Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Main Forum Thread

I have just listened to the audio of the recent meeting with adult content creators/providers here:

https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/community/blog/2009/03/25/follow-up-adult-content-changes

3/27 - Adult content merchant brownbag

Its 88Mb but well worth a listen as a lot of questions asked here are being answered. The text transcript isn't there at time of posting this but i would suggest that all the doom sayers have a listen

LL doesn't seem to want to ban us all and seems on the face of it to be listening.

just one mans opinion though

This is..., this is..., this is... - this is so much - much surprising, that I am out of words - because of one vocable: "answered".

I will go listening soon (well, after working on my brandnew absolute PG-couch, because I thought this will be the upcoming market...maybe I put now some adult anims additional in... after listening...)

But if there something will sound positive, I give some trust to it then, when it is signed on paper by the LL-boss, triple stamped, under the eyes and ratified by: a notary and a consumer-protection attorney - and passed over as stamped notary copies to us - with paragraphs wich giving a irreversible life-time guarantee on all positive aspects.

Then I will believe it overwhelming euphorical, if not hysterical optimistic.

It seems Blondin get lost while he is on tour through the redlight districts along the landmarks wich were given from many "greyzone" owners to him...

Maybe he is catched by the suggestive charme of these areas and is now self-experimenting his life new...

hehehe

I imagine him partying with ten girls in a hot-tube.

Maybe he's using an alt meanhwile... lol

There a text transcript of this?

so here we are, Philip Linden saying the grids will merge - dated January 2009.

No expected date as they want to get everything in position first.

key points for why:

educators can't get into the teen grid
teen grid is only open to US teens atm
parents can't mingle with their kids

yet rather than creating a specific "g" area where this could occur, we're being pushed into the ghetto.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLnMRiMYYkQ

to begin with some of the mature stuff may stay, but with the best will in the world if the merge is to be a success then we really are all going to have to go behind the age verification curtain. It won't work any other way.

Supposedly my shop can stay. In reality there's no way a parent would want their kid to be able to sit on the borders of the shop and cam in to check it out. It's just not realistic to assume anything else.

All of this consultation stuff really is pointless. Our views aren't really relevant. Nany and her ilk will have far more say than we do because "We must think of the children!!"

LL appear to be wasting our time and causing drama for the sheer hell of it. This won't end in June, but will keep rocking along as they institute each clampdown after each parental complaint and each bit of bad press about it still being a sex fiends paradise.

Now I'm just hoping that they'll actually tell us what they're planning before the June viewer release. Other than general conversation, this thread is just a waste of time.

so here we are, Philip Linden saying the grids will merge - dated January 2009.

No expected date as they want to get everything in position first.

key points for why:

educators can't get into the teen grid
teen grid is only open to US teens atm
parents can't mingle with their kids

yet rather than creating a specific "g" area where this could occur, we're being pushed into the ghetto.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLnMRiMYYkQ

to begin with some of the mature stuff may stay, but with the best will in the world if the merge is to be a success then we really are all going to have to go behind the age verification curtain. It won't work any other way.

Supposedly my shop can stay. In reality there's no way a parent would want their kid to be able to sit on the borders of the shop and cam in to check it out. It's just not realistic to assume anything else.

All of this consultation stuff really is pointless. Our views aren't really relevant. Nany and her ilk will have far more say than we do because "We must think of the children!!"

LL appear to be wasting our time and causing drama for the sheer hell of it. This won't end in June, but will keep rocking along as they institute each clampdown after each parental complaint and each bit of bad press about it still being a sex fiends paradise.

Now I'm just hoping that they'll actually tell us what they're planning before the June viewer release. Other than general conversation, this thread is just a waste of time.

so here we are, Philip Linden saying the grids will merge - dated January 2009.

No expected date as they want to get everything in position first.

key points for why:

educators can't get into the teen grid
teen grid is only open to US teens atm
parents can't mingle with their kids

we need to stop creating isolated areas which are age specific

I told you all. Their goal is to merge the grids, despite what they say to our faces, to do that they first have to get rid of us.

I hope Linden Labs withers and goes bankrupt from this completely stupid and idoitic action. I don't care whats coming in June, I wont be here to see it.

Fuck this!

Just to throw in some possibly relevant information regarding, Reuters' reasons for quitting SL.

Make of it what you will - definitely worth a read, if you're not already aware:

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

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2008/nov/23/reuters-quits-secondlife

and...

http://www.businessinsider.com/2008/10/second-life-offers-business-teleconferencing-now-penis-free



*I* Am STILL Adult Content (which doesn't seem to have anything to do really with the information in these Reuters stories - I've never thrown a penis about in SL)

Haha Wyn, agreed - oh look! a pink pig just flew past my window...

And landed in your inv

Actually, American Indian is the preferred term.

http://www.rezed.org/forum/topics/philip-rosedale-teen-second
a lot of people have suggest this was the case,and i am not the first to offer a link.
this forum is a just a smokescreen from LL.
its going to happen however much we all protest.
SL is losing around 80 regions per week and slowly going bankrupt.

Sorry this makes no sense - if it doesn't matter that someone can cam into an adult sim from a PG sim because the owner is Anshe Chung, then it logically follows that if Anshe Chung doesn't flag a sim as adult it doesn't matter because it is owned by Anshe Chung.

Matthew

I own some beautiful land on mainland. [...] and I would not like to move from my property unless I was able to get like land at the value of the property I own.[...]

