Natural Progression?

First the OS price hike.. new themed mainland coming in... SLim (outsourced) ...“LLnet” Agent Inventory Service... ie moving the asset server ??

and now the New User Experience... (outsourced)

what with all this and M. Linden's comment that "Premium subscriptions are immaterial in our overall business."..... isnt the next logic step to Oooopsie when they transfer Inventories and then introduce 3rd party content to make up for it...

i get a feeling that LL prefers new consumers to old creators .. and that ppl are getting squeezed out little by little.

just my humble opinion

I have to admit, it seems to me that LL isn't particularly concerned about it's current customers.
On some level, it makes sense. If they firmly believe that The Grid(tm) will be the next big thing, they are poised to be firstmovers and the gatekeepers of the technology. Helping alternate grids or even pushing the creative, fiery souls to "do their own thing" on servers and grids only fans the adoption of the technology as a whole, building a market which is much, much larger than the current SL microcosmos and it's whining, bitching residents who, on this scale, are a lot more trouble than they are worth.
In a few year's time, what's some hurt feelings amongst a subculture nobody even remember, compared to a central market share in "the next Internet"? Or, if you choose a positive view, compared to having "connected us all and advanced the human condition".
Whether truly idealistic or purely profit-motivated (or both), it seems LL is willing to crack a few eggs to make that omelet. -It's just not fun to be one of those eggs

This is not to predict doom and gloom and falling skies; only my musings over LL's - at times rather callous - approach to a customer base which has given a lot of loyalty to their world, and sometimes don't feel they get enough loyalty back.

Well, according to a quote from the old CEO and creator of SL, its possibe. The qoute says, that he is unhappy of what kind of people are attracted to SL and that they are the wrong ones. Guess LL decided, that certain people dont fit into thier concept what SL is and try to slove that.

Could be, but it could mean also that they are just trying to save cost from outsourcing all the stuff that was central. Somone pointed out in the froum, that SL grew to large for LL to handle and thats the point: LL didnt grew with its product, so now they outsource a lot of things to compensate that. That would be more then logical.

Thats are my guesses.

I've been saying for quite a while that SL is not LL's vision, and that SL users are merely necessary guinea pigs to develope the system under heavy load. That's my opinion and, if it's true, then LL needs a very large number of users, but it doesn't need to take care of them all. SL is not an end in itself like similar systems are, such as WoW. If the SL system finishes up as it is now, with almost all users in it just for fun, LL will have failed miserably in their view - imo. LL's aims and the aims of current users are poles apart, imo.

*Nods*
In his (in)famous speech with the (not so) very important announcement, Mitch Kapor all but said that he considers SL a derailed tech-demo for his vision of a global telepresence system.

It's interesting that LL's latest hire is someone who is going to work on Government Projects.

I think LL have allways envisioned SL as being a corporate tool. I think we have been lucky enough to be a part of it whist that tool is being developed and hopefully will continue to do so in the next few years. But the endgame has got to be a platform or network of platforms that is mass marketable to RL business as thats where the money is.

Porky gets it. The Providers are gracious enough to take our Quatloos, and let everyone have their little fantasy world, and even let some make a few Quatloos of their own. But eventually we will be a nuisance to them other than potential marketing targets of the people who will be important to LL. A few may be able to get a seat at the Big Person's Table, but most will be asked to be seen and not heard.

'Course that doesn't mean we can't have fun while our Quatloos are still good.

I wouldn't say they are saving money by outsourcing, so much as finding a group that can handle certain aspects of it far better than LL can. But that's the end of my defense of LL on this score.

This latest blog post was just the last thing about me ever recommending SL to anyone. I won't do it. It's great to want new users, but new users are quickly disillusioned by the fact that they'll be treated just as we are. Yeah, LL is more than a bit dense in the forethought/sight room.

Yes and no. I don't really believe in this vision of SL as a stand-alone universe which somehow has a mass of potential customers milling around, which big corporations can pay LL for the privilege of cherry-picking.
LL is not that naive; there has to be something for that mass to be here in the first place. The small fantasy world(s) are not mainstream enough, sure, but there needs to be *something*. That's why I believe more in the "fanning a general adoption to create a larger market" rather than the "corralling users so they can be leveraged by corporations"-strategy.

Oh, no. I think the idea of corporations participating in the in-world economy in any way was proven hopeless a long time ago. If the SL grid goes the corporate route, the whole in-world economy is irrelevant and obsolete. (Sure, maybe they'll need a small selection of outfits and animations for the virtual meeting rooms, but LL can outsource that for a lot less than what it'll cost to put a fresh coat of NUE varnish on the website.)

Thing is, the assumption that corporations are going to want this is a hypothesis not at all grounded in fact. Look at the tiny share of corporate communications that actually use videoconferencing--the technology for which is really quite good and quite cheap now. It's not telepresence, but it's more like telepresence than the ubiquitous conference call--and I think that fact is some evidence that the market for business telepresence may be vanishingly close to zero, even if it were perfect, and free.

In any case, it's far from obvious that LL's platform offers any unique advantage for such an application over some pinstriped version of Lively. Yeah, there are some instructional applications where SL's content creation ability gives some advantage--at the moment. But even this fleeting edge is hardly necessary for the "take a meeting in the Metaverse" crowd.

The infamous quote was from Mitch Kapor (the Chairman of the Board), not Philip Linden-nee-Rosedale (the original CEO).

I think they're trying to settle and find a stable place in the market for Second Life going forward. The biggest problem Second Life has at the moment is that there are very few activities in-world, other than content creation, with any true depth - and if such an activity does have depth, it can always be bypassed by content creation and social contract. Now, I know there are many people who are very happy with content creation and social contract, but there are also quite a few who seem not to be (who mostly end up leaving). So, LL are trying to find a way to add depth to in-world activity. They can't do it by adding extra in-world features because control over those would have to be added to the content creation tools, thus making them bypassable by content creation again. So they're trying to do it by creating extra real-world relationships; first with brands for advertising, then for live music, and now for business conferencing.

