Is the Demise of Second Life Nearing?

You are welcome then.

Well, yeah. We all know that. He can speechify all he wants. Hard core republicans aren't going to convert.

See, that's the great thing about the US. People have the RIGHT to own that stuff. Whether or not they SHOULD own that stuff is completely a moral decision on their part, not the government's. The gov't has no RIGHT to take anyone's stuff away from them. If anyone wanted to commandeer someone's stuff, it'd be the lending bank who has first dibs, not the gov't.

To suggest that Obama "suspend mortgages and recall any luxury cars that exist" is a) to grant Obama an obscene amount of unilateral power, usually referred to as a "dictatorship" and b) just stupid. You think that owning big cars is what fucked us up in the first place? It could be part of it; mostly it was people taking out mortgages that they couldn't afford. To "condemn any mansions or mammoth-sized houses" is to strike down the people who could ACTUALLY AFFORD those houses, as well as the people who couldn't. Is THAT fair? You think Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie couldn't buy 10 mansions with just the cash in their bank accounts? Sure they could. Why should they be punished for that? Why should anyone who can afford a nice house be punished?

(It's called CAPITALISM. Look it up some time.)

It's more the "I'm not responsible, it's not my fault" mentality.

In brief, internet-trolling means posting irrelevant, controversial, equivocating, ambiguous, or unclear response to a genuine set of arguments. Those who do such things are called as "an internet troll." It is commonly done in discussion forums or in usenet newsgroups.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_%28Internet%29

Very difficult to determine that. Asia seems to be going off an even steeper cliff; some isolated basket cases (e.g., Iceland); UK and EU as a whole may be about the same as the US; Canada perhaps a bit better. But it's very difficult to tell because some of the effects are masked or accentuated by currency fluctuations. The yen has been appreciating at a scary pace while at the same time the pound sterling and Canadian dollar have been tanking against the US$ and Euro (more or less), which may be somebody exercising smart monetary policy--or not.

Nonetheless, if one had to choose, yeah, Canada might get by with marginally less GDP shrinkage than the global average, but that's no sure thing, given the economy's disproportionate dependence on energy, commodities (as in construction materials), and the automotive sector--not likely to be happy places for the next few years.

Oh: the Forbes thing cites the recent Valleywag piece as if it were a valid source, so has no credibility. That doesn't mean SL isn't dying, but if it is, Forbes has no information bearing on the subject.

So I guess what I posted was basically from a gossip site, right?

And I thought that Forbes magazine was a reliable magazine.

If that's the case, maybe someone at Linden Labs can clarify this matter.

They won't. Why should they? They are a privately held company and don't have to answer to anyone...including us.

Obama will fix that too.

I think Second Life will survive but involvement by corporations might decline, as might the number of island owners. This is purely because of the economic situation.

SL will survive because of those of us who like it here. We will stay until we don't enjoy it any more. I guess people who came here mainly to make money tend to leave if they fail to make any, or at least they reduce their investment.

LL seldom clarifies anything - especially any negatives in any article.

SO in summary:
Some people who went into SL based on pure hype have gone.
SL continues on because people who enjoy it for what it actually is continue to use it (and steadily increasing concurrent numbers)










WE'RE DOOOOOOOOOMED!!!!

In a way the Forbes article does have a few points.

LL has been searching for ways to monetize their whizzy virtual world. To little avail. It has almost no good business purpose. There are better virtual meetingplaces, it has a very difficult learning curve, has far too high a failure rate, suffers from stability issues, and requires a disproportionate amount of effort to utilize as a 3d work environment.

If LL cannot find new, and innovative uses for their technology, they'll be relegated to holding just another game, or social networking solution. At that point, the Second Life they had envisioned has died. And at that point, LL has to move to maximize their returns while they are still able to.

That doesn't mean that SL is going to suddenly poof, and LL will shut down their server rooms in the middle of the night. SL will almost certainly continue for years.

Can hardly wait for a return to the true american way when you lived in your Company owned house, got paid in Company script, shopped in the Company store and didnt even get to vote in elections even though you were a US citizen because the Company voted enblock for thier employee's in all Elections.....oh look here comes Henry Ford to offer you a job on the line now!

