So Now They Are Feeling the Heat

Look, I'm still unhappy about being forced into the role of a female teen ava with hip-hop attitude. That alone was enough to send me running back to the safety of the grid. It's certainly aimed at a young user group. I personally dont think SL has a thing to really worry about, not from Lively anyway.

Yer tellin' me!

Actually, a point is that while many Second Life users have mocked Lively, Linden Labs has not.

That's what fascinated me about M Linden's "we still care" post. It indicated to me that Linden Lab does not laugh at the idea of Lively as a competitor; it fears Lively as a competitor.

I don't have any inside knowledge as to what is happening in the industry of virtual worlds.

However, I do assume that M Linden does have some inside information. A CEO had better be developing inside information within the industry in which he competes.

So I'm assuming that M Linden has a little more insight than I, or most of us residents, have as to the future of Lively.

And I think that the blog post yesterday hints that M Linden has seen a little bit into the future of Lively, and the future of Second Life, and the future gives him a bit of concern.

I've said this elsewhere, but for the first time I'm starting to feel hopeful about the next three to four years, but SL is only one player.

First, I predicate this on the idea that the technology is not cutting edge, proprietary or beyond the capabilities of high-end hobbyist technicians. Add that to the fact that practically every player on the open grid already uses or can use the SL viewer. The technology is nearly there for a viable connected open grid. The issues that they will have to iron out over the next year are the administrative and cultural issues. Currency exchange, grievers across grids (I'm guessing universally blocked IPs), cultural issues and issues of avatars literally crossing national lines when going server to server. Basically, many of the issues you have moving sim to sim, racheted up a bit.

Next year this time, in my opinion IBM will plug into the open grid from its own server farm. They will have a showcase 3D grid that will have its main portal starting from its websites, and will permit access from other grids (why not?). Pure show case, pure dazzle, and cutting edge tourist site in the Metaverse.

This time next year you will be able to rent a host computer (less than current mid-tier costs) or hang a server grade box at the end of a fiber connection and host your own grid from home or business. In short, dedicated 3D hobbyists will be able to fully immerse themselves in their OWN vision and hang it onto the open grid.

And, yes, SL will probably be the largest open grid portal, essentially splitting the product lines against the portals on one hand (just offering the horsepower to log on the maximum number of users into the open grid and focusing on the client as end-user issue) and the hosting on the other (same-same, companies maximizing support capabilities of the individual grids). The pricing will have to change, with basic accounts paying, bots being scrubbed out altogether, land dropping further, and more choices in how SL lets you have your sim or your large part of the grid.

More real, in that people will realize that they are not buying land. More emphasis on portability, so that people can choose to move from one grid host to another if their customer service is substandard OR if their internal customers/visitors complain about performance.

Yep, I am optimistic about the coming expansion of the open grid, the positive changes it will force on SL if they don't move there first, and the coming chaos of creativity. Planning on buying a server and getting a team together soon.

IMO, the day of SL as a standalone is closing and the Metaverse is really about to begin. SL should be able to have a chunk of that, but they better realize their vision is no longer a controlling one, just one among many.

No
- ish

I tried Lively.
It's not like SL, but then it's not meant to be.
Even though I knew it was not SL, I found myself trying to navigate SL-wise
That was just habit. We shouldn't allow our familiarity with SL's interface to influence a judgement on the 'firness for purpose' of a different online world.
Lively is not competing with the SL feature set. It's not trying to.

There is a huge audience for online chat.
A basic 3D-ish system that allowed some customisation of accessories and surroundings would be "good enough" for many people.

I had a quick peep at Vivaty.
That's building on Facebook and AIM, which will give it a head start. That's going to be plenty good enough for a lot of people.
Facebook and AIM are mainstream and well understood by a vast audience.


SL is being pitched now as *platform* for the development of disruptive technologies. SL is not disruptive in itself.
In that respect, it is probably streets ahead of what Lively and Vivaty appear to be developing into.
I say 'probably' because if those sorts of services will allow some hooks into user-built applications hosted wherever then a creative mind has the possibility to build something with a potential audience far larger that that of SL.


SL just need to re-engineer the grid ASAP. We appear to have arrived at a plateau for the current technology. The world can't expand much more with the current grid system.
M Linden blogs in his Letter about expecting to break the 70,000 barrier "soon".
We've had 65,000. We need a quantum leap, and not just a long battle to get an extra 5,000 concurrent.

And they are offering this to 13 year olds. Right *rolls eyes*

Well, let's take into consideration that this is Google we're talking about, and Google is known for two things: pouring vast amounts of money into a projects it wants to see become successful, and being a juggernaut when those projects do so.

I can't imagine what Google has planned for this thing, it seems inferior to SL in many ways. But I'll put this on the table: Google didn't offer to buy LL at any point AFAIK, for whatever reasons we're open to speculate about. That alone might be an indication of why the CEO seems nervous.

i went to Lively. it sux green donkey d's.... it's just IMVU all dolled up with sex and lag features. nothing like SL, and no potential of that, that i could detect.

And that's really why I think Linden Lab squandered what it had with Second Life.

