A response from Caledon.

I don't believe, can hardly find it credible, that any company of this size can be so oblvious to the basic business rule of keeping the customer happy, or at least mollified. So what I take away from this whole episode is that LL does not consider grid residents to be their customer base. I have no idea who they feel obligated to please to insure the continuation of SL, but it is most obviously not us, at least not in their eyes.

*points to things like Mitch Kapor's stated opinion of regret that the Grid is filled with fantasts and hobbyists rather than his vision of teleconferencing business persons; Rivers Run Red's virtual workspace; and IBMs information sharing tool.*
While it may easily end up sounding bitter, I think it's becoming more and more obvious that SL, the virtual world, is indeed considered a tech demo and testbed for the "true" product.

I think, however, that this turn of focus to internal business communications tool is undermining Philip Linden's original dream of a connecting grid. LL may think "we're refining the practical use so it can be deployed to everybody once ready", but I think what they are doing is cutting themselves off from those "everybody" who would adopt it.

Whether Philip's vision was a hippie pipe-dream in the first place is an open question, but I think LL is digging themselves into a hole where the grid technology *can never become* anything but another half-successful SharePoint and video-conferencing tool until something better comes along.

ETA: The idea may be to let the open grids take over now to create the connecting grid and infrastructure, and refine the marketable special-case software using it, rather than the "web servers" tying it all together, but in that case, I think they have cut it loose too early; the grid technology does not have enough momentum to survive alone while LL and their partners make nifty business applications on top of it.

Yes, that's very much the way I see it too. The development of a grid technology that is adopted into maintstream culture has to be built from the ground level up, not the top level down. Provide the base platform, make it an attractive place for users to visit and STAY, and eventually you will reach the critical mass that makes larger applications feasible.

You do not reach critical mass with bots and campers. Fudged numbers may appease a board of directors, but it does nothing to solidify a significant user base. Does LL honestly think that IBM and other corporatations would have any interest in SL without the people who live on the grid?

Secondlife is an entertainment platform.

It is a massive error to not recognize and embrace this fact.

Linden Lab is an entertainment company and would do well to recruit entertainment company expertise into it's executive ranks empowered to transform from a geeky toolkit purveyor to a global entertainment platform immediately.

I'd even replace "entertainment" with the broader "social", but yes, I too have the feeling that LL, in a desperate attempt to invent the next killer app, is failing to recognize what they already have.

Excellent post!

Firelight

Well put Ann!

After an announcement like this I feel that LL doesn't care much if masses of frustrated residents leave SL forever. They seem to focus on how to improve the first hour of the new blue-eyed residents who don't know anything about the history of LL and hence replace the old difficult mass who knows too much. All communication from them seem more or less like management-speak than really listening to those who suffer. My opinion is that if people really like to protest then leaving SL is not the best solution but to make the new-comers aware of how unpredictably SL is managed.

It seems more and more evident that phenomenons like SL should not be controlled by for-profit corporations who like to maximize their profit and minimize customer benefit. If Internet was under control of a single corporation maybe we should pay for sending each email, loading web pages, receiving an instant message etc.

Appreciate the confidence, but I've had others mention that sort of thing and... no, not me. If there were greater transparency of minds and motives, it might be constructive.

But the spectre of Resident Organisation writ large would be even worse than the issues we face today. Bad enough that people have to suffer the vagaries of both land barons and the service provider - this would add yet another level of beaurocracy.

It's been tried before; if you read Prokofy's blog I think the story of Metaverse Justice (some name roughly like that) is probably buried in the archives. To summarise: more infighting; less traction with regard to the issues at hand. Besides, what kind of person would want to lead such a thing. Far better a thousand individual voices.

I've said what I had to say, and shall continue to do all I can for residents in Caledon. Maybe the wonderful support of many resident friends uplifts me a bit, but to be honest - the big mistake would be to think I was somehow really special.

It would be an even bigger mistake for our service provider to cater to me, even if I was somehow special. Consider the implications. They have to be very careful to treat everyone the same.

* * * * *

A lot of other good comments here - I won't elaborate other than to say... yeah, that.

As someone pointed out in another thread (forgive me for not having the time to find the exact citation), even one of his smallest customers (a $13,000/yr account) merited a personal trip to appease their unhappiness. The company I work for has a similar approach to customer support: any customer of ours deserves attention and concern.

From what I've seen and you have described, LL *is* treating you the same as everyone else. Most unfortunately for all us, this is evidently the best we're going to get.

Funny, because I always thought the grandfathered full sims were the death of a fair business platform. Everyone who was unlucky enough to start a land business after that date had no possible chance to compete with you and a few dozen other estate owners who could afford to undercut the competition by 50%. A 2 or 3 month grandfather period would have been perfect, a 6 month period would have been tolerable. Instead the status quo has been maintained for a year presumably due to the kind of lobbying you described in your post.