Note the URL.

"blogs.forbes.com" is NOT Forbes. It is a place for their so-called (or wannabee) reporters to blow on about things that they can't put into articles for Forbes. It's basically like just about every other blog on the planet; someone's take on something that they may know very little about with little to no accountability, since it is simply nothing more than personal opinion.

EVEN IF it were a front-page article on Forbes' main site, I would hand-wave it away because Forbes is known to do shallow, vacuous pieces at times for the sake of sensationalism. They aren't any different than any other mass media outlet in their need to sell copy, and can quite easily "fudge" an article into hype based on poor research or none at all.

Not only that, even the most cursory of research should have made you question the accuracy and the veracity of what the blogger said. If not the comments following the blog, then simply looking at the continuing growth of Second Life itself should have opened your eyes.

I would suggest a heavy dose of critical thinking the next time you read something like that and are tempted to just accept it at face value.

Can you believe this guy?

"Here's the ultimate problem with Second Life: unless you're some kind of sexual deviant who gets off by pretending to be a diaper-wearing man-fox, it's boring as hell."

"Meanwhile, Second Life users can visit the prototype Sears virtual showroom by clicking this link. And then they can do us all a favor by unplugging their computer, picking it up, dropping it in the trash, and never ever going online again." (why don't you tell us how you feel?)

"If creator Linden Labs can't grab a guy like me --a self-professed gigantic geek who still dreams of becoming a "console cowboy"-- they're in trouble." (Yup, no shred of arrogance there!)

"has anyone ever noticed how the Second Life logo looks like a raised hand telling you, "Stop?" Seems like good advice."

"the vast majority of activity there is either related to casinos or deviant cybersex."

"In-game bank Ginko Financial has ceased operations, a move that threatens to send the virtual economy into a tailspin." (August 2007)

"Second Life is about to fade into obscurity like LambdaMOO." (August 2007)

Wow, now here is someone I am going to LISTEN to in future! David M. Ewalt - remember that name!

The article says nothing of substance and it is written by one of those unimaginative dorks who seem to have made it their mission to denigrate SL and its residents. I hardly expected a balanced report under the running headline "Second Life Deathwatch" but I was nevertheless astonished that a reputable organ such as Forbes would retain someone capable of such an amateurishly opinionated report.

Valleywag, another byte bin devoted to slagging off SL and Linden Labs, is one of the two links he includes in support of his slight piece. The other link to PBS provides a fairly balanced article about various media outlets in SL, which not unreasonably suggests that RL businesses are still trying to get their brains around virtual worlds in much the same way they were trying to get to grips with the web ten years ago.

There is a very interesting quote from the editor of Wired Magazine, Chris Anderson, on the reasons why Wired closed its sim:

"Well, partly it was the whole 'there's nobody there' problem, which is of course just anecdotal. Like everyone else, I had fun exploring the concept and marveling at all the creativity. Then I got bored, and I started marveling at something else: all the empty corporate edifices. By day I'd speak at marketing conferences that usually had someone pitching SL services, complete with staged demonstrations (the 'inhabitants' invariably paid employees). By night I'd go back to the same places, which had reverted to ghost towns once the demonstration was over."

I am a regular reader of Wired online so I was very interested to learn way back last year that they had an office in SL and guess what I found when I slurled my pixel ass over to their sim?

I found an empty corporate edifice.

That broad who does the Sex Drive blog wasn't even there.

I didn't go back because I didn't see the point of visiting Wired in SL when nobody from Wired was there to meet me and I reckon quite a few one-time visitors felt the same, which may provide Mr Anderson with a clue as to why their enterprise failed: it isn't enough to buy a sim and fix up a heap of over-designed builds with a few interesting doohickeys. You need to staff your sim with at least one av to make it interesting.

And still these corporations feel the need to whine like disappointed kids because folk are staying away from their dead sims in droves?