If Linden Lab was banking on Second Life competing on the basis of cutting-edge technology, then it guessed wrong. Second Life opened five years before Lively, but Second Life by no means has a five-year head start on the technology. Whatever technological innovation Second Life has made has been slow, because it has operated on a shoestring budget. A company like Google can drop the investment capital to close the technological gap in mere months.

Second Life could have had a five-year advantage in terms of PR and a loyal customer base. Second Life has had decent press. When it comes to the customer base, though, Linden Lab just chose not to invest in customer service and communication. Instead of technical improvement of overall quality of experience, technical improvement focused on bells and whistles. (So we got Windlight instead of stable databases.)

Of course, it remains to be seen how good Second Life's name and customer loyalty is. Those things will be tested over the next few months. And even a company with a reputation and resources like Google gets things wrong sometimes.

Exactly and this is the point many people are missing. Lively is nothing like Second Life, it's technically inferior, it has no economy but none of that will matter if it gains mass appeal and that's why it's a rival to Second Life and you can bet your bottom dollar that the management at Linden Lab understand this.

I'm not sure I agree with this philosophy at all.
Yes there is a large audience out there that will enjoy Lively.
But these people were never going to like SL anyway, these are the people who don't want to be creative and actually create things, they just want to chat and probably talk dirty to each other.
So, IMO, this is absolutely no threat to SL at all. I can't see more than maybe 1%, if that, of SL residents actually leaving SL for this platform. But I can see many people going to Lively, having their curiosity piqued and then leaving Lively to go to SL where they will be amazed at the difference.

I think a lot is being read into M's statements that just isn't there. His statement was basically a State of Union address and nothing more. Again, in my opinion.

FaTeke

Without people like this Valleywag's description of Second Life as "The Big empty" would be even more accurate. Second Life needs consumers.

If these people just want to chat and talk dirty, they'd do better staying here - we have the infrstructure to make that experience all the more intense. But that competitive advantage may not last long.

The striking thing is the ability to have your own "room" for free. That is a very big difference philosophically from SL, which forces you to expend cash to have your own private space. But the broader concept of it being a world cannot be achieved if you have a bunch of rooms that are just floating disconnected. This is the nice thing about having a mainland, however crappy it may seem. It gives you a feeling of a contiguous world.

It would be foolish to take Lively too lightly at this point. On day one, of course it's pathetic compared to SL after 5 years. There's a lot of connection problems that need to be worked out, no user created content, and very limited content to choose from. And no economy or even a currency.

But how much of that is already in the code just waiting to be turned on? We can't tell yet. We already know that the test group was able to make stuff. Those capabilities are there but not activated now. The catalog is set up in a way that implies that some content will eventually require payment.

My guess is that Lively will seem about a year behind SL in terms of capabilities by the end of this year. They'll be worlds away still in terms of freedom and existing content, but they will have the capability to do most of what we can currently do in SL. If gambling were allowed, I'd bet L$50,000 that user created content is available before the end of October.

Lively will do great.

It will catch all those frustrated users that come into SL and walk away.
Edit to add this great example of a user that cared enough to ask rather then just log off as many are doing with Lively before they explore it:
/327/3e/269943/1.html
Of course his reason is because of the difficulty of SL, not the simplicity of Lively.

It is great for chatting with a hint of customization at this point. And will only grow from there.

If I had a corporation to run I would meet with people virtually somewhere like Lively or There.com. SL is the clunky one. Too much of a learning curve, issues constantly with the service reliability etc etc. Why would I pay the high prices for an Island in SL when I could just have my people meet in my own private "room" in lively? Seriously.. yes this could do the things LL is selling users out to do.. get those corps.

It is not about the simplicity of the platform with Lively.. it is all the tools google has at it's disposle and the potential it can become that LL should be afraid of. Especially when they can do the same thing networking wise there (regular users or professional) all under the Google umbrella.

LL would be stupid to not take notice.

Edit to also add: I found it beyond ironic that Pathfinder set up a Linden Lab room there. I see heavy recruitment for SL coming from that room coming up.

It occurs to me that timing is everything.

I assume that guys like Phillip, Mitch, and M(ark) are industry insiders, and have something of an inside track on how their company is progressing, and how their industry is progressing.

In March, Phillip announced that he'd be stepping down as CEO. This announcment came one month before the disasterous April performance where the Second Life technology just finally broke down. The annoucement came four months before Lively went live.

Do you think that sometime around March, Phillip got a little inside information on what Google was doing with Lively, and then looked at where Second Life was heading, and decided it was time to bow out on a high note and let another captain go down with the ship?

Whatever the reason, Phillip had some marvelous timing with his annoucement to resign as CEO. He will have the legacy of making something out of Second Life. He got out on top.

When Mitch gave his pioneers-to-pragmatist speech a few days ago, did he know Lively was going live and his speech audience would, within a day or two, be suddenly aware of Lively's existence?

Whether Mitch did or not, wow, that is great timing for that Second Life transition speech. Make that speech on Monday, and Mitch is a visionary. Make the same speech on Tuesday, and he's an apologist and spin doctor.

And what a difference a couple of days make. M's "be patient, we promise good times" speech came right after SL residents, at least on this forum, started buzzing about Lively. M may very have well been sincere, but by making the announcement right after the Lively buzz started make it sounds more like an excuse than a promise.

Maybe M really was sincere. But wow, what rotten timing for the blog post.