Of all the changes they made the one I'm most glad about is they've finally ended the horrific class structure in OpenSpace sims so we can all compete fairly.

In the light that Second Life IS a social or entertainment platform, it's especially important for LL to realize that to each and every one of us, with the exception of the very few like Desmond and Anshe and others who earn an income here, SL is disposable. Especially today, when the headlines on CNN.com read "The government reports more grim news about the economy: 240,000 jobs lost in October; unemployment rate spikes to 6.5 percent." Helllloooo Linden Lab; you want to RAISE prices?

When it comes to a choice between owning an open space (or any sim) for pure (individual) enjoyment and spending "playtime money" on families, I bet LL's users will pick their families every time.

Here's a link to what the grid looked like in my 2nd month of operation:

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f329/Torley_Linden/second-map-20-preview.jpg

Seems about 20,000 more regions since then are competing with me just fine.

But you have a really good point. Let's *really* level the playing field.

1) Drop *all* our regions to 195 a month so we can compete with mainland. Or raise mainland prices to 295. Estate management tools for 100 USD a month? Oh please, take 'em - that and the terraforming limits too. That's the biggest class structure imposition of all - we were whacked with the mainland's incredible 100 USD/month subsidy on every region going forward from Nov 06. 75% of my estate is at 295/mo rates, and I am still kicking mainland ass.

2) A neighbour of mine is launching an Atlantean theme - and suddenly Nautilus pops up at double the prims for the price, advertised on the splash screen. Fair playing field? Sarah Nerd summed up how I felt about that in a statement two weeks ago. But not a peep out of us.

But you know what, I can roll with that. Here's what would happen to me if the rates I agreed to back then were taken away.

a) I'd be forced to adjust rates. To look at it from the most callous viewpoint, setting aside the fact that these are dear friends and supporters who made the platform worth visiting back in the day, it would just be a speedbump for my spreadsheet. Like you say, the birds come back to the fence 20 minutes later - until the whole platform takes a dive because we've sold our future. Shades of Wall Street.

b) 10 regions full of dedicated oldbies would lose whatever shred of trust they had for Linden Research, and most of them would get fed up and bail. Yey, more pissed off ex-Second Lifers. Smooth move.

c) If I was treated that way, I'd smarten up and respond in kind. Caledon isn't exactly in the top five when it comes to 'cash in and get out' strategies - for that, I'd need bots. I've got 20 years of industry experience; wouldn't take me much. You of all people know how easy it is.


Hey, I respect you and what you do - absolutely no problem with coexisting. But I call foul when there's talk of levelling the playing field... but that so-called level field has one hell of a tilt on it, leaning heavily toward 1/4 billion square meters of mainland and themed estates at 1/2 tier price built using the pages of our own playbooks.

Level the playing field fairly, and I'd 100% agree with you.

Well, it's obvious that mainland doesn't compete with private estates in any serious sense but if you're double daring me to agree with you then fine I do. As long as the same product costs the same for everyone then we should all be happy.

well you obviously stand to win now that mainland will become more popular.
it seems disingenuous that you are on about a level playing field when you have done everything in your power to tip the landbuying game into your favour with the landbotting.

Well, I have a small, but growing estate of sims, 3 full and 15 openspaces, we'll probably be buying another OS this weekend since we're still expanding. Anyway I have my finger in both pies and stand to gain either way to be honest.

As for landbotting, probably this is not the right place to bring this up but I'm sure you know I can't stop myself. Landbotting is as level a playing field as possible. Tutorials and resources are free to find on the internet and everyone is free to put as much time into writing a landbot as they wish. There's no nod and a wink to a special group of players who can landbot for one price while everyone else is charged extra for it.

It's certainly arguable that management of the Mainland should have been turned over to somebody who knows what the hell they are doing--such as an actual Estate manager. But it's not a supportable claim that the value of a sim of Mainland is currently comparable in any way to an Estate sim.

One can make all kinds of technical arguments for why that's true, but it's kind of beside the point, given that the damned stuff exists, LL is a business, and under current pricing, LL can't keep the abandonment rate from creeping ever higher, largely hidden by delay in reclaiming non-productive land.

In Nautilus City, they had to dedicate 30-odd sims to the task of generating a brief infusion of auction proceeds and ongoing tier revenue equivalent to 4 normal Mainland sims. We can be all awe-struck by the auction prices, but how long before that cash flow goes negative--especially at today's low cost of capital?

The Mainland is a financial swamp for LL, but with demand in the gutter, raising tier wouldn't level the playing field, it would sink the swamp further.

A swamp of their own making...

As others have said, it might have been a smarter move to drop tier a bit. Even just going to US$150/month for mainland and US$250/month for private islands, and adjusting the non-full-sim tiers down a little to scale, would probably cut down on the amount of yellow we see on the map.