I think you're both nuts. America should simply stay out of the electoral process (like they've always done) and let me install myself as benevolent ruler. Then you will live in a Ruler-owned house (but you get to design it), get paid (in lindens), shop in stores that only sell PROPERLY-DESIGNED PANTS, and work at.....well, you can have any job you want, really, I don't mind.

I laugh, seeing stuff like this in print.

Kills off competition inworld and out.

Hey folks, it's the end of the world and impossible to make income here, yep, keep on believin'... (just ignore Desmond in the corner, what does he know!)

* * * * *

There was an 'expert' on NWN talking about the cause and effect of the land market bubble, as he called it, on the grid... I replied in comments when the question was raised: did this ring true?

Interestingly, the guy argued with me. Which was sort of like arguing about the hot dog market in New York, with a rather successful hot dog vendor. Ponder that one...

I've often wondered... why aren't all economists and market analysts scary rich? Sort of like claiming to know how to cook, but never even making cookies ~ unless maybe it's all hype?

As such, I predict the end of Forbes, as soon as people come to their senses. Well, maybe they've got some time, some people believe anything.

* * * * *

I do see a massive grid shakeout going on; the bar has been raised a bit in the past few years. Not just any bored 19 year old can lazily provide what passes for quality content or land on the grid any more. But that's kinda how developing markets go. The openspace price debacle didn't help, either.

But the real question is: who will be left standing at the end of this recession, to take full advantage of the recovery? Hint: not naysayers, in any field.

For the most part naysayers will go back to their cubicles, convinced of the illusion of their job safety. A lifetime of wage slave living is a steep price to pay for that illusion.

When I started SL there were only about 2000 people in world at any given time. I remember a time when LL sponsored an official stress test where the goal was to get 5000 people on at one time.

At this moment, there are 66,000 people in world.

Meh

But from another viewpoint, the answer has to be Yes. SL is nearing it's demise. Unless of course you stipulate the lifetime of SL is infinite...

(yeah...not helping...I know...)

Isn't it? I don't mean to be facetious but I actually thought the net was like a bit like wireless transmissions? You know how Martians were supposed to be panicking a few years back because they just got Orson Welles' broadcast of the War of the Worlds and didn't realise it was only makey-uppy?

Won't we be sailing through the universe until the end of time?

Will nobody on Saturn even see me scratching my ass tomorrow?

Well there's the whole thing. Wired seems to have suffered from the same presupposition that other corporations seem to have suffered from - "if you build it, they will come". There's a bit of arrogance involved in assuming that since your company has a building in-world, it's going to be popular; evidence of this arrogance comes in the form of deducing that Second Life has largely been abandoned by the general public when you log on to your sim and see nobody there.

They're there. 70,000 online, and no, not all of them are bots. They've gotta be somewhere. So where, then? Well, somewhere else. I'd visit a company's new sim, but if all that's there is a neat building and nothing else, why go back?

A perfect example of this is Gibson Island. It's a sim terraformed and built upon to look like a guitar. It's a fun sim to explore - there's EXTREMELY detailed (like 200-prim) guitars of different models scattered all over the place, that are freebies. There's galleries, videos, and a model broadcasting studio. And a huge stage for hosting in-world events. I must've spent two or three days, thoroughly exploring the place. And I haven't been back since. Why bother? I've seen every inch of the place; there's nothing left for me to see, because nothing ever changes. There's a big stage there that is never, ever used for any event ever (I know, because I kept tabs for the longest time).

What did Wired expect?

"Hey dude, I'm bored. Let's go hang out at Wired's office."

"...yeah!" "...OK!"

(several TP's later)

"Well, here we are, at Wired's office! This is SOOO cool. I mean, it's Wired's OFFICE man!"

"...yeah!" "...totally!"

The real world doesn't work that way. The only reason anybody goes to Wired's RL office is because they're getting paid to be there; you think people are going to go to a virtual facsimile on their free time because....well, why?

Mouse - you are actively depressing me.

Not really. SL is not just "the web". It is a privately held company, utilizing privately held assets (servers) and employees, to provide us with a service. They *could*, if they so desired, shut us down tomorrow. So, infinite? Um...not so much.