Reuter's closes it's SL Bureau

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/11/why-reuters-left-second-life-and-how-linden-lab-can-fix-it



It never made any sense to me for Reuter's to have a Second Life Bureau to start with.

It is a good article. It talks about the standard disenchantment most ex-SLers experience on the way out. And it is that exact syndrome that this New Linden is suppose to create a cure for. I am not sure they can do it. The cure has to start with their own staff and it seems as if the minimal management at LL have lost positive control over these employees and their buddies a long time ago. If they can get soem new blood on staff that actually cares about the paying customers and will be emodied with teh power to make positive change - then they could change alot of minds about the future of Second Life.


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Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Hopefully the rest of the businesses out there open their eyes and give SL the shove-off so LL can back to making SL for people - and ditch this idea of trying to make SL for corporations.

Yep, SL as a business platform never had any future. It's time that LL sees that.

I remember when the Reuters office opened. But I mostly ignored it. Having read through a few of the articles posted there, I see that, unlike the M, he seemed to understand that SL, in spite of its flaws, attracts a certain kind of loyal player, and is not an advertising or business platform.

I read a few articles and even visited the sim once, to get the hud. One thing I had hoped was that it would have RL news IN SL, rather than just covering SL news. It'd have been great to have a mix of the two, keeping SL in the loop with RL.

I found there wasn't much to do in the sim, however. It seemed professional, but not something I'd want to visit on a regular basis.

You'd think LL would have got the hint about corporations not really finding SL the one-stop-business tool. There are other programs that do so much more for businesses, like giving them the ability to see each other's comp desktops so they can have presentations. SL also needs to be a lot more stable. Corporations aren't going to use a program that is going to cost them millions of dollars with each unexpected downtime. That happens on such a regular basis as to be closer to expected downtime.

If LL wants corporations, they are going to have to listen to us on how to improve the platform. Oddly enough, the same tools the corporations want are the same tools we've been begging for. And the same kind of support we've been begging for.. professional and fair minded.

The difference is that the corporations want us in there. That way, they have yet another chance to pitch their brands to us. Consider it a bonus to the big companies.

I kinda saw this coming when Eric left. He seemed to "get" things in ways his co-worker did not.

When I first visited and talked with Adam, I tried to get them interested in writing about the community, and how it is the real driver of SL. He let me know that Reuters doesn't write about community things. Pretty much told me right there how well they do.

They did have a good run, though. Better than I mighta expected.

I still think SL has potential for corporate use through private grids that are essentially seperate from the main grid. I would think those private grids would be more stable and secure than what we are use to.

Exactly.

LL should have already presented some private grid model to corporations - where only they can connect and have a grid where every sim was a corporate representation. But they cannot do that with out us. They need our build skills, our scripting, our textures, they need US...for now.

But there is no content in private grids - a corporation that decides to open one has no access to all the things that their avatars need to look professional, much less to create professional looking builds to host their conferences. Unless SL hopes to provide that content through "secure" grid rentals, it's a dead end idea - how many corporations are going to employ graphic artists to spend the time creating content to fit this medium? It's a job in and of itself.

I thought that was what Second Life GRID was for. I also thought there were resident content developers that do that sort of stuff for corporate clients.

You're correct, I forgot about that. Corporations can employ our existing content creators to do that stuff, sure. That will fill the gap.

it's funny, how much selection bias just the brief quote shows... nightclubs and sex... could've hoped for more community level involvment like Marianne, since a great portion of the stable grid populations governence, business, and social life is driven by these. In a land without strict government roles, and required jobs for survival, community codes of conduct become the driving force behind so much of what we see and do. and I don't mean LL's code of conduct either.

I would venture thant 75% or more of SL is "community" in one form or another. IMO, to miss that is to miss the point.

Reuters leaving SL is quite understandable to me. As with every real life business that has come to SL only to leave shortly after, it's sign that SL is not a viable revenue stream that LL wants it to be. I really don't know why Reuters even had a bureau here anyway......perhaps they thought maybe residents would come for Second Life news? Obviously, not enough did to make it worth the effort on Reuters part.

Real life busiesses and corporations have no incentive to keep a presence in SL. At this stage of development this platform is not suited for the offering and selling of real life products (and services) to the public.......it's seen by the majority of the population of the world as little more than an elaborate, sophisticated game. Some can (and have) made real money in the game.......but that real money is made by the selling of virtual products and services. A real life business is not going to settle for selling a virtual replica of their real life product for less than what it costs to produce that product. About the only value that would have is for advertising purposes......and we, as a whole, have flatly rejected any notion of real life advertising in SL. And we have shouted that very loudly and clearly to Linden Lab. Any real life based business has heard that almost hesterical scream from us.......and they should take it to heart (because it's very real).

