unchanged: No, I'm not happy with the direction LL is going. Sacrificing your existing user base in favor of potential new customers is rarely a good idea, IMO.

But don't forget that 2 in the bush are worth more then 1 in the hand. We *are* discussing LL and their logic, remember, which works opposite to most people's.

If there is time to read blogs and shop inworld and play on the island, then by all means, invite some of the people that inspired you from the blog over....invite the person who made your stunning prefab over....invite the mall owner over, because she did a fantastic job in that mall presentation.....invite some musicians and club owners over....and invite some random people over that you ran into while shopping.

Set them all down in a lounge chair on the beach, and say "so... what did you do in SL today?......"

Then be quiet, and listen. The strategic direction will be in that dialogue.

Halfway through reading, and I have to say, I like his plans. I especially like the idea of 'pathways' geared to different main interests, and the idea of hooking someone to new friends fairly quickly. That sounds like guides...I'd love to be a guide.

And/or ask "so... what would you like to have been able to do in SL today but couldn't?"

lol....well, I figured he would get an earful on that, regardless of how he worded the question.

Kingdon does a good interview.

But though he talks a good game, I don't think he has much to show for his 18 months. At least when it comes to my experience. Maybe he's improved someone else's experience, but not mine.

The one accomplishment he touts is grid stability. While it does seem that there is less outright crashing of the grid, there are still lots of periods where, even though I can connect, it is downright unusable (no transactions, no rezzing, no teleporting, etc.) If one measures stability by whether people can connect, then I guess he has the stats to show more stability. If it were measured by usuability when someone is actually connected, I think it might be different.

There is also the claim of retaining more users. Well, I don't know from where Kingdon gets those numbers, and I'm not inclined to trust statistics from the Lab, given the voodoo that usually produces their statistics. I have noticed for about this entire year that I meet fewer and fewer new residents. Previously I routinely met people who had only been in Second Life a few months. Lately, the Second Life universe seems to have shrunk, wherever I go I've already met everyone, and I don't see a high proportion of rez-dates in 2009. And if there are higher retention rates, it certainly doesn't seem to have helped the content creators and merchants who seem to report massive drops in sales. New users should mean more sales, not less. The new retainees don't seem to be socializing at clubs at least, almost everyone I talk to reports that numbers at clubs and social hangouts are dwindling.

I haven't seen evidence of all these Second Life improvements. But I suppose Kingdon respond to me with a quote from Marx: "Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?" (Chico Marx, that is.)

I just don't understand how going from triple digit gains pre MK to a net loss per year after MK is going from stagnation to %20 growth.



Maybe he was talking about content theft.

I admit, I too came away from reading that interview with a warm, fuzzy feeling. But, in all honesty, it's a feeling I have felt rather often here lately - right before the other shoe fell.

I can only echo Taco Rubio's response from The Other Place:

LL most certainly does have stockholders, it is just private stock, not publicly-traded.

I think LL is a bit beyond the "venture capitalist" stage, having entered into "midlife" a year or two ago.

To be fair, we haven't had the problems we had every weekend early this year, where the grid essentially rolled over and barfed up chunks every time concurrency approached 80k. However, I'm not sure if that's a product of improved grid stability, or a product of the fact that we don't get 80k concurrencies anymore. These days, we're doing good to get 60k.

That's part of the growth that ML mentioned. At this rate, in 3 more years SL will grow to the point that no one will log on at all!