So Now They Are Feeling the Heat

When I first heard about Google's Lively (or whatever it's called), it didn't seem like much of a real direct competitor to Second Life.

I think that Linden Lab is taking notice of Lively has the first true direct competitor to Second Life. Thus this fresh new blog post, along the theme of, "Please don't go elsewhere, we'll clean up our act, promise!"

http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/07/09/letter-to-second-life-residents/

I only regret that I don't have a list of all the times I've speculated this in the forums. Linden Lab will treat its resident base poorly as long as it thinks there are no direct competitors. When a direct competitor finally emerges, they will suddenly wake up and try to clean up its act in a hurry before the new competitor gets a foothold.

It happened. Someone finally opened shop next door. No more slacking on the smug assumption that residents don't have anywhere else better to go.

It remains to be seen whether Second Life can stand on its lead in the area of providing a user-created virtual world, or if Second Life has squandered that lead too much.

Am I reading too much into the blog post?

You are reading wayyyy too much into the blog post. Things will go borked as usual.

QFT

And I thought I was being cynical.

You're probably right.

Seriously, this blog post has been said/typed in various different formats, especially around this time of year.

Phil did it. M does it. It's a CEO sort of thing to do. They make pipe dreams, promises and well, for a bit people buy into it. Then everyone realizes that the CEO is full of it when things haven't changed/aren't going to change.

I want SL to get better.. but after a few years, you kind of tune out the promises and go with a "I'll believe it when I see it," sort of attitude.

Edit: Hubby is smarter than me. See, they need to hire him to go over their speeches.

Not at all.I think it reads as you described.Sounds like these guys are worried.There was also a hint of a plee.

this is about as exciting as the adfarm solution, or the hot air about upgrading this forum.

The indirect acknowledgement of Lively is what struck me as new about this post, compared to previous "we'll get better, promise," posts.

I'm reminded of a small community in which I once lived, that for a long time, had just one local supermarket. Shelves were never well-stocked, it was always under-staffed, and staff were never terribly friendly or helpful.

Then one day, across the road, construction started for a new supermarket.

When construction on the new supermarket started, the old one started stocking shelves better, it hired more staff, and the staff became friendlier.

Despite the sudden improvement in the old supermarket, most customers were so digusted with years of poor treatment of its customers that, every time I went to the supermarket, I could easily strike up conversations with strangers while waiting in line, talking openly about how much we hated this supermarket and couldn't wait for the new one and the improvement of the old supermarket was too little, too late.

So despite the last-minute improvement by the old supermarket, prior to the opening of the new supermarket, the old supermarket generated such ill-will that it initually lost customers in droves on the opening day of the new supermarket.

I wonder if Second Life will experience the same dynamic that the old supermarket did. Even though Lively may not be anywhere near the experience of Second Life on open day, are so many people so digusted with Second Life's track record with customer satisfaction that they are willing to jump to Lively and extend it a lot of patience in catching up?

Oh, the postscript on the two supermarkets is this. When the new one opened, both supermarkets were highly competitive, keeping things stocked, hiring loads of friendly employees. Over time, the both slowly leveled off to provide roughly equivalent levels of shoddy service and poorly stocked shelves. So much for the consumer benefits of competition in an open market.

Massively has an interesting take on this:

http://www.massively.com/2008/07/09/kingdon-feels-the-fear/

Notably:

There is a telling first comment to that post, from Gwyneth Llewellyn:

And just now I've already found this article:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/?p=1088

Headline for that article? "Google’s secret project turns out to be Second Life."

Vivaty (vivaty.com) looks more like SL than Lively does. Too bad for them they surfaced roughly the same time Google did.

Hipihi should be an interesting additional choice when it gets finalized and properly translated.

Novoking seems to be taken a wrong turn, becoming less virtual world oriented and more vside-ish.

Does Linden Lab treat its resident base poorly? I don't really think so any more than the wild west treated its pioneer residents poorly. There are technical problems to overcome, yes. I don't equate that with mistreating people.

Apologies, it's early in the morning here and I'm clearly not yet awake. I've edited my previous post to make the link show up. I think I'll have to stop using the 'img' tag trick to make links clickable on here.

To continue from my last post, I wonder if it's not fear of unflattering comparisons that may turn away potential users, and not fear of Lively actually *being* a competitor, that's prompted M's blog post.

