Second Life finding new life

Second Life finding new life (AFP)

* Posted on Fri Mar 13, 2009 10:05PM EDT

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - Linden Lab chief executive Mark Kingdon shakes his
head when he sees news stories heralding the demise of former Internet
darling Second Life.

Reporters that rushed into Second Life to cover cyber-events and
portrayed the online fantasy realm as science fiction future come true
have been pulling up stakes and tearing down the community they had
embraced.

Well-known Silicon Valley gossip website Vallywag even started a death
watch for Second Life.

"You read those stories; as CEO I have to shake my head," said Mark
Kingdon, who last year ago took over for founder Philip Rosedale as
chief executive of San Francisco-based Linden Lab, the company behind
Second Life.

"The reality is that Second Life continues to grow; every second someone
joins. Second Life is hopping."

The number of "active users" at Second Life has grown 25 percent since
September last year, while the amount of time and money spent in the
virtual world has climbed by similar percentages, according to Kingdon.

Linden Lab thinks the drubbing of its image is a rebound from the
incredible hype it got during infancy.

"We are not called the darling anymore like Facebook or Twitter, but we
are continuing to motor on at incredible levels," Kingdon said.

"Time will tell the story. We are a profitable business and we are
growing."

Technology-loving "early adopters" flocked to Second Life, where they
socialized in the forms of animated characters called "avatars"
controlled by computer keystrokes and mouse clicks.

Second Life was accused of painting a misleading picture by touting the
overall number of people that opened accounts without accounting for the
fact that many people didn't stick around to homestead.

The number of people that have joined the virtual world since it was
created in 1999 eclipsed 15 million last year.

The average number of people logged on to Second Life at any given time
is about 70,000, according to Linden Lab.

Residents spent about 41.5 million hours total in Second Life in
January, as opposed to the 28.3 million hours users spent in the virtual
world the same month in 2008, according to Linden.

Voice capabilities were added last year so people can talk in-world
instead of typing conversations.

"The array of things people do in Second Life has blossomed," Kingdon
said. "One thing that has popped out as a killer application is business
meetings."

Technology firms with workers spread around the world are increasingly
using Second Life as an economical forum for meetings.

"There is something about that feeling of presence," said Karen Keeter,
marketing director for digital convergence at IBM, which uses Second
Life for gatherings.

"Being able to see yourself as this avatar standing there next to other
people is just a feeling of immersion you don't get with other
alternatives."

IBM's campus in Second Life features a picnic area with hammocks; a
sculpture garden, and cafe for avatars to slip off and chat over faux
coffee.

"People love that," Keeter said. "We create these environments that are
like the lunch room. We get people there a half-hour early and the whole
point is to mingle."

IBM is working with Linden to build a private conference area protected
by a software "fire wall" for meetings focused on sensitive information
best not discussed on the "public grid."

Kingdon downplays what he refers to as "an empty storefront syndrome" at
Second Life.

An array of businesses that rushed in to sell virtual or real-world
goods have abandoned the virtual world, leaving behind vacant faux
buildings.

"Merchants in Second Life are doing well," Kingdon said. "We just bought
two commerce sites last month because we see selling and buying of
virtual good in Second Life is booming."

More than 1.3 million US dollars worth of transactions reportedly take
place daily in Second Life, where the currency is the Linden dollar.

There are more than 15,000 merchants in Second Life selling snippets of
computer code that become clothing, hair, art work or other items for
avatars.

People spent 360 million dollars (US) in Second Life last year,
according to Linden.

Schools continue to use Second Life for online classrooms and bands
perform on in-world stages, albeit to sometimes meager audiences.

Linden is making avatar tools easier and "reworking the user
experience," according to Kingdon.

"We have hired a world-class-team to lead the changes," Kingdon said.
"You ain't seen nothing yet. A lot of work is going to be done in the
next 9 to 12 months."
--
http://tinyurl.com/d7muhp

oh boy..

Please please please let decent avatar meshes be on of the new improvements.

i dont think he means that kind of work.

Yes.... he is referring to rounding the deviants up to their respective concentration camps...

Ahh, but since this is a positive? post, I'll try to say something nice. I'm hopelessly addicted to Second Life *shakes fist*. Ok... that was sorta positive, right?

Indeed. In fact, if this half-witted plan actually comes to fruition, reporters looking for sleeze won't have far to go - it'll literally be one-stop shopping for them!

People who try Second Life and don't enjoy it tend to leave. If they happen to be journalists, their negative SL experience will probably end up in print or some other media.