I don't think a closed universe is in their plans either, just the opposite. But they have the jump on everyone else, so it is essentially that for the time being. But I do believe that a RL marketing venue IS part of their plan. In truth, it has to be. Becuase , it's true, they aren't naive. And just like any corporation in today's world, they are following the money.

Hopeless as implemented at the time. But it doesn't mean they won't try to reinvent the wheel, and perhaps succeed in at least making it rounder. I don't think The Big Boys have given up on SL. They will try another strategy, and possibly find one that works. They all didn't get to be Big Boys for nothing.

In my head, I envision that the successful commercial use of virtual worlds is to create virtual malls and shopping environments. Online shopping is already massive and I haven’t been to a supermarket in a long time. In the future I think we will be able to log into virtual supermarkets, stroll the aisles with Avatars, click on a packet of bacon and be given an option to review the ingredients, check out health stats, watch and download bacon related recipes, find out where the bacon was manufactured, everything you never needed to know will be available for every product. Go to a book store, click on a book, get an overview of the story, watch video reviews from critics and other readers, links to other books by the same author or same genre, go to a clothes store, test out clothes on a dummy Av with your exact dimensions, go to the computer game store and play demos of the latest games available on all platforms and watch video reviews, go to the hairdressers and try new hairstyles on a true 3d representation of your own head....anyway you get the idea.

A completely 3d interactive shopping environment. With SL it was Public (us) first and then RL business trying to cash in on our presence. The ideal business model would be for RL business to create an immersive world or series of compatible worlds and for us to find it attractive and functional enough to shop there.

Basically the internet, but in 3D, accessible to everyone (graphics wise) and works 100% of the time without the need to ever unplug it and plug it back in again.

Most of that stuff can be done with the current 2D Shopping we have now. The grocery shopping idea is ludicrous, in my opinion. I can click on a 2D image of any product and get all that information. Why would I want to push a virtual cart, down a virtual aisle to look at virtual groceries, when that is virtually what I want to avoid by shopping from home in the first place? Same with books, or videos, or cd's. The clothinh idea, maybe. But I generally need to see the item, and feel the material and see the actual quality, so I still need to go to the store.There are probably some benefits, furniture shopping has been mentioned, and it would b great to put the look of the room together before buying, but I don't think beyond the geek WOW factor, 3D shopping will be a big imorovment over what we already have.

Unfortunately I cannot be held accountable for what goes on in my head. It has a mind of it's own and rarely makes sense.

Not that head........

You would get to stand in the virtual aisles and chat with your virtual neighbors while making sure your virtual carts are blocking the virtual aisles so other virtual neighbors can't get through.

You mean the ones who are talking on their virtual cell phones constantly, who don't pay attention to where they are virtually going, and keep banging their virtual carts into my virtual ass as I am bent over looking for virtual soup?

Yes with their virtual rug rats running up and down pulling stuff off the shelves and screaming.

I hate those virtual people. I hope there's a virtual Hell, just for them.

I don't want them at my virtual place.

I don't think LL seriously sees SL as a corporate networking tool. They are too smart not to see the major drawback to that, namely that SL is too cartoonish, for lack of a better word. No serious corporate environment is gonna integrate a tool that features a glowing-red-eyed werewolf at one end of the table and a pink-haired, huge-chested, dressed-like-a-stripper, woman at the other. There are far more professional applications out there in competition with SL, and LL knows it.

The way I see LL's vision is more of a place for marketers to sell RL stuff to residence. The new zoned mainland sims like Bay City or Nautilus are demos of what can be done, now that LL has its act together under the new CEO.

What derailed corporations from coming into market to SL residence before was two-fold.

Firstly, there was an assumption that you could just build an island and people would come to be advertised to. People in SL don't go to islands just to look around at ads. They come for interactivity. I believe in time, marketing groups will open specialty/party islands, where you basically have activities directors who keep the party going 24/7, while marketing the product. Some of these sims might even be residential in nature, that is, if you meet the demographics that are most desireable, you 'win' a chance at living in the specialty/party sims, tying you down to the sim and all the advertisers that the marketers are contracted with. You get a cute, custom-built environment, and fun events and scenery, in exchange for advertising bombardment. The island is built to the interests common to that demographic, and the events are tailored to that demographic's common lifestyle.

The second problem was in that the demographics weren't what they needed to be. In short, lots of free accounts brought alot of poor people into SL, who didn't have much discretionary income or didn't share the lifestyle types that marketers seek. Premiums are just as bad, as making money in SL is not too difficult, so you can have poor people, with little discretionary income, paying tier off their in-world earnings (I myself am such an individual). Also, many of the prefered jobs are adult in nature (gambling and sex), and while gambling has been banned, the sex industry is booming, particularly now that there is voice chat, and you still have skill-based games. Lots of bad-for-mainstream-business happens in SL, and that limits SL.

Now, I personally oppose this new vision for SL, and hope LL falls flat on their faces with this. I'm not gonna cause any trouble to this end, but I hope there is another flop in the 'growth' of corporations in SL. I personally like SL as it is, and liked it better when I first started, before all the bans, bots, and wild price swings. If they do fail a second time, I think LL will finally get the idea that SL is more like WoW than they'd like to admit, but that they can grow over time to be the TOP virtual world, rather than the second in line, as SL is far more flexible a platform, if not flexible enough to make them the new internet.

Just cause they're not the new internet, doesn' mean they can't be a profitable, mid-sized, business. No shame in that.