Solution Providers Update from Glenn Linden

Maybe theyre saying that if youre not part of providing a solution then, ya know....you must be part of the problem

Is any further comment needed?

Well we have made good experiences with real world companies which wanted more than a little product placement like a sneaker or advertising by message boards. For examples the 4 star hotel "Concorde" in Frankfurt City. They using the spot as 3D homepage extension. Guests from homepage can visit inworld the place, get a first look and meet the business manager from time to time for questions, before they want to booking. An virtual room give visitors more impressions as a photo on a website. Get walk in customers from SL? Perhaps, but it is not the basically task for them. The target groups are international visitors, who are looking for a good hotel in this city motropolis from outside of SL.
Another marketing example is Hitradio FFH from Frankfurt. They wanted a model of their real life transmitting station and insert their streams to the parcels. Generally for regional promotion. But with secondlife the listeners (fans) can also vistit the place, the source of the radio which they are hearing every morning on the journey to work. Radio station can also send their advertises inworld about streaming and visitors get more information about the radio background.
This are only two examples which are staying in SL nearby 2 years. I could list some more but this should not going offtopic too much and its not my task to promote something. On this examples you can see, that this are not huge concerns with single simulators. This are companies which are integrated into a virtual world there also residents have advantages. They spent money for events, starting lotteries or help new residents on their first steps, give residents an intent for their secondlife AND acquire new residents from outer world.

In future SecondLife needs a standarisation, an interface with existing solutions and generally money and well known company names which are using this new medium. Only then secondlife will have a future, as a kind of 3D web. I have no interest in further MMORPG and i think the average age of residents are higher as in world of warcraft. That means residents have other tasks to joining secondlife as an standard world of warcraft player. MMORPGs are a part of this world just like real life companies. That is what secondlife should be, a world of unlimited (legal) options.
Selling inworld stuff for other residents? Yes, perhaps a good task on the first step, an house, vehicle or a hat is not much more as an animated GIF module for a website. Im be able to build, script, sculpt, animate, texture everything what i want, see or think in secondlife or building crossworld solutions with web databases. But in current phase of SL it is not much more as gaming stuff. SecondLife have the ability to beeing much more then this, think on 3D onlineshops. People like to shop virtual stuff. Why not also real stuff and can easy pay in L$? You life in Arizona and found a huge japanese desh from a seller of okinawa? No problem, you can test a model of this in your virtual home which was rebuild from real one, order the real stuff comfortable by mail and pay easiely in same system. With 3D preview impressions it is much better then EBay.
Or make your weekend purchases from office in 3D supermarkets. You order what you need and will supplied in time you want. Many online shops in www enjoy growing popularity. Abstractly you are buying also in real world only boxes with colorful pictures.
But first you need a handful of companies which have the bravery to invest in this.

Only some argues for real life companies solutions, which want more then video conferencing in second life. I think that most of the companies principially not interested into secret conferences in SL. There are much better ways and easier solutions. Perhaps only for open conferences or expositions. But for events of this kinds the sims are to small with only 100 avatars.



Own grids like opengrid solution? I think it is hard enough to promote a single region in main grid ocean and it will be much harder to promote an own single grid outside of SL. Which advantage have an own grid, then it is not the task of conferencing? Perhaps to simulate something for real world? No i think not, secondlife software is not fast and exactly enough to generate practical results for engineering. Im engineer, i tried out different things. SL is good for marketing and previews, but you need special software for exact calculations.

No i think an separately grid is not the right way. If you are watching free TV, you consume also advertisments. If no one would consume advertisments, an TV channel would not be free. And if it is not free, the channel would have less or no viewers. It is an symbiosis between companies and users.


Yes it is not the problem to create all by your own, theoretical. You forget only the fact of time. You have only 24 hours per day, 365.2421875 days per year and averaged 78.45 years per life for executing all of this. So it is needful that you specialise yourself to one task and buy all other things you need. For buying/selling you need good sollutions from providers.

Thanks Glenn for the posts and follow ups.

It would be great (and for full disclosure I work for a full service provider listed with LL) if we could look to expand out showcase and the *front page* elements - I think more content can be in Showcase (especially educational programmes). I was interested to see the 12 Nights highlight up, this was a great step forward in highlighting resident content. I think Showcase needs to also have the ability to deal with upcoming events of note - or see below.

In addition, whilst events etc are searchable, it's still a difficult tool to use. It would be good to have a tool to highlight one off large or resident important events brought to platform for the residents. Perhaps with the work being done on the website, a *hot events* type feature can be dropped in - much like New World Notes do - a weekly highlight on your front page - one editor so not much of an overhead to maintain with a submissions policy.

In responses to some of the other comments, the work we have brought to Second Life is for the main outside some areas mentioned - e.g. non profits and eco conferencing. There are still many valuable uses for the platform with innovative results. We have benefited hugely from registering with Linden Lab, so I recommend it to other users wishing to benefit from the resources and support available.

I dunno..I kinda saw this post as LL bragging that they don't need the little guy cause they have all these businesses paying the bills. My take was it was further back-up to the statements made about Premium members and how they aren't that important.

My thoughts exactly. LL has been laying out a barrage of "we're a business platform, interested in businesses, not in hobbyists" lately.
While a lot of it could, if you squinted a little, be taken to be a result of lots of plans, thoughts and wordings coincidentally colliding just now, this latest post comes not as any logical follow-up to anything, but is deliberately chosen, written and released now. It's hard to take this as anything but driving home the point and clearing up any confusion still lingering.

Doing my best to keep my SL business going. Was going to upload a new product today, but can't log in. Hoping for a solution soon.

Thank you, Glenn.

Thank you for the additional helpful and constructive comments. As for business use, if you look at reality, you'll see that businesses have chosen to use Second Life. Linden Lab hasn't coerced them into it. Residents will benefit if businesses in fact push for an SLA for Second Life. Look at the internet - which grew successfully from both business use and individual use. We hope to enable Second Life to do the same. Residents can benefit form tools and capabilities required for business use, and businesses benefit from the resources available from individuals.