Further Conversation... with M Linden

That should have been "He's writing..."
I think if I was going to nit-pick at the CEO of a big company I'd get someone to proofread my writing before I put it out for the world to see.

Thanks for the correction. Those who want to offer corrections to other user's posts could do so via forum PM so as not to divert the thread from it's intended path,.

I don't have a staff to request proofreading assistance from. I do use a spellchecker, and I've already gone back to the post to correct several other mistakes I saw right after clicking submit, a process I go through quite often.

As for your desire to have your nit-picking proofread before posting, you can send any nit-picking comments you have on CEO's writings and I'll be glad to check them for errors.

I want Linden Lab to look good. I think they look better when their corporate writing is well written and wouldn't get red X's put on it by a teacher of 6th grade English.

M:

Wonderful post - always nice to hear an update in particular because you've been, at the least, consistent in your areas of focus. This helps to set priorities, I hope, and shifts ongoing development and resources towards user-driven needs rather than what seems like a cool toy or technology.

I do have a few questions if you're open to replying! (Sorry for cross-posting on the main blog, missed the forum link ) :

- With regards the new viewer, obviously this is something I'm really excited to hear more about. As you know, there are a number of open source or community initiatives underway or ongoing - does this "new viewer" change the base source code or is it mostly an "interface" change or to what degree is it each?

- You talk about "product strategy, development and management" (and congrats and welcome to T Linden - his CV sounds like he'll be an amazing addition to the team) - but can you define in the context of the Lab what "product" means? Is SL the product and you're bringing in product management discipline? Or are you saying that you're bringing in expertise to manage the "products" within SL?

- Care to share what you see as the principle products? I see SLim as an "outsourced" product, for example. Or Immersive Spaces. What do you see as the products?

- Does product management imply a reorganization at the Lab? We don't need org charts or inside information, but one of the things I find really troubling is that the JIRA isn't effective if you think of SL as a suite of products, and I find it really hard to get engaged with the Lab on business projects and support.

Thanks M - it's always nice to hear about your progress - been an amazing 4 months.

Unfortunately, all this does is transfer extra load to the login servers. Bots can be easily programmed to relog if they get logged off... putting extra strain on the already fragile login system, authentication servers, asset servers as things that MUST be cached even by bots, physics data, friends lists, groups lists, etc etc. all get redownloaded,.

I find it increasingly frustrating that the so-called NEW CEO at Linden Lab spins the numbers to make them look as if everything is alright in the world.

Let's take them point by point shall we?

First Hour Experience: This is the load of crud you tried passing off on the community last week, but you shied away from answering them, will you us now? You think that the SLURL program will make the FIRST HOUR experience so wonderful for New Residents. How man New Residents did you speak with to see if they even knew what a SLURL was? Comparitevly how many New Residents where there in the time you were speaking to these other phantom New Residents? I ask this because college statistics say you must meet at least 7% to get a decent sample. Did you obtain 7%, and just how did you do that?

The problem is, and you can verify this for me, is you didn't talk to a SINGLE New Resident about this program did you? I kind of know what New Residents are thinking, I have been doing a New Resident Q&A for over 5 years now, and from experience, because you see I asked them, NO New Resident that I spoke with last week knew what a SLURL was in their first hour. The only one that knew it the first day, was someone doing a Search and found them that way. So, let's drop your pretense, and get back to work, this time you should actually TALK to New Residents, instead of just assuming what they might want. You would be surprise what their answer is!

MAINLAND IMPROVEMENTS: I'm sorry to ask this question, but just how many more PRIMS have been added to the MAINLAND and did you survey the Residents that live around these "improvements" before acting? Did you actually check to see if any of those Residents wanted those "improvements". Let's not forget, the more PRIMS you guys stick in the world, the slower it gets for those that live around where your so-called "improvements" are. While it's nice to have a finished road after 3 years, does it really work out in the end? The only thing I can see Jack Linden doing is adding MORE LAG to the GRID.

Experience Localizaton: Since apparently you don't know what this person really does, you just gave us a fluff piece. There's nothing to see here, please move along.

Product Focus: Well, you said a mouthful there. The thing that worries me is the "Product Enhancement" line. You see, everytime your "competent" staff tries to add something to the world, it either crashes and kicks everyone off the Grid, or your "competent" employee's let slip a number of bugs and have to remove the newly added "enhancement". Just how many tries was it to get version 1.24 in place? 5 or 6? If you really are thinking that this is a good thing, well then we all know you are nothing more then a mouth for Philip Rosedale to talk thru.

