Linden Labs email and chat services

have you guys considered offering your own email and chat services? I assume you have, so I'm wondering about the details of your thoughs

Is it something within your company's grasp this year? Is there a barrier or two to be overcome? Have you made any progress in coming up with chat and email packages for sale to your residents?

Personally, I think it's the answer to the issues of communication among residents on a broader, more available scale. I also think it would solve some of the smaller issues of SL like offline message limits, graphical client unavailability, etc.

I'm sure alot of us would pay a fair price for a Second Life POP and IMAP email account and I know i would use a Second Life chat client all day every day, no matter where i was!

~Lefty

We've certainly been thinking a lot about such things as lightweight (e.g., text-only chat) and mobile IM clients.

Joyfully, consistent with Second Life being a Resident-owned, Resident-created world, we have Residents who're actually making a lot of impressive headway on projects like this on their own. I heard mention that Baba Yamamoto and Adam Zaius (to name two--please let me know of any others!) have already got working tools that do this. Wow. So, yeah, you'll want to get in touch with them.

We applaud and encourage such innovative efforts which not only are cool, but benefit the community at large and make Second Life more accessible if you can't login "the regular way".

I don't know of plans for us to become an email hosting provider because there are so many companies that do that exceptionally well (I use Gmail). It would have to be something compelling and unique that contributed to the SL experience.

Your passion for Second Life is very much appreciated, Lefty.