Humble vs. Ambitious?
Rod Humble, Linden Lab CEO, formerly EA: Ease of use and accessibility are obviously extremely important; http://eicker.at/RH
Tagged: Linden Lab Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Gerrit Eicker
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Gerrit Eicker
Second Life in a Web Browser?
Linden Lab confirms Project Skylight, tests for a Second Life Web Viewer; http://eicker.at/Skylight (via @slhamlet)
Gerrit Eicker
Second Life Marketplace
Korman, Tinfoil Hat Theory: How are Bunnies, Vampires and the SL Marketplace connected to one another? http://eicker.at/LL3
Gerrit Eicker
Metaverse: a Singular Entity?
Blechner: Metaverse is about allowing all different kinds of applications work together; http://eicker.at/z
Gerrit Eicker
Linden Lab
Korman: A tinfoil hat theory about Linden Lab, makers of Second Life. Part 1; http://eicker.at/LL Part 2; http://eicker.at/LL2
Gerrit Eicker
Second Life: Educational Exodus?
Linden Lab cancels educational rebates for SL; http://j.mp/cgiFFv @Fleep: Are you trying to hasten the exodus to OpenSim?
Gerrit Eicker
Virtual Worlds and Business?
Korolov: Why virtual worlds like Second Life suck for business, and some solutions; http://j.mp/d8RTyS
Gerrit Eicker
Second Life History
The virtual whirl: a brief history of Second Life from 1999 to 2010 by @TateruNino; http://j.mp/SLhistory
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Gerrit Eicker
Massively: “Second Life has just seen its seventh anniversary (called its seventh birthday, only it technically isn’t — the original birthday is in March, but the anniversary is in June. There’s history there). It’s also traditionally a time when Linden Lab and Second Life users most often treat each other as enemies and obstacles; and it is a time for retrospectives and for considering the future.”
– 1999-2002: Linden World, and ‘the rig’
– 2002-2003: Beta, taxes, layoffs and the road to economy
– 2004: Features, bugs and Tringo
– 2005: Video, the Lindex, verbing the GOM, a gold rush, and griefers
– 2006: More gold rushes, less griefing and the Second Life Liberation Army
– 2007: Scams, bans and friction
– 2008: A mixed bag
– 2009: The bull in the china shop
– 2010 and beyond
Gerrit Eicker
Rosedale Returns
Philip Rosedale: Mark Kingdon is going to step down as CEO [of Linden Lab], I am going to return; http://j.mp/aM549Z
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Gerrit Eicker
Rosedale: “Mark Kingdon is going to step down as CEO, and I am going to return as interim CEO, working side-by-side with former CFO Bob Komin, who is being promoted to COO. – This is a big, tough change but one the board of directors and management team deeply believes in. We owe Mark great thanks for the many things we’ve accomplished in these last two years – most notably a great improvement in the stability of Second Life, and also the hiring and nurturing of a strong team of new leaders who are now ready to do some amazing work together.”
DW: “Mark’s work wasn’t enough to see the anticipated increase in new users. Predicting that the Lab would break 100,000 concurrency, Linden Lab has instead seen a new viewer that was met with resistance by the current user community while efforts to attract new users seemed to fall flat. – In announcing the retraction of the hiring of 100s of people under Mark’s watch through lay-offs, he positioned the changes as a way to focus on things that matter to both Residents and to the larger goal of bringing Second Life to a larger user base. This plan was implicitly endorsed by Philip Rosedale during a recent speech to Second Life Residents.”
VB: “Back in April, Kingdon said Second Life was bucking the trend of a decline in traffic for virtual worlds. Social networks are the new craze, but Second Life saw $160 million in user-to-user transactions in the first quarter, up 30 percent from a year ago. The company’s monthly unique user number hit a peak of 826,000 in March, up 13 percent from a year earlier. This happened even as virtual worlds such as Vivaty, There.com and Metaplace were shutting down.“
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Gerrit Eicker
ST: “The King is Dead; Long Live the King. … Whatever you want to say about Philip, he understands that Second Life is about the world, a world created by his company but with everybody else, and as he himself said, which contains many people’s livlihoods. … I think it’s an exciting time. I love Philip and I’m glad he’s back. I hope his sojourn out in the parks and coffee shops of San Francisco with his solar-powered laptop making his goofy Love Machine has maybe sorted rather than addled his brains, and brought him to a point where he can motivate staff and reach out to community constituencies compellingly. … Bring back town meetings, bring back Philip and other Lindens at them, and control griefing by prebanning and ejecting the obvious Woodbury remainders instead of indulging them because they are the friends of people like Rodney Linden. – Bring back the Feature Voting System! – Out of enthusiasm, excitement, love. – We’re not going to risk the livlihoods by growing ahead of profits. – We’re safe, the world is safe.”