Now, let's go back to your "celebrating" some of those numbers. You brag that Viewer Crashes are down, but have you compared the viewer count to people who have decided to get a 3rd Party viewer and say at a lower level of version since that is more stable then the one's your "competent" staff have brought out? If not, why not? Have you noticed that as online numbers increased, the more lag and crashing the rest of the world is doing and the number of failed logins are occurring during this time period? Why not? You see that would be something to celebrate, but since you didn't mention that, I assume you know those numbers and are afraid to announce them.

Finally, your cash issues. It seems to me, and to most merchants in-world, that the Linden Dollar has dropped off and people are buying less. There was a time in-world that the money passing hands was greater to then the money made by Linden Lab from fee's, Islands, etc. Can you give us that number now? Or do you know what us Merchants know, that the SL Economy is in a recession?

You can hide all you want Sir, but I will always be around to call you out on these things. Robin, I'll be seeing you tomorrow with these questions, please be prepared to give me detailed answers.


Thanks,

Bob Bunderfeld

Congrats on 4 months M, seems longer to me. do you have a bear yet? i'd love a copy so would a few of the other regulars.

T Linden? you guys need to think of better names M's kinda cool. like that gadget guy from 007.

i really don't have anything add just wanted to say hello, looking forward to the newbie friendly viewers.

cheers

-Crunch

Great post and sounds like good news, in general. Could you go into a little more on some of the items below, M?

"Leading the company’s efforts to make Second Life more relevant, more usable and more reliable."

--More relevant in what sense?

"Yes, we are creating a viewer that is new user friendly! Stay tuned for updates."

--Great idea for noobs, but will it be a totally separate and optional viewer for the rest of us?

"We are now at a stage in our development where we need to add addition product strategy, product development and product management experience to help us better tailor our product offering for each of our key markets."

--Could you define what you see as the "product" and the "key markets?" (BTW, a hearty welcome to T Linden!)

"We’ve just completed a major strategy project to define the areas of focus for the next 18 months and we are in the process of translating those strategies into tactical action plans."

--Sounds cool - can you share those "areas of focus"/"strategies" with us at all?

Maybe it's like Hangman, and a secret message will be revealed. OK, so we have an emm and a tee so far...

Congartz Mark for the post and the forward moves during the last 4 months. It is great to see SL moving forward with a purpose again.

The increasing concurrency though does alarm me. We are thinking of starting snail racing in our sim, which should be entertaining as they are able to travel faster than my avatar once the concurrency figure breaks past the 65k.

Shame it can now take up to 15 minutes for the sim to rez once we exceed that 65k concurrent users online.

Marianne, thank you for your post. Welcome areas are very much part of the "first hour" redesign work. I've spent enough time on Orientation Island and Help Island to see them both through the eyes of a new user. We have a lot of ideas already and welcome yours.

Give us Mega Prims (prims with dimensions > 10m)! There are already 1000's of them in world and they don't seem to be doing any harm, so what is the point to not allow us builders to make them as we need for the content we create?

Dear M Linden,

Before you "celebrate", I think every SL entrepreneur would appreciate the proper focus and attention paid to the numerous show-stopper/critical money, email, IM and communication related JIRA issues pending, such as vendors or pay option failures. e.g. VWR-8744, VWR-8834, VWR-4513, VWR-5924, VWR-4514, SVC-405, VWR-7866, VWR-2950.

Daily user-to-user transactions may continue their steady climb, but the success rate in handling such transactions is declining, with no urgency shown on LL's side to fix those issues in a timely fashion. When payments fail, SL entities lose trust, value, and business, with little accountability on the part of Linden Lab.

Until SL becomes a reliable platform to handle transactions and communication near flawlessly, the platform will not become the pretended and advertised "Increased Productivity, Effective Collaboration, Improved Communication..."

LL is currently failing to stabilize the essential economy and communication components supposedly making this platform a viable marketplace, and that's a shame.

I am looking forward for incoming progress in stabilizing the above mentioned issues.

PS: Welcome Tom! I wish you the best of luck to promote and tailor a product ridden with 500+ major bugs. That must be a daunting task...

MaCelia, thanks for your post! A few answers/clarifications: 1) As we make Second Life easier for new users, we are making it more relevant to more people. 2) We still have a substantial amount of work to do before we have a new viewer interface for new users. But, one of our guiding principles is that our new experience must be a net gain for existing residents. So, you should feel confident we won't be hugely simplifying the current viewer then making that Residents only choice. We didn't do that with the roll out of the modified Dazzle viewer and we won't with a new viewer. 3) Second Life is a complex experience that is made up of a series of products and product features (the viewer, search, map, content creation tools, etc.). We've matured to a stage where it makes sense to put more investment in each of them to make them more robust, better designed, more closely aligned with Residents' needs. By key markets I mean vertical markets -- consumer, enterprise (includes government/not for profit) and education 4) We are already posting on the several of our strategic initiatives e.g., how we're improving the "first hour" experience, how we're improving stability and scalability. As we make progress on other initiatives, we'll be sure to do blog posts on them. Apologies for the long reply.

