So Now They Are Feeling the Heat

I'm a Mac User, end of story.

Very true about the current state. The issue is that Google, if it gets interested in developing this further, has bazillions more resources (people, tech, money) than LL does to dedicate to the effort. That right there is a concern. However, it's probably pretty unlikely that Google would dedicate those kinds of resources to Lively unless there is a real return for Google in terms of ad play or something relating to that. So it remains to be seen how serious Google is about this platform, or whether they simply wanted to plant a flag in the virtual space just in case the "3d internet" takes off. My guess is that it's more of the latter.

i would love to see more show up to compete with SL.
it wouldn't feel so much like stall mode and each would be introducing new things and trying to get you to their world..
it's nice to think about but only a thought until i see it happen hehehe

I see those words so much form LL people that I've come to dislike them intensely. I don't give a damn whether or not they see it, feel it, or hear it (usually "I hear you". I want them to say "I fix it" - and actually do it.

The blog might well have been a response to Google. It pointed out all the benefits of SL that can't be found elsewhere. And don't underestimate Google's offering, and how it might develope. Even now it provides what many people spend a lot of time doing in SL - chatting in a 3-D environment.

As impossible as this may be to believe, based on remarks in Jack's office hour yesterday, in about two weeks we should expect LL to release a blog post outlining new policies that address (somehow) the adfarm problem. No details available until the announcement, but I wouldn't go buying up extortionately-overpriced microparcels just now. At the very least, I'd expect them to finally disclose their zoning policy for new Mainland, but I think they know they have to do something with existing Mainland too, so I'm betting on very different rules for G-Team to use in judging extortion and ad abuse.

Not such good news on the Forums update front: per Robin, the upgrade is stuck in something called "Software Review" which may mean that they're testing the new version to make sure it doesn't pose a security threat. (But my actual guess is that "Review" amounts to a summer intern glancing at a box on his desk every few days and saying "yep, gotta get to that sometime before I leave for campus," followed by an extended reverie of wet t-shirt night in dogtown.)

On Lively: it's crap, but I don't think it's intended for actual use anyway. It's still in Google Labs. That doesn't preclude it eventually being rolled-out "for real" to augment Google's existing communications stuff--and it's Google, so they can do whatever they want at any cost. But I think it's really a bargaining chip: Google would surely want a seat at any Virtual Worlds Interoperability council. So they gotta have some kind of entry in the field, however sad, sluggish, and simple.

I was going to compare this situation to Netflix and Blockbuster, but then realized there's a huge inverse relationship to the two cases.

Little start-up Netflix entered the market with an amazing, breakthrough service. It followed up with astounding customer service. Lost a DVD? NP! Broke a DVD? NP! Then Blockbuster felt the heat so they developed an online clone of Netflix. The thing was, for me, Blockbuster had developed years of ill will. Lousy service. Stupid policies. Bad selection. So jumping to the big name brand was never, ever gonna happen. I was and still am totally loyal to Netflix.

In this case, little start-up LL enters the market with an amazing technological/sociological breakthrough. It follows up by constantly ignoring customer service. Lost your Inventory? TS. Attacks by underage kids? TS. Now Google enters. I have nothing but good vibes from Google. Hey, does anyone have anything bad to say about them? So if they get it to where it's got the features I'm looking for, I will jump. I will even allow them to make many mistakes as they develop their metaverse.

I also expect them to come knocking on my door and ask me, little ole' me, for ideas/suggestions/opinions about this new world. I expect them to do the same with the few thousand SLers who have somehow stayed with it. They are that savvy. No Fetid Cores. Just an understanding of how to retain customers.

The billion dollar question for Google is, can they make a billion dollars off of this concept? Since they have much more business acumen than LL, I'm gonna bet my Slingo game that they can.

I dont think LL has much to worry about.

I can run SL without a hitch.

Lively crashes on me within the first 30 seconds.

Maybe they're just trying to follow in SL's footsteps that way?

I tried out Lively yesterday and the only "Lively" thing about it was the laughter coming out of me at what a ridiculous thing it is.

The graphics are cartoonish and silly. There's really nothing at all there for any SL user in my opinion.

