The Proposed Adult Continent Policy Has Resulted in Good Press for Second Life

Disney!!

May we say that this "smut problem" is a WHO and not a WHAT? (T_T)

It's easy to talk about this issue like it's a "thing" that can be tossed aside. What what about the people that get tossed aside with it? (T_T)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect

The people writing the article don't understand Second Life, and so it's easy to dupe them for a little while and get an uptick in the press. However, when the truth comes out - about what really happened, what the real effects (content, economic, expectations), this is just going to come back like a bad enchilada. LL is operating on the theory of short attention spans, and desperately doing whatever they can at the moment at hand to stave off terminal disaster, to live and fight another day.

Better hope that more savvy reporters don't show up and write more discerning articles, especially when combined with the "teens" and "education" and "business" spins.

Two words: Targeted Advertising.

More words: Personalized Advertising

The trick will be in convincing the brands that SL is a specialized and desirable market, characterized by people willing to pay for entertainment...oh, except most of them don't like to spend money...oh, and when they do it's usually only a tiny fraction of one US dollar at a time, and not really very often. And they hate anything that smells like advertisements.

I'm sure some Lindens reading this think I'm just a terrible negative naysayer, but in reality I think there are better paths to their goals and better business directions they could take.

Having no stock in LL, I only have two concerns. One is for the continuation of an enjoyable experience in SL, which seems to diminish all the time. But a larger concern is that once a technology business like this fails, it is very difficult to ever convince anyone else to do anything that seems remotely like it, ever again. The investment community does learn from bad experiences, but they don't learn nuances. So the replacement company that comes along later after LL has failed will never be able to launch. No more 3D VR online world thingies, unless you can convince them that it's NOTHING like that "SL" debacle was.

Now that IBM is buying SUN, uniting the two cheerleaders, I guess there's hope that the idea won't totally disappear from the technosphere, though, so that's good.

In other words, Linden Lab doesn't need to change its policy to bring the universities. If it were to actually work with existing policies, it would be just fine.

A question of intersecting philosophical and practical arguments. But when LL says it's going after "education", I don't think they mean college aged in the main. They are going after the much younger children, and their clueless teachers and administrators. Does my characterization sound somewhat predatory? Good.

That's because our motivation is to change LL's behaviour by whacking them with a clue stick. It hardly seems to work, but most residents don't want to see LL damaged in the press. (At least, statistically not so many pissed residents that the connected ones actually get that chain of events in motion.)

As LL tries to reboot their image and deliberately get a higher profile in a sensitive area, the risk goes way up. When committed to that plan, the devil is in the details of the path. And the way they are planning on doing this seems idiotically perilous to me.

Real journalism went the way of the dino long ago. I've known too many people who were hurt by 'journalism' to respect the major papers automatically. Print first, check later seems the norm now. Insurance covers lawsuits.

Yes, people who have never played SL and/or who think it is a safe place to plant their kids instead of watching them, are going to think this is great.

"Linden Lab is not trying to wipe out adult content in Second Life, Roberts said. "Definitely not. We're just trying to make the experience of the vast majority of people more predictable."


Predictable is boring! Thats all I am saying.

I understand it as such, they are closing the teen grid, allowing them onto the main grid but yet they will put the adult places in one area (roped off? I wonder if they are physical) into another "grid" ????

Odd.

Too bad for them it's still against the TOS to dump their kids in SL.

I do not know what the fuss was about. LL did this with There.com when they announced they were going to close their doors back around March 2004 or so and introduced the surname "Therian" just for them.

Well, the idea of 3D collaboration for business and education won't disappear - there are several small companies and startups offering it with various toolkits, in addition to the big guys, who will have their own worlds, and offer services as well.

Whether SL can survive as the eclectic entertainment/alternate life venue it now is, and how long such a beast can survive among the 'social networking' sites, is worthy of debate.
.

They took money from people investing in adult content, a jam company can take money from people investing in it too and anytime decide without investors and customers consent to stop making Strawbery Jam. We have the right to vote with our feet of course, but you will be replaced and probably forgotten.

I wonder if people will be so upset about significant finacial gains that occured from this good press increasing gridwide profits in the long run or is it all about the greedy "must make money now" mentality that is stuffing everything up.

We have management at work that knocked back purchase of a new crane because we couldn't show a 2year gain from it, it's a 10year investment, but they didn't listen till the old crane crapped itself out of action for a week and now we are spending half the price of a new crane to patch the 10yo old one

If LL don't grab the combined Adults & PG kids market and clean up SL's image someone else will grab it and SL will truely become a porntopia. This world will continue to evolve, if it stops, it is dead, those who can't move with and take advantage of the changes will also die out.