An IBM coffee shop. Whee!

For this the colorful content is being forced onto the rez?

For my own personal use I think SL is fine (except for the truely bad mesh we clothing designers have to work with). I'm not interested in any x-rated stuff but I'm not bothered my it either.

On the on he hand if there were a new section of SL - accessed through a separate viewer, maybe, were grandparents like me could spend time with their rl grandchildren I would love that.

That's right--and moreover, most of them seem to assume that their reactions are representative of all of humanity. With the exception of us SL-loving deviants, of course.

This part of the article:

"...An array of businesses that rushed in to sell virtual or real-world
goods have abandoned the virtual world, leaving behind vacant faux
buildings...."

-----shows the extent to which that particular reporter never understood SL. Clearly the reader is meant to picture a scene of decay and despair--instead of the reality of builds that come and go with no particular drama attached.

Im thinking if TWC follows through with their bandwidth caps it will effect SL a lot. I know my use will have to drop off considerably.

If they want to remain at the top of the heap they have to be more realistic about their product pricing. I bought an island with more prims on another server for only $100 USD and $100 USD Tier a month. The last pricing changes Linden Lab made was to increase the price of a low prim open sim. If they want to be a research and development company then they need to go get R&D money and not stick it to their customers while ignoring customer service improvements and shoving bizarre, badly implemented policies down our throats.

Within Mark's 9 to 12 month timeline the competitors grow also.

If we send all the "are you a deviant?" survey writers too this could work out very well for all involved and the rest of us would never have to see either of them again

Fer shure----that's definitely the elephant-in-the-room for virtual worlds.

Mmmmm, if the array of things people do has blossomed, how come the "killer" business app is still the same tired response to anyone who asked what a business can do in secondlife since secondlife began.

If "holding meetings" is such a killer app, how come the only company willing to go on record that they use SL for business meetings is IBM (and the section of IBM tasked with exploring the potential of virtual worlds in business at that!).

SL isn't a good technology for holding meetings. You can't even share documents in SL - unlike qwaq forums (a 3D virtual world for meetings where you can drag/drop an office document onto a in world whiteboard and collaboratively edit it). However, even with that sort of feature, 3D virtual worlds are still not the right technology for virtual meetings - you don't want to interact with a fake avatar with automated body movement, you want to interact with the real people in the other locations, to be able to read their real body language, to be able to see what objects/documents they are holding up etc.

True, lack of privacy is one reason businesses don't use SL for meetings, but other reasons include that it requires heftier hardware than the typical business machine, and that SL without chat is a pain to get working through company firewalls, and the vivox voice client is positively corporate firewall hostile. Companies are going to opt for solutions like skype where they can see the real person, which will work without them having to purchase new computers/laptops and reconfigure the entire corporate firewall, which will allow them to share documents and desktops etc....

Of the growth figures, how much of the new accounts are bots. I've see a lot more bots modelling outfits these days, as well as group invite bots etc. Of the increase in revenue, how much of that was due to the OpenSpaces price hikes?

To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised to see some real growth - but growth from the recreational users. It is quite common in a recession that people stay at home more rather than go out so look to entertainment from within the home. As such the online gaming industry should be benefitting from the current financial climes. It may be a bit of a bubble however (if you assume that the recession will eventually end).

On the other hand, businesses tend to cut back - whereas they might have been interested in SL as a meeting tool more due to it being a bit of a gimmick and a bit of fun, in a recession they will concentrate on functionality - functionality SL doesn't have.

As others have said - SL's key strengths are as a recreational platform. Apart from offering consultancies in virtual worlds, there are no reall business drivers for using secondlife. The three often mentioned uses are

i) meetings - which I've discussed above

ii) advertising and marketing - however, as many RL companies have found, in order to get enought people onto your SL island to warrant the initial outlay you have to do more marketing of your SL presence than you would normally do for your RL activities!

iii) commerce - only the financial system in SL is pretty crude with none of the controls, checks, audits you would expect in a system that you would entrust substantial sums of money to (you can't even check if the lsl function for transfering money has actually succeeded in transfering the money - you just have to assume that it worked), and with one or two notable exceptions the typical income you can expect from a SL business (other than a how to use SL in your business consultancy) makes a paper round look profitable.

I'm sure Mark will shake his head if he reads this too. However, I think he is taking SL down a route which will either eventually kill SL or require a major U turn.

Matthew

considering most australians have a bandwidth cap in the neighbourhood of 20gb, i reckon this is more alarmist than anything.
you dont need hundreds of GB a month for sl.