This is, again in my opinion, no competition to SL at all. The comparison is laughable.

I'd also like to say something I feel very strongly about, and that is the negativity and lack of realistic expectations I see so frequently here in the forums.

It so easy for us, as users, to sit back and arm chair quarterback every move that Linden Labs makes but in the end that doesn't make it true.

Linden Labs WANTS SL to be a major success, not just financially although you can bet your a*s thats up there (as it should be), but also from a user experience point of view.

So many people in these forums trivialize the programming and the complexity of the issues facing SL constantly.

If the issues we all deal with were so easily fixed they would have been. Period. There is no vested interest for Linden Labs to ignore these things. In fact just the opposite is true. There is great incentive for them to work their tushies off to fix these problems and I for one believe they are doing just that.

No one has ever created a system like Second Life before. Comparisons to the Sims Online and World of Warcraft or Entropia or any of the other virtual worlds out there are like comparing apples to raisins.

The user created content, the freedom to create and do and be whatever you want is unparalleled and as such is intrinsically complicated. We ARE in the forefront of the future and have to deal with the lag and the crashes and the inventory loss and all the myriad bugs because of that.

The fact that 50 or 60 THOUSAND people from all over the world can log into this incredibly rich and diverse virtual world at the same time and communicate and build and love and fight is absolutely amazing, wondrous and awe inspiring.

In the end, things will improve, they will get better, the grid will become more stable and as new technology comes out all of these things will be MUCH better. We just have to sit back and try not to become chronic complainers and doom sayers.

Are there problems? Have representatives of SL (mainly individual Lindens) done wrong by residents before? Absolutely. Have issues that we take seriously been seemingly ignored, yes. But in the end I think, no I know, things are improving, slowly but steadily my SL experience has gotten better not worse.

Every day I find some new gadget, or some new sim that amazes me. That makes me sit back from my computer and go WOW look at that. The potential for this platform is absolutely unlimited.

I'm looking forward to being a part of the future of SL and seeing how it grows and improves. Not only that, I'm proud to be a part of this.

Theres my bit of optimism for the day.

Let the flames begin.
FaTeke

I looked at the Google 'Lively' website. It looked intersting but more limited than SL - you get your own room that you can decorate plus a customisable avatar.

The biggest challenge to SL still looks to me like coming from the SL clones developed from LL open source via the OpenSim project. At the moment they lag behind SL but as they develop they will probably diverge from SL. For example, the RealXtend viewer supposedly adds shadows on one of the open sim grids, but I haven't managed to see that for myself.

Like FaTeke in the post above, I'm a great supporter of Linden Lab and what they've done in creating Second Life. I also dislike all the negativity we see in the forums.
Yes, annoying things happen to residents, sometimes really bad things happen. People are entitled to complain or even moan about their problems. But it's the general air of negativity that I don't like. It seems to be ingrained in some parts of the culture of SL, in the way that RL people resent their governments. I mean, like is you go to any infohub, the chances are you'll hear newbie basic members who are already dissing LL as if it's the 'thing to do'.

I laugh at most of these posts talking about the doom of SL.

LOL

Always the forum posters who think they've got a pulse on what's really going on.

The RC client is vastly improved. Ever since I switched to it (about a month now), I've had no crashing problems. My client doesn't disconnect like it used to. I rarely see sims go down these days. On this front, SL is getting better.

I know you all want to continually bash SL for what it doesn't provide i.e. stability and performance but it is silly to act as if the people at LL just don't care about their own creation.

All I know is I hang out with a lot of people who are not technically savvy. Many of them have never been in a 3D environment before. To them, the problems in SL are minor compared to the experiences they have every single day. I believe the vast majority of SL users are the same way. We recognize that there are problems but we still love SL for what it has to offer....and we DO NOT lose sight of this love.

I'm actually glad that land has flooded the market and prices are falling. This means lazy sim owners who think they can litter their sims with cookie-cutter houses and expect to profit will fail. It allows people like me to be able to afford large amounts of land and create wonderful/beautiful projects for the sake of creation, not profit! I'm so sick of this MUST PROFIT mentality in SL - this is what's really destroying it and I think LL is sending a message that SL is not a place for people to come and profit above all else.