SL is the best value for money advertising we have for our RL website and a lot of existing members from the site joined SL as we had a presence here and it gives them a 3d space to play in as well as the normal features we have on the site.

I think that's one of the reasons that so many newspapers are failing. The sad part is that online blogs are starting to become the only source of news for many, and a lot of bloggers can spew whatever they want at whomever they want without fear of repercussions.

That is true, with the addition that those who choose not to move with it will also die out. We have a tendancy to kick against any changes to the way we are used to things being, but it would be interesting to take a peak at SL 5 years from now. It would be different from now in so many ways, and most of the people we knew would have gone. But there would still be a massive and vibrant population - kicking against any significant changes to the way things are that LL comes up with.

If this change requires me to move my store, or a part of it, then I will most likely be one who could move with it, but who chooses not to.

LL have a market that others don't though, I'm not sure they quite appreciate that. The 50 year old lecturer gets excited about Second Life, the 18 year old student simply doesn't.

any bad press about antitrust and fair trade yet? I mean I think in the future of the virtual worlds and trade people should all be entitled to use services equally and market their items the same way as everyone else. But LL doesn't seem to think so. They still aren't letting people who were banned from the forums on SLX back on to sell their items. Seems to me the press missed all that. I think if someones gonna clean up issues they need to deal with it all. They shoulda cleaned up the people who moderated SLX before because it sends a clear message now with LL supporting their decisions, that they aren't practicing a fair and balanced market.

i think the reason for not changing something like Xstreet is because it does run smooth..

Xstreet is still young to LL..they wouldn't invest into something that is running well then clean house..
chances are the majority of people getting banned were banned for good reasons..i'm sure some may be innocent..
but letting the majority of bad back in because of a few that were victims i don't think is ever gonna happen in any business move..i don't think they will be frowned on by anyone but the victims that feel they were wronged..

i know that doesn't help anyone that feels they were wronged..it's just the reality of the situation..

i don't know how the admins are over there..i have only heard things about them and then opened my ignorant mouth as if i knew what i was talking about over there when i should have went off my own experiences lol..i'm trying to curb that flaw..we'll see lol.

To be honest i have never even seen an admin or mod there unless it was on an information thread about the market or something..

i just don't see pardons coming for everyone that was banned before LL took over..
mainly because
1. It's an immature move in the eyes of investors and anyone watching..
2.It would be letting exploiters back in..
3. It would undermine the staff that they feel is already doing a good job over there..
4.If it's not broke don't fix it.

that just my opinion trying to look from their eyes ..My opinion and $2 USD might get you a cup of coffee at the nearest grease stop..

It's not an anti-trust or fair trade issue. You'd need to define a market extremely narrowly to make it into anti-trust. SL doesn't dominate the computer software market, the computer entertainment market, the 3-D virtual world market.

The issue is Linden Lab dealing in bad faith. It induces people to do business with them on one set of rules, and after taking their money, unilaterally changes the rules. It often falls under fraudulent inducement or flat out contract violation. And it is a reputational issue. If the IBMs of the world had a real handle on the way Linden Lab deals with other customers, they'd take their money elsewhere.

I keep making that point because Linden Lab's activities do not have to harm big, ambiguous entities like the "government" or the "market" to be wrong. It's wrong when they are dirty with YOU. It's not necessarily to fit their actions into some problem with a grander name.

Uh, no. One of those original "rules", from the very beginning, was always "By the way, we (as in, LL) can change these rules if we want, and no, we DON'T have to ask you if it's okay first." Just about every single EULA ever drafted, ever, in the history of the universe, contains that sentiment in some form or other.

Really? Are you sure about this?
Please name the name and circumstances under which anyone has experienced a significant financial loss due to the upcoming change in adult content? Xcite, Stroker nor any of the other adult content creators/providers are going to see even a blip in sales. All of the public dungeons are going to be relocated but the same people going now will continue to go. You are just one more in a long line of people stating that the LL sky is falling and every single one has been proven wrong.

So many are just forgetting this main point of SL

The sky is NOT falling. But I do think we will see a short term contraction in the providers of adult content. For the smaller providers the move is going to cause some pause and some will simply decide to close rather than relocate, rebuild, recreate their traffic and rankings. But one thing that has always been true in SL for every business that shuts it doors more will emerge to take their place.

On a similar note depending how the verification process goes in the final version that gets implemented...there might be a contraction in the number of customers these businesses have as folks try to get verified or discover they are unable to ( for whatever reason).

Stroker runs an affiliate scheme, this helps fund some clubs. They won't all get away with moving. When all the clubs in the same area are trying to run Strokerz Toyz affiliates to fund part of their tier costs it will simply be unviable.

Add to this that simply moving ruins your search ranking and it becomes pretty clear that some people will suffer financial loss.