Second Life's span is virtually over as firms decide to get real
Just three years ago technology experts predicted Second Life would become the internet sensation of the decade, overtaking YouTube and MySpace in the process. Now the same experts are predicting its imminent demise.


By Rupert Neate
Last Updated: 9:12AM BST 31 Mar 2009
While the site is still beloved by geeks and the socially awkward, Deloitte’s director of technology research, Paul Lee, says it has been “virtually abandoned” by “normal” people and businesses.

In 2006 multinational companies, including BT, Coca-Cola, Adidas and Toyota, were scrabbling to create “in world” presences to profit from what was expected to be the next great internet cash cow.

But today the Second Life high street is mostly deserted, as businesses have realised that despite management claims that the site has 15m members, far fewer people actually play the game. Research for The Daily Telegraph shows just 580,000 people logged on to the game last week.

Matthew Brotherton who runs BT’s presence on Second Life, says most major businesses “have gone cold” on the game as they “can’t see how it is possible to make any money out of it”.

“T-Mobile, Vodafone and a host of our competitors all had public presences, now you cannot find them, they are all taking a step back to save money,” he says. “There are definitely far fewer businesses than there used to be, it is a struggle to find the ones that were there just a year ago.”

Mr Brotherton says he would not be surprised if Second Life has died a death by the end of the year.

At the peak of its hype, Reuters even set-up a bureau on the site but it closed down its operations last year. Eric Krangel, who reported under the byline Eric Reuters, explains why the news agency left: “The very things that most appeal to Second Life’s hardcore enthusiasts are either boring or creepy for most people: spending hundreds of hours of effort to make insignificant amounts of money selling virtual clothes, experimenting with changing your gender or species, getting into random conversations with strangers from around the world, or having pseudo-nonymous sex (and let’s not kid ourselves, sex is a huge draw into Second Life).

“As part of walking my 'beat’, I’d get invited by sources to virtual nightclubs, where I’d right-click the dance floor to send my avatar [Second Life character] gyrating as I sat at home at my computer. It was about as fun as watching paint dry.”

The overt seediness has caused businesses to think twice about whether they want to be associated with the game.

Concerns about the ubiquity of adult content have forced Mark Kingdon, the chief executive of Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life, to introduce tough new rules to restrict sexual activity to “red light” zones within the site.

But he insists users come to Second Life for more than just sex. “You can learn French art at a Parisian café, go on an African safari and meet interesting people from all around the world,” he says.

Paul Jackson, of Forrester Research, warns that if Second Life is too draconian in clamping down on its seedier side it risks alienating its current users without the guarantee of securing new followers.

He believes the site is close to “stagnation” in terms of user growth as the concept only excites a small subset of internet users.

“The gloss has gone off the whole virtual world segment,” he says. “It only appeals to a very specific mindset, most people don’t have the time to sit in front of their computers for hours on end playing a virtual game.”

Mr Kingdon, who took over as chief executive of Second Life last year after its creator Philip Rosedale stood down from day-to-day operations, claims the site is attracting new players at the rate of one every 10 seconds and is adamant that a “good number” of companies are still present in the game. But he refuses to state how many, claiming Second Life does not keep a record of businesses in the game.

And even if businesses, faced with recession, are pulling back from hyper-reality, ordinary users may end up using the site more, according to Mr Kingdon. “People who can’t afford to go dancing in the real world, will buy a tux for a $1 in Second Life and dance the night away,” he says.

Mr Kingdon also stresses that Linden Lab itself is “very profitable”, though he refuses to disclose any financial information on the privately-held company. Second Life makes money by exchanging real money for Linden dollars, which players can use to buy land, goods and services in the game. Mr Kingdon says $37m (£26m) worth of Linden dollars were transferred between users last month alone.

Repeated requests for financial data on the company were ignored despite Linden Lab’s press office saying they would “love” to provide figures to back-up their claims of profitability.

The company is owned by a host of venture capital funds, including those run by Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and Benchmark Capital, the backers of eBay. To date, Linden Lab has not publicly released any details of its revenue or profits. Valley Wag, the respected Silicon Valley gossip blog, has meanwhile created a Second Life “death watch” as it believes the site is on its last legs.

There are fears that as the cost of data storage rise the company is struggling to fund enough servers to run the site. Users complain that the website crashes frequently.

The booming popularity of newer social networking sites, like Facebook and Twitter, is also bound to affect Second Life’s usership and its cache.

“It is a very different proposition [to Twitter and Facebook],” says Mr Kingdon. “We have an incredible business model that any social media property would envy. Facebook and Twitter may have more users, but Second Life actually has a business model and makes money. I wouldn’t trade places with them.”

Second Life has also suffered an exodus of executives over the past year. Mr Kingdon, a former online advertising executive and senior partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, took over from Mr Rosedale last year. A couple of months earlier its chief technology officer, Cory Ondrejka, left for EMI after a spat with Mr Rosedale.

Only last Friday, finance director John Zdanowski left the company, completing a near total shake-up of the senior management team.

Gone are the days when Linden Lab’s executives — as a frog, a beagle and a jellyfish in one instance — had their meetings in the virtual world they created. Instead, perhaps, as Second Life’s critics would have it, it’s time for Linden Labs’ management to face reality.

I don't know about bankrupt, but certainly since the open sim announcement LL has consistently week on week been contracting. The grid was around 31,000 sims when that announcement was made - now it's down to around 26k.