Infohubs

Are all infohubs owned by Gov. Linden ?

Actually, what I'm wondering is whether an 'infohub' is only an infohub if LL says it is. Are there standards or qualifying markers that certify it as an infohub ? And when it has qualified as such, is the land then turned over to Gov. Linden to make it an 'official' infohub ?

Once upon a time, in days of yore, you weren't allowed to freely teleport anywhere in SL. Instead, you could only get around by teleporting to pre-determined map locations called "telehubs" ... and then fly/walk the last couple of kilometers of your journey.

Land around these telehubs was considered to be very valuable, as most people didn't really like that final part of the journey, and would much rather visit stores right next to a telehub. Plus, of course, everybody flying out of a telehub would see your store anyway (good advertising!!). Particularly obnoxious advertising builds could even be constructed to (quite literally) "capture" aerial traffic flying out of the hubs.

Needless to say, land barons sharked these areas for a premium.

Then, one day, (almost a year ago - a long time in SL history!) ...the Lindens decided to allow unfettered point-to-point teleport access to anywhere on the map. No more need for telehubs. Hooray! - the telehub tyranny was lifted!

This didn't please the land barons... or the people who had paid inflated prices to said land barons for all their hub-adjacent land. In order to appease these people, Linden Lab stated that they intended to build a new type of building on the site of the old telehubs. These new buildings would be packed full of compelling linden-sourced content, and generate lots of traffic, just like the telehubs did. And they would be called.... "Infohubs"!

Sadly - and perhaps, predictably - for all their good intent, the Lindens didn't really have the foggiest idea how to actually put this plan into practice. The Linden infohubs comprised a couple of information boards, some freebie vendors, and a surreal "paint your own hippopotamus" competion. It was an abject failure. The infohubs bombed.

Disgruntled ex-telehub land owners threatened a bait-and-switch class action against LL, for devaluing their land. Remarkably, LL capitulated, and started buying back infohub-adjacent parcels! Some folks held on to the land though, thinking the infohubs might -eventually - turn into something worthy.

There was a contest, in which residents were asked to design a future infohub. Somebody won. I've no idea what happened to that design. It looked kinda neat, but was basically the linden infohub in new clothing. Maybe that's why it was quietly discarded - I can't remember any of them being rolled out.

At this point, some folks offered to take control of certain infohubs, and re-model them into specific community-focussed projects. This never seems to have been made a formal process, and who exactly got to re-model infohubs seems to be a bit of a random affair... a case of asking the right Linden at the right time, I think. Some of the resulting infohubs ended up being prettty neat. Others less-so.

As the resident-created infohubs started to come online, the remaining Linden-style infohubs were quietly deleted from the map, leaving empty parcels. Not many people noticed. If questioned, the Lindens said they would be retaining the land as governor-owned, but had no immediate plans for it.

A couple of months ago, the land started being recycled as first land.

Last week I asked Torley if there was still any infohub slots remaining, for suitable resident-sourced projects. One of my friends has a very nice German "newbie welcome" centre, running on her own land. It's so nice that LL have actually made it a default rez point for new German-speaking residents! - they pop right out into her skybox, without ever setting a foot on orientation island. As such, this struck me as being a particularly worthy candidate for an infohub, particularly since it's non-commercial, eating into my friend's tier cost/prim count, and - by their own admission - basically doing LL's German-language induction job for them.

Sadly, Torley informed me that a new round of infohubs might be released at some point in the future, but not yet

...and that's the history of Infohubs, according to my own muddled memory. Hopefully at least some of it is correct

I'm late reading it, but thank you very much for this reply. A 'history' lesson... something not so easily found here.

I'm guessing that this means you can call your little spot an infohub or build directly beside one and call it an 'infohub extension'. In other words, the name 'infohub' is not a protected name.

Very interesting. I happened upon a thing called a Telehub the other day, I was wondering what it was... I guesss now I know!

Thanks Shep. I enjoyed the read.

After I went through the Orientation and the Help Island, I clicked on the "Go to SL" sign and was sent to an infohub and it was set a my home. The problem there is no information there. I got a small little notecard that did not explain much. I did a search on infohubs and found one that was loaded with all kinds of information, (I wished I had gone there first).

I wish there were standards for the infohubs, before they are set up.