SLOG: “Philip is a visionary, but more importantly he is a visionary who has the ability to make you believe in his vision, and that is what Second Life needs most. People have started to doubt the prospect of Second Life and lost the vision, if Philip can do one thing is bring that back. He won’t be the only visionary working on that, Mitch Kapor, famous technology entrepreneur and investor in Linden Lab has announced that he will be working closely with Philip as he returns as CEO. – Philip’s two speeches from last week will now come under scrutiny, trying to find clues of what is to come. One of the Philip’s repeating statements in those speeches has been: ‘We were doing to much, we actually have to do less then two thirds with two thirds of the people‘. The two thirds is referring to the massive 30% lays off from earlier this month.”
TC: “June has not been a good month for Linden Lab, the creator of virtual world Second Life. A few weeks ago, the company announced that it was laying off 30 percent of its staff and taking Second Life into a new direction. … The company did not give a reason for the reshuffling of the executive team but it’s safe to assume that it reflects Linden Lab’s new strategic direction. … Considering the company’s new direction towards building out a presence on social networks, Linden Lab is probably going to be embarking on a search for an exec with significant experience developing on these platforms. … As we wrote in the past, Linden Lab isn’t completely dead. The company was reportedly valued between $658 million and 700 million a year ago. If Linden can turnaround Second Life and push the social agenda, the virtual world could rise again.“
Gerrit Eicker
Linden Lab: Restructuring
Linden Lab is undertaking significant restructuring, says: remains in a solid financial position; http://j.mp/8Z84XQ
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Gerrit Eicker
pC: “Linden Lab executives have lamented for several months now that Second Life isn’t interconnected enough with other sites on the web, saying it is too difficult to share actions on Second Life on third-party sites. In February, the company bought up online avatar community Avatars United, as part of an effort to change that. – The company’s financial state isn’t known. Linden Lab has raised about $19 million in funding but hasn’t raised outside cash since 2006. At least two of its backers have sold their stakes; one unnamed investor sold its holdings to late-stage investment firm Stratim Capital a year ago, while Catamount Ventures sold its shares in November 2007.”
RWW: “In previous coverage, Tom Hale, Chief Product Officer for Linden Lab, said user-to-user transactions in the immersive world spiked 30% over last year to $160 million, breaking all previous company records. Clearly this was not enough for Linden to feel comfortable with the future. Its assertion that it is restructuring to ‘generate efficiencies’ (?) doesn’t really answer the question of why.”
Massively: “It’s going to be an interesting month at Linden Lab, certainly, and this week especially. Likely, we’ll know more in a few days. It could wind up as a windfall for competitor businesses as well, as a number of exceptionally talented employees appear to be among the cull.”
LL: “We will adjust how education and non-profit advantages are provided, effective Jan. 1, 2011. All education and non-profit private regions of any type, purchased after Dec. 31, 2010, will be invoiced at standard (i.e. non-discounted) pricing. All currently discounted renewals which occur after Dec. 31, 2010, will be adjusted to the new price at that time. To continue to provide entry-level, private spaces to educators just launching their programs, we will be providing Homestead and Open Space regions to qualifying organizations without their meeting the retail full-region criterion. Customer Support will be available to answer any questions that you may have about these changes.”
DW: “Yesterday’s announcement that the Lab was raising prices on education and non-profits has kicked in a sort of reflex instinct: maybe there is a strategy, and I’m simply too mortal to get it. – I have no idea why I’m doing this to myself again. I went through this for, hmmm, a few years I guess and it turned out that there wasn’t any sort of secret answer, there wasn’t much more than the Love Machine, and Mark Kingdon was brought in to answer the same question I had pounded my own head over: where are you trying to go, and how are you going to get there?”
MJ: “And rightly so, given the critical mass of educators that have generated significant outcomes for Second Life. In fact, it could be argued that it’s only the good news stories generated by the non-profits that have helped offset some of the negative aspects inflated by parts of the mainstream media and others. The comments section below the announcement is well worth a read: even taking out the initial emotion, the overwhelming attitude is that it’s time to downsize or move on. Of course, the migration to OpenSim grids is already well underway, for a range of reasons.”
AH: “Discounted Second Life virtual land will be phased out for non-profit organizations and the education sector as of January 1, 2011 according to this announcement by Nelson Linden. Reaction was predictably negative from those whose budget cycles do easily accommodate costs doubling with three months notice – in other words, essentially all non-profits and education. … Apparently Linden lab has written off the non-profit sector to concentrate on entertainment in Philip Linden’s walled garden of cyber delights.“