Then again, some people actually *want* what Lively is offering. Not everyone who wants to try out a 'virtual world' wants to create content or script or build or get their heads around making an AO or attaching items to themselves, etc; they just want a nice-looking place where they can hang out and chat to people and maybe play house a little bit by shifting the furniture to where they want it to be.

Any chance you can give us a link to that Massively article?

Sorry, was editing the post and managed to quote it instead! Corrected it now

That's what really strikes me.

To me, based on what I've seen of Lively, and objective comparison between Second Life and Lively would be that Lively is a dim, dim shadow of Second Life at best.

If Second Life had a lot of goodwill with its resident base, Lively just might be laughed off as a potential Second Life competitor.

However, simply because Second Life has a dismal relationship with its long-term residents, that ill-will may be enough to turn off people to Second Life, and to give Lively a lot of slack when it comes to shortcomings, and a lot of hope to the future.

It seems to me at the moment that the one and only reason that comparison of Lively to Second Life as a competitor passes the laugh test is that Google is a company with a lot of credibility, and Linden Lab has squandered any credibility it has ever had.

Based on that alone, Lively may seriously steal a good chunk of resident base from Second Life because, even though Lively may be far behind Second Life at the moment, over the long term, Lively has a far brighter future and upside.

What is the more credible claim to you? Is M Linden's blog post today more credible when it comes to its claims of future improvements? Or is Google more credible with the vague promise of implementing meaningful content creation tools for users sometime in the future?

Based on what I know of both Linden Lab and Google, Google's vague, non-specific promises are far more credible than Linden Lab's more specific, immediate promises. Easily.

Just a thought. Many were hot and heavy into The Sims Online when SL came out. We laughed at SL and said there was no way it would overtake TSO...

At any rate.. just like feeling neglected by a lover. They always promise it will be better when you are packing your bags.

the tell all, ultimately, will be if any competitors can turn a fake game money system into a dime of real usable money for their customers throughout game play.

SL offers free entry, a small investment of L$1, and then you can cash out real money by doing nothing but letting your computer run all day while you go to your RL job, or sleep, or whatever. imo, THAT is going to be the defning factor of any competitor's ultimate success.

when SL stops paying out, it will die of as the leader. it's only a matter of time, of course.

that isnt necessarily the motivation for many people being here.
in fact, there are ppl that would figure the rl $ component to be a disadvantage.

I've already personally settled on this a while back. Right now, I see one of two things as the most likely outcome in the next couple years:
- LL realizes their free ride in the Wild West is coming to an end and they get serious about fixing things and keep their users happy to try and keep ahead of the inevitable competition.
- A true competitor arrives and starts luring away frustrated customers as well as the money, talent and resources they contribute. LL notices and finally gets serious about fixing everything, but as with the supermarket in Amity's story, it's just too late.

Reading that blog post alone wouldn't convince me but the timing adds weight. Lively may not be a major threat even if it grows, but just maybe, they're realizing it's only the beginning of the competition's rise and the end of their free trip.

Until we get more solid evidence of how things will turn out I'm just going to assume LL is getting things together. I hope they do. If they don't get serious though, something equal or better will eventually come about and I can go to that when the time comes.

Lively as it stands NOW is a shadow of SL's shadow. But it is clearly built for growth. Obviously it needs refining. But once user created content AND a serious scheme to handle intellectual property is established, it *will* be a viable competitor to SL. SLers will have an advantage in that many have developed skills to provide decent content - it won't take long before skin, etc. will become available for LIvely for sale. Obviously it can use improvement to the UI and tools.

When Lively gets poseball humping action then there will be problems for SL.

Serious-leh!

And I never played TSO cos our phone connection was too crapsome ... but I did laugh like a drain at the virtual prostitution.

Same old same old. I'm going to make an account on there and watch that from roots up.

I tried out Lively yesterday.

Second Life is so many lightyears away from it
in terms of functionality, performance and well, coolness.

Try it out and it may change your opinion considerably
about where Second Life is today.

Personally I welcome other companies getting into
the virtual world business; I don't see HipiHi or Lively
as being any threat to the future of SL; it will only
help accelerate development, imho.

- Infrared

I agree completely,money is the defining factor here and it is also the strength that may keep SL going.Without the added frisson of making a few real life shillings,I certainly would not give this or any other game a Second Look.

That is an interesting take on it. It's not that Google is a competitor: it's that people think it is.

/me is suddenly reminded of trying to hammer the issue of "perception" into a certain E-named Linden, and finding deaf ears

Mari