Second Life, There, and the Metaverse

We've had a lot of questions over the last few days about the announcement made by There.com last week to refocus their business strategy -- including whether we plan to buy them or merge with them, why we're offering their members a discounted Second Life account, and if we're advertising on their fansites to recruit them.

So, first, we have no plans to purchase or merge with There. Second, it isn't our intention to recruit members away from There. We aren't doing any advertising on fansites for There members (although some Second Life residents are). But we do want to make sure that people from There know we're thrilled they're giving us a chance, and very glad to have them join us. We've tried to make it as easy as we can for them to get an account.

There are important reasons for our support of Thereians apart from the prospect of increased revenue for Linden Lab. We continue to believe that there is an exciting digital future ahead of us, and that creative pioneers from Second Life, There, and other early digital worlds are laying the groundwork for that future. It's important to us to preserve the value being created in businesses, buildings, and designs, regardless of where that value was initially created.

To help you understand our position, following is an "open letter" from Philip Linden:

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Digital Worlds, Digital Lives, Digital Futures
An Open Letter to Thereians and the Metaverse community
Philip Rosedale, CEO and Founder, Second Life

With the recent announcement that the There.com commercial service is to receive reduced support, I wanted to write a bit about how I (Philip Rosedale, AKA Philip Linden) and the Second Life team see the future of these places in a way that hopefully spans both our worlds. The achievements of both the Second Life and There.com communities in pioneering our digital future are impressive. I believe that the collective challenge of building a viable digital world outstrips in importance the success or failure of any one development team or product. We, as developers, are doing the easy part – building the scaffolding for a new world. You, as the engines of creation, must breathe life into it.

Your World

Theme parks and shopping malls are built by designers or design teams. But cities and countries are built by their citizens, in an emergent and bottoms-up process that is enthralling to be a part of and ultimately to look back on. I believe that for digital worlds to become real and relevant, they must be built like cities or countries. There are a lot of growing pains inherent in that choice. Many folks in There looked at the early beta of Second Life and commented (often we laughed and sometimes we winced at your humor and insights) on what a disorganized mess it was – a crazy mishmash of user-built parts that didn’t fit together very well. But look at it today! Those crazy parts are rapidly becoming individually better, and clumping together into all kinds of meaningful groups, places, and experiences. Evolution and competition and learning are moving the world of Second Life forward, just as early cities rose from haphazard camps and bazaars into great expressions of collective meaning.

The criticality to achieving this result is ownership and control – like it or not, to succeed we must truly and irreversibly make the world your property – yours to do with as you like and as you are able. In different ways, the development teams of both Second Life and There recognize the importance of a user-owned world. Where There has focused on a more casually oriented experience that gradually/hopefully broadens to a wider scope, Second Life jumped into the deeper waters of user control right from the start. Pros and cons can be found for both choices. Hopefully when you look at Second Life, you will be able to see the incredible future that this degree of openness will offer.

Digital Business

Real entrepreneurship has for the first time become a glimmer of possibility within our worlds, and the hopes of being able to pioneer businesses, create great designs and potentially great wealth has attracted many bright new minds. We have been overly distracted by the early debates (more prominent in There due to the active courting of real-world marketing partners, but present at some level in Second Life as well) around the intrusion of real-world merchandise and marketing into digital community. While these are certainly spirited and exciting discussions, I would assert that in a couple years’ time they will be a laughable memory! The incredibly creative output of the pioneering digital community, fueled by vastly reduced protyping and near-zero manufacturing costs, will dwarf real-world merchandise in their volume and importance. Look at the clothing already created in There (not to mention Second Life with its literally millions of designed objects) – does Levis or Nike stand a chance against the hundreds of highly skilled designers pouring their hearts into rapidly growing catalogs of new fashions?

This is but one of the reasons why digital worlds are so important – they will become the vanguard of the creative design process. You, the pioneers of these worlds, will create creative businesses whose quality and output will quickly outstrip the real world. So please keep creating – whether in SL or There – it is in your creations and your profits (not ours) that the early stories of why the Metaverse matters will be told. I can’t wait for the day one of our newly-minted virtual design companies outstrips the real-world leaders in its category!

Building Value in Virtual Worlds

The digital future is still largely a blank slate, slowly taking on form and meaning. For this reason, all those who come are quickly drawn into the epic debate over what we are to become, and what this is all to mean. We cannot avoid building – we are driving the train forward while laying the rails underneath it. But the ‘building’ we are doing isn’t limited to modeling or texturing or scripting – it includes creating government, organizing events, building interest groups, or just contributing a voice to the many discussions and debates about the future.

There is tremendous value inherent in these creations and communities, independent of the individual world they’re in. It’s our hope to find ways to sustain this value, and allow it to transfer from one world to another as necessary. Perhaps these changes can be a test – are there yet ways to transition value from one world to another? We’ll do whatever we can to support these changes, and welcome feedback on all these ideas from both communities.

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