That leaves nothing to make a presence in SL feasible........just a money pit to throw real currency into without any hope of return. If LL wants the real corporations and businesses to come to SL they will have to change the very basics that Second Life was built around.......if will have to become a platform where businesses can advertise their products to a population willing to accept that advertising and be open minded enough to show interest in the advertised goods. Those changes will be extremely unwelcome to the present population that exists in SL.......a change in that direction cannot be sprung immediately without a very real danger of LL losing a substanial part of it's base. Corporations know that as well as LL knows it. But, over time a change can be made and, as far as I can see, is already underway. Like it or not, SL is going to change to make it more friendly to businesses (real businesses selling real products). There will always be a bone or two tossed in our direction but the focus will be in building a viable platform for real companies to make real profit.

Most of us will learn to cope. But many of us well go away to other places that are more to our liking. The demography of SL will be radically different in a few years (maybe as few as a couple years).

It's either that or SL will remain the sophisticated, elaborate game that it is right now. And I really don't think LL has the intentions of staying a game.

Yeah I was never too sure why Reuter's was here and what they got from
reporting in SL.
A lot of reporting seemed like it was from some grumpy journalist that
was mad that they were exiled to SL in first place.
I am still curious where they got the sources for the articles.
Like how do they know how many sex organ's we buy in SL?

I agree that the only real selling point SL has for corporations is as a form of advertising.

Though your points about Resident dislike for conventional advertising are correct, I think, there IS a way around this dislike: for corporations to sponsor innovative and interesting builds. I'm thinking of builds that are satisfying games, or puzzles, or just amazing to explore.

Residents would happily visit such builds and wouldn't mind seeing a few signs saying "Brought to You By Coca-Cola", if the build were compelling (and fun!) enough.


But this idea of corporations being eager to hold meetings inside SL was just never realistic. The rival 'photo-realistic' platform recently announced by Microsoft might make inroads in that market---if it ever comes to pass. But that's easily years off.

(Corporate types do NOT want to expose themselves to the potential ridicule of making little cartoonish avatars of themselves. It's just not in the personality profile.)

One great example: 7 Days Magical Bakery

as with anything, you can sell whatever you want, but you'll sell more if you have what they want where you are... Rueters really didn't have a product that interested people in SL... they could have, but they were more focused on the RL dynamic, which just isn't workable in a comparatively small focused venue... a little digging and maybe theyd have been a great source of LL news as it affected residents, but something tells me that got ditched to prevent possible bad blood with the people providing the outlet.

One of the advantages of real-world corporations is that when they make substantial investments they want SLA service level agreements. An SLA for SL would contain a provision for timely, efficient and uninterrupted access to the inworld.

It tends to focus peoples minds when they working to an agreement that penalises them financially if the level of service is not what has been agreed to.

As an individual subscriber to my ISP, I dont get an SLA just a we-will-do-the-best-we-can-for-you arrangement, just like I have with LL. But the large corporations who got SLAs with my ISP dont and wont settle for that. So to keep those big guys happy my ISP spends lots of money on infrastructure and service.

On the main road that my street runs off is a university. We was all on copperwire including them. They wanted fibre as part of their SLA and they got it. And because the ISP built in extra capacity looking to the future, they were also able to hook up all the people around as well, including me. My bandwidth speed doubled even with the peakhours throttle which is around school start and finish times. I got double my monthly data allowance as well and I got it all for the same price as before. Is fabulous =)

And it snowballs when this kind of thing happens, because other large organisations then demand and get what the other big guys have and all the little people around them benefit as I have.

So there is a place for large organisations and I hope they come to SL and stay because they going to demand and get SLA that penalise their provider (LL) if they dont get the level of service they paying for. So LL will put in more and more better infrastructure and software sooner and faster to cater for this. And the smaller SL accounts will benefit from this. And yes they maybe get preference over me at times but they are paying for it and not me so thats fair I think.

No

I wrote that down.

Spoilsport.






(Surely there is SOME level of excellence and fun and astonishing innovation in a build, that would induce you to tolerate the brief sight of a sign...?)

No. I'd rather not have the intrusion.

So you're saying that if you were to go to, say, Universal Studios, you would write them a letter of protest if they had a sign saying 'Spiderman' or a sign saying 'Shrek' or a sign saying 'Spongebob Squarepants'.?

Because all entertainments should be provided by, what...governments? instead of commercial entitities?


I'm not saying anything on the order of Everything Should Be about Commerce. What I'm saying is that it's unrealistic to assume that money will be spent on our behalf (say, to provide interesting builds) from a basis of pure altruism.