As Mitch Kapor said, we should all try to strive to be the best we can - and just like RL, profiting isn't and should not be the ultimate goal. More land means those who came here to become land barons or exploit other users will have a hard time doing so. It sends a message that turning SL into a bedroom community might not work. Land prices will continue to fall and hopefully people will buy land and begin to create rather than try to turn SL into Earth part 2. And, with Open Life offering full 256x256 sims at under $100us, people are not going to be willing to pay the crazy high prices/monthly tier fees that LL is pushing on its customers. So land prices MUST come down.....just glad to see the profit mongers now squirming in their boots!!!!

The post is just executive spin. I ran it through my exclusive patented BS filter and here's what came out:

"I’ve been here for almost two months"

So would it be better if the CEO said nothing? What is he supposed to say?

The performance of SL is much improved since I came here in Sept 2006. The biggest single improvement in stability seems (subjectively) to have been when Havok4 was introduced.

In the last few months I've been able to hook up to a much better computer for some of the time and the improvement in the visual experience compared to the old comp is vast. If there are crashes on the newer comp it's nearly always related to Vista rather than SL.

i think what many people arent taking into consideration is that lively doesnt necessarily need to offer the same features as sl to compete. lively doesnt need to attract scripters, modelers and so on. they dont really need to appeal to land barons. the only people they need to attract are the vast number of ppl that are using sl as glorified 3d chat. lively requires no real client, runs in an existing browser, can be embedded into forums/webpages like a java irc client, is easy to use with a shallow learning curve, doesnt 'require' knowledge of ao's, attachments and the like, rezzing and positioning things is easier, you cant break things, you arent asked for money, and you dont need a fancy gfx card to run it.
imo linden lab would be stupid to scoff at the allure of lively to the casual user.

But it wouldn't be a surprise. The casual user has never been high on their list anyway as far as SL is concerned.

I saw much the same attitude from Origin Systems when Ultima Online was in it's heyday. They were the very definition of MMOG, and there really wasn't another worthy game in down until EQ showed up.

Now, the UO team spends it's time and resources trying to incorporate all the features and concepts found in other games to keep an audience. Heads up, LL.

i went to the Google home page, and then the "more" page.... if they really want people to try Lively, they need to create an easy button. i actually have to 'google it' to find it. LOL

p.s. this is some of the 'rooms' they offer just from the first page:
girl on girl
http://www.lively.com/dr?rid=7863063917264668660

sex island
http://www.lively.com/dr?rid=-4174813956037086552

sex in asia
http://www.lively.com/dr?rid=1735024366263687216

you see where this is going, right?

linden lab remind me a lot of infopop, the ubb ppl. people begged and begged for a php/mysql ubb and infopop stalled, made empty promises and so on. then a ubb user wrote a mysql backend for ubb and offered it to infopop. infopop couldnt be bothered, so he refined it with all the features ppl had been begging infopop to include for years, and released it as... vbulletin.
how many ubb boards do you see anymore?

Thumb up FaTeke, you pronounce what i always would like to say, but can't illustrate with my poor english. I agree 100%

Georg

Meh. "Lively" is about as much a serious threat or competition to SL as a kid's lemonaide stand is a threat or competition to McDonalds. It's no different than IMVU. A chatroom that allows 13 and up kids to sit in a "room" as badly drawn cartoons, and have G-rated conversations. I couldn't locate their terms of sercice, but I'll bet that just like IMVU, any adult content and even adult-oriented conversation will be banned.

lively clearly uses 3d meshes.

*snickers* Well, since I'm about to do the annual reinstall of my OS anyways, I figure I'd give Lively a try before I do it. That way, if I don't like it, well... *shrugs*

'nuff said

.

And with my short attention span.. I got bored within 10 minutes.

It's clunky. It's via web browser and.. it's waaaayyy more limited than SL. I don't see what the fuss is all about.

You made it 10?

Am I the only one who find it ironic that LL pitches SL as a "disruptive technology", which is all about being "just good enough" for what people actually need to use it for, and undermining an existing market from underneath that way, gaining and growing.
...and the Lively shows up, and is mocked for being a poor shadow of the "real" featureset a virtual world needs.