Even without this openspace stuff, I really wasn't interested in adding to my monthly fees for SL. Or for anything else.. I suspect a lot of other people feel the same way.

This could have been managed sooooo much better. Either I'm missing something and need to start buying into the conspiracy theories more or LL really dropped the ball on this one.

Having lived in Caledon for three years, I can safely say that Mr Shang's success is not due to his use of "bots" as he doesn't use them. We rent/buy land rights there because he has created an atmosphere that we want to enjoy. If you do the same, I imagine you will have the same success in your own niche. Mainland and Estate land appeal to different people, within the Estate lands alone there is appeal for different people. So, there is no competition between the two, and, as far as I can tell, never will be.
This call on LL's part seems peculiar to say the least to drop the service of a currently existing product through the floor for a vastly proportionatly higher price, and offer as an alternative the current product's capabilities for more than what people are currently paying for it. From what I have been reading about on various forums, the people that are the most concearned are not those who have been misusing the product, but those that have been using it as expected, and are now being forced to either cut back to a rediculously set 750 prims or to "upgrade" to the same thing they already have been paying for. Fortunatly, in Caledon, Desmond has been doing his best to ease his tenants through this in a wonderfully accomodating manner.

I went a bit throubh the previous posts, and I would like to restate something:

-there is not a given purpose to SL. Or SL is to everybody, from "hippies" to companies. there are people who come for games, people who come for social, people who come for dream, people who come for healing (disabled, etc) people who come for art, people who come for in world business, people who come for RL business, and probably many others.


-None of this purpose is "good" or "bad", all have to be served on an equal basis. If you suppress one of these categories, there will simply be no point for the others coming in. Like in There.com which is slowly dying of not having implemented social groups and building tools.

-Linden labs is basically not a content provider. They provide the container, the tool: the hosting of the sims and the development of the tools. They can have some sims and animations of their own, but it is not their vocation. And not the source of the success of SL.

-If Linden Labs want to drop a part of the users of SL, whatever it is the "hippie" part or the "business part, they will, not kill SL, but make it just ininteresting for everybody.


-Some mention hidden agendas of LL, or shadowy calculations. But rational people simply share their opinions and discuss, so that they don't have such hidden plans or calculations.

-the process of sending an announcement and seeding an "improved" second which is the same than the first woth other words is not a discussion process, it is not heeding at the users. I imagine LL simply don't care for us, they even not read this forum.

I am really surprised that a few residents as well as LL seem to not understand that some estate owners have created community, not just bought a bunch of sims to rent out.

It is a rare and wonderful talent/skill to develop community. A community has a sense of identity and a sense of belonging. The successful communities in SL made SL more than server rental with creative tools.

I include in this the successful and beautiful role play sims as well as the many communities large and small created by those with this rare skill. (The SL forum club house is an example, The Shelter another, NCI, Caledon and the whole furry nation...so many good examples of people creating community).

Nautilus and Bay City are just dreadful and show that LL has no clue as to what creates community.

Since LL obviously lacks any ability to create community (see how they treat their customers) , I beg them to please work with the residents who have proven to have this skill in spades before your bizarre customer services makes SL a confused wasteland of malls and short term tourists.

Set up a paid council of community organizers to serve as an outside source of advice - not people who just own a lot of land or pay big tier. People with a proven track record of creating ongoing communities that keep residents happy and in SL.

LL you are too self involved and have lost touch with your own creation.

Dnali, forget it. Nobody's listening or, if listening, reacting. It is telling that in a forum titled "Talk with M and Jack Linden" the talk was almost purely one-sided, in a single overlong thread disallowing any meaningful conversation.

That thread appears to be a pure "let the fractious user base blow off some steam" exercise.

We know that premium subscriptions are irrelevant. What had been Openspaces so far is now called Homesteads and still made as expensive as originally planned, with even some more restrictions.

Whether this is a singular bait and switch manoeuvre, part of a grand strategy to push people onto the mainland, an attempt to drive off older (as in: more fractious) residents or just a reaction to changing market trends we'll see in a few months when the consequences become clearer.

People may have entertained a hope that LL could be swayed after the first blog, but the second was M handing down the verdict. I don't think anybody expected the thread after that to make any difference apart from blowing off steam. Heck, Katt practically stated as much with her popcorn comment opening the thread.

Dude, are you smoking crack? I pay $295 a month for every one of my regular sims. How much are you paying for your mainland sims? And how in the hell is that a level playing field?

I would certainly go for a drop in price for private island tier.

One thing noticed when I got my own island was that I never have to contact support anymore. When I had a mainland sim I was contacting them daily with problems. So they are actually saving support wise from me having a private island.

They may be paying more to support mainland but (in theory, when there's not so much yellow on the map) they make a lot of it up with tier.

I don't ever see mainland and estate tier evening up...