2009's November Surprise?

Oh, this is not good!

Now that merger could well be a possibility as that was one of Phillip's visions.
In my opinion it will end up being a disaster with the worst possible PR for the company.
It also would lead to exodus of those SL'ers that don't won't to interact with Teens on the grid.....i foresee a disaster should LL go down that route!

If Teen Second Life has been closed, Linden Lab hasn't told anyone about it. TSL regions are still visible on SLURL.com.

The merge of the Teen Grid into the Main Grid has been delayed until after LL can change the name of the Heterocera Atoll continent to something that doesn't have a whiff of sexual suggestion.

They should also tell the Teen SL website. I'm filing this in the "Unfounded rumour" drawer.

C'mon Laval..you know usually LL announces things AFTER they do them.

No, no. It's true!!

They've being flying teens from Teen into Main in helium balloons.

Maybe related to this http://www.massively.com/2009/10/19/looking-forward-to-second-life-2-0?

Is this the viewer that is supposed to be very user friendly and bring millions of new users (presumably Facebook genre) to the SL platform?

That's why I'm trying to find confirmation of this beyond the one and only source I have. But it would certainly fit in quite nicely with that being the November surprise, and is certainly in line with the other groundwork that has already been laid for the merger as well.

Only time will tell.....

You owe me for one cup of coffee and the cleaning of my blouse

Dunno.

Just thinking out loud here.....if I were sitting in the CEO chair and planning to make a full-out run at mass market acceptance (one done right, not that train wreck in 2006) here's what I would do:

1) Move all the explicit sexual content behind a age-verified firewall and out of the mainstream viewer.

2) Rework the main client to be more user friendly so that mainstream users have a shot at figuring out how to use SL.

3) Come up with better orientation programs and ways for a new user to find friends and integrate into the community ASAP.

4) Bring down initial land purchase prices to a point where they are attractive to a new user who hasn't figured out tier is the real cost they need to be looking at.

5) Start promoting SL as a social networking tool.

6) Start a media campaign and invite all the "right" people take another look at SL.

7) Promote the hell out of the fact that SL is where all the people are where all the content is.

Oh I have no doubt the kids are coming eventually, I just don't think they're in position to do it yet, but as you say, time will tell.

I know, I shot one the other day. Kid admitted in IM he was 17. AR'd. He was offline within ten minutes.

Look, I've got two roleplaying teenagers living next door to me now...and I can barely stand it. Keep the REAL teens behind that fence!

(Actually, Jez's "kids" are pretty good. But they DO roleplay surly teenagers disturbingly well.)

Hey, you kids! Git offa my lawn!

To reply to the OP: I don't know, but I'm scared. Can I put my Grid Crash Protection Box next to yours?

this just in!

LL is restructuring the way we deal with textures! No more slow loading (I wonder what this wood texture looks like) 12 minutes later and only 3 textures are sorted/renamed!

Now you can download and browse thru all your thousands of textures on your computer, minus the lag time!


I also heard they were inventing some sort of fleshlight / USB microphone/ headphone combo?

You know. . .It wouldn't be that hard for them to suppress content creation with out eliminating it so that they could control user created content. All they'd have to do is create some variation of the prim tax that they used to have. Or take a percentage of sales. Or turn the premium account into a creators account.

All that being said. . .I don't think they want to get rid of "us" until they're sure they've got this wave of new controlled, dumbed down users they're looking for

You really know how to chill someone's blood, y'know?

*huddles in her GCP crate and shivers*

M has said that they don't want to suppress content creation, that's one of the reasons we don't already have controls in place for content theft. They want anyone to be able to pick up the tool set and create. Distribution (selling) of content is where the efforts will be made and there will be some kind of certification in place in the future that sounds like it will lean towards a BBB type of arrangement. I am sure of nothing else except that when their plan does get rolled out, some are going to like it and some are going to hate it

If you were watching closely, there have been all sorts of rumblings for the past year or two about "moving beyond the early adopters" from the powers that be. I don't think the intent is push oldbies out as much as it is to bring new business in and recover lost opportunities.

FYI ....dumbed-down users describes most of your average people in society. Is WoW dumbed down? Can anyone create an account and be playing in short order? It's very easy to think SL should be a special playground for an elite set of highly intelligent users who have the neural capacity and high end hardware to figure out how to use it. However, at some point all those elite users have sold as much as they can to other elite users and if you want to grow you have to open the doors to everybody. Churn being what it is, either your grow or slowly die while your user base is siphoned off to the latest shiny - a fate met by most other virtual worlds.

If you want to keep your SL, it must grow.

Entirely agree with this last paragraph....it is essential, especially for existing SL businesses. I did agree with the rest of your post, but this last paragraph grabbed my attention and worth highlighting!

Growth is essential for SL's future. But it has to be a planned, well thought out and carefully monitored growth. Downstream effects have to be considerd. This is something that LL has proven , up to now, they have been incapable of doing. What is to prevent them from another stupid move like the 2006 opening of the gates affair? they have no track rcord of inspiring confident. When someone at LL talks about painful changes, it is only natural the current residents start a Chinese Fire Drill.

I get the impression that this plan has been in the works for a year now. Having sat through M and T Lindens presentations at SLCC, I have a whole lot of confidence. I want to go where they are going, although not everyone else will.



He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery. ~Harold Wilson

I'll leave you my stuff.

Yes. . .I kind of agree with al of that Isablan. But when I meant was, that I suspect LL will be looking to develop an experience where users don't expect as much freedom. And figure out how much we'll pay for what we used to get for free.

A licensed seller system sure would go a long way to solving some of the problems we're all complaining about now--and be another way to put money in LL's pocket.