Sound Business

Feel free to bash, per usual, a top of the head theory. I'm not meaning to scream d00m5d4y or expose the many evils that are Linden Research et cetera; this is just wonderment based on various ideas and observations. Furthermore,

Now what was I thinking? Yes, the world continues to grow as LL releases yet another vast landmass. The population continues to grow (he says realizing that there's a marked difference between one-hundred-thousand accounts and a few thousand active users). Usability continues to decline as the grey invasion advances, and other indications signal the acceleration of The Asset System All Hail The Central Asset System swirling the bowl.

I pause to say "you'd think Prokofy could get that right as many times as I've typed it."

But whoa now, usability is a tricky term. It may just be the case that most, and yes I mean most, of the population still just use Second Life as a 3D chatroom. If that's true, the grid may seem perfectly usable to them. In which case, providing more land and more lag inducing features is sound business practice because it's what the better portion of the customer base is demading and will be happy to have.

My question is, if such a thing exists, are we anywhere near the point that the model's increasingly obvious lack of scalability will tip the balance of demand on the asset server so that the bulk of the population will find Second Life unusable even as a chatroom? My thinking is that the fairest indication of such a swing will be increasing amounts of public (or non-bid auction, therefore governor) land. One can hardly blame LL for barreling blindly into the grey as long as all the land they release is steadily tiered. What will they do when that's no longer the case?

Of course it may never happen. As long as people are happy hanging in small areas chatting, listening to music, and seeing only particle blings on a grey background, it may never happen. We're only up to the point of having to ipl the grid several times a month. Is that not enough?

Okay well I've already been corrected. Gosh you people are fast ha ha I said "you people."

It apparently doesn't so much matter how the bulk of the population defines "usability." It matters that the people paying the tier for the land, that the bulk of the population uses, continues to pay the fees. Usability to funders is what, people being on their land, being listed in popular places, getting a dev incentive? It seems to me that'll last even less time than the party. After all, the basics can still hang on all the land the governor is accumulating while the tier payers quietly slip away.

We have no way of clocking this do we? It may already be happening. But I shall not be a d00m54y3r. Everything is rosey, the population continues to grow, all auctioned land continues to be bid on and paid for, the asset system continues to scale with great alacrity /clap yeah whatever.

Thank you for the correction Jardon.

What is it that you expect people to do with it other than use it as a chatroom?

If you make your avatar move around people act like there is something wrong with you.

Using Poser seems unlikely to become a mass market hobby.

The average paint program user probably want to use output that doesn't have to get made into a 1024 by 1024 pixel file.

Statuesque chatting to pretty bling is an okay second vocation for the basic account masses as far as I'm concerned. My question is how that group affects, or can affect, the bottom line at Linden Lab and, therefore, the future of the world. This is simply proposed as a topic for discussion. It's not meant to be a dramatic attack on anyone's lifestyle or business practices et al or a directive of how other people should, or shouldn't, live their second lives. I apologize for the confusion.

The Asset System All Hail The Central Asset System is obviously not ever going to scale properly to a grid any larger than the one we have now; and, we're told, shrinkwrapping the software so that groups can build their own gridded worlds is years away.

What might happen in the meantime? We've speculated that SL will begin to show a downward trend in population growth as word gets around that the grid is useless. We've speculated that SL will begin to show an upward trend in nonactive and cancelled accounts as existing customers find the grid useless. But it's not useless to the masses is it. They are perfectly happy with the service as is. So proliferating features and land and attracting more of the same seems good business for LL who doesn't have to care about scalability for useability's sake.

The only thing that'll run most of our population off is if the relative few who pay the tier to support the land the masses use get fed up with the service and tier down. That hits the bottom line by cutting into cash flow and forcing LL to support the land in order to keep the basic population entertained. When that double whammy hits, how damaging will it be?

Although I agree with your point about the landed tiering down, I wouldn't say the masses are necessarily perfectly happy with the service as it is, even those among the masses who hang around after their first couple of days.

coco

Can't speak for the masses - never met 'em!

Do think SL isn't functioning very well these days...Hope things will improve.


_/_/_/

Well, Khamon, in light of the update yesterday to the SL web site, I'd say that LL's focus is to try to snag more corporate customers who want to use SL for various business or promotional purposes; the rest of us may very well be just warm bodies or pairs of eyes that LL can claim as a potential audience for big clients they are trying to attract. Witness this statement under the "Partners" section:

Please fill out the Proposal Form if you are interested in working with Linden Lab to:

* Build a large-scale project using Second Life’s platform
* Provide enhanced distribution for Second Life
* Extend an existing brand into the virtual world
* Introduce an existing community to Second Life
* Do something ambitious not listed above

This does not surprise me in the least, I was expecting LL's focus to shift in this direction eventually. Usability issues, however, should most definitely affect LL's ability to attract corporate partners, though who knows what sort of improvements they might hurry to put in place if they got some really big corporate fish hooked on the idea of working within SL.

And what about the whole Havok thing? Will that engine (in theory) increase the usability of the SL grid, or not affect it at all?

(Nice forum avatar, by the way, Khamon. )

Truthfully, while I personally want havok 2, it will not effect most of the people who play sl in any noticable way.

On the issue of big business in SL. At least their signs will be professionally designed and less likely to spout controversial or innapropriate messages .

-The money LL gains from such investments would certainly allow them to expand their infrastructure and hire more devs/liasons/hall monitors etc.

-If these large business hire professionals to create content for SL, then I believe the average quality of objects will go up.

-Large corporations would also be in a better position to enforce copywrite/trademark infringment countermeasures, thereby setting precident and possibly making it easier for the rest of us to do so. Talk about an incentive to fix permissions.

-Finally, individual users are prone to stick around even when they are dissatisfied, and their absence from second life would probably not have a serious impact. This still applies even to moderately sized groups. A corporation with a solid investment would definately have enough pull to make an impact should they leave. This sort of investor would also probably be less influenced by personal dependancy and sentimentalism which means they are more likely to follow through on that sort of leverage.

Go for it LL!

Oh, I agree, Rickard. I'm hoping SL will be around, in some format, for many years to come, and about the only way that I can see to ensure that is to get some other businesses interested in using SL in some way. It's interesting, though, to see LL being more open (at least in a public manner) to these sorts of partnerships. Of course, they must balance their obvious desire for more corporate involvement with their ability to continue to attract (and retain) new users. It's an interesting time to be part of SL, to see what happens next.