Meade, thank you for your post. 22 is indeed a lot of regions to explore!! The Map is on the "must fix" list.

Thanks for writing Dusan! The new viewer design will be an interface design. If we have to make changes to the underlying code base we will do that with care and thought. I am not sure at this point how much of that we will be doing. Also, we will be folding the great thinking already done in the Resident community into our work. I write about our definition of "product" in another reply so I won't rewrite it here. As we reshape the way we work to better align to our strategy, we'll work hard to ensure our tools (like Jira) are also aligned to our strategy. Point noted.

Thanks for the clarifications - I appreciate you taking the time to reply (doesn't seem too long to me!)

Some of that blog post is positive and I'm enjoying looking at showcase recently, I wish it had been here when I was new, just take fashion out of it as it has no place being there.

Crashes down, teleport improvements are boxes I can tick. I'd like to hear more about this strategic plan.

Crucial issues for inworld business like failed deliveries never seem to get addressed, that's a very important issue and whereas I understand it's not easy, for a forward thinking company the challenge should be grasped. The same goes for group limits.

Three things:

1) Regarding roads, I'm one who is very pleased to see these roads being finished.

Just the other day, I found a nice piece of land for myself near a road that I think was a new one. I don't like the claustrophobic feeling of being plopped down in a square amid dozens of other squares, filled with structures of all heights and sizes.

While I was looking for my own land, I followed a number of roads looking for plots for sale. I noticed that there were many plots not near the roads, but very few available at roadside.

So I'm apparently not the only person who prizes them!

2) Please consider getting rid of the unfair and meddling Showcase. I don't think LL should be reaching down into the economy to pluck out resident businesses they think should get free promotion and advertising and the lion's share of the profits, at the expense of their competitors.

I believe it is outrageous for LL to use its power to pick out one hair or clothing shop, for instance, and decide to throw business to them. My feeling is that only not-for-profit venues should be featured on Showcase.

3)

Where do indigenous content creators fit into this? Are we "consumers," even if we make more than we spend in SL? Or are we just not in the picture?

coco

What does "Immersive Spaces" refer to in this passage?

I see that Rivers Run Red uses the phrase in a trademarked slogan "Rivers Run Red - The Immersive Spaces Company™".

Hello all, and hello Mr. M,



Why not opening SL to all ages? Not all of it is X rated. Why not meeting your child at Svarga? Anything wrong with that? We don't have a "teen world wide web" either, do we?

Take it a step further and merge the teen and main grid, and instead create a main (PG) and an ADULT grid (mature, very mature). To get clearance for the adult grid, age verification would be required.

Note: the "grids" would not be separated like the beta is. The teen "grid" is in fact on the same grid, you just cannot go there because you lack clearance. If there was an adult grid, you could still communicate with people not currently logged in to an adult sim.

This would make SL safer. Not just for kids who now stroll the main grid anyway, but also for adults who could enjoy mature content is a safe and controlled environment, away from kids. Just like in RL. We don't close entire cities for kids because there is a sex shop somewhere, but instead we card people who want to enter the shop.

Virtual worlds are very appealing for the young crowd. Open the doors for them, and SL's value will increase immediatly.

great post monalisa, i always thought a merge would be a bad thing, that makes me think the other way now. and makes me want to sing

"...teach them well and let them lead the way...."



-Crunch

M Linden, I know that you will not be able to stay here for the next few days answering everyone's posts. But I did want to point out that even by taking the time to answer a handful of posts as you have done here, helps tremendously. LL was too quite and visibly absent from the forums for too long. l could never understand that, there is not one other program/platform etc of this complexity that does not have an active forum with help for it's user base. The recent change and new threads started by Lindens are very much appreciated.

Sorry for the delay in replying - Immersive Spaces refers to the product launched by Rivers Run Red for which Linden Lab has an exclusive license.

Sorry - might have been helpful to include links:

http://riversrunred.com/immersive-workspaces/

http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/2008/09/rivers-run-red.html

I had a fairly big post that quoted the above and elaborated on some bits but it all boils down to "Hi M. Yeah, what Jesse said" so I'll just leave it at that.