Taking Wagers: When Will Linden Lab Sell

by Urizenus Sklar on 23/11/06 at 1:36 pm

by Flimflam Edelman at the Puppies, Ponies, and Other Action Desk

There is always chitchat in world about the possibility of Linden Lab selling out soon, but now the chitchat is coming from “RL” blogs. Last week PR Marketing guru B.L. Ochman predicted that Second Life would go within three weeks. Two weeks left for that wager to pan out. Anyone taking that action? I am also seeing action on which happens first: Second Life is sold or Duran Duran arrives. Duran Duran first pays 1000 to 1 on that bet.

9 Responses to “Taking Wagers: When Will Linden Lab Sell”

  1. Random Writer

    Nov 23rd, 2006

    Very very interesting indeed.

  2. Sativa Prototype

    Nov 23rd, 2006

    I’ll take that Duran Duran bet for 20.

    I’ve thought Second Life has been primping itself for a sell out for some time, but there is a problem as I see it.

    Who would buy it?

    Anyone who actually digs around will see that, infact, Second Life has more negative press by actual users than pats on the backs by PR and vested concerns. The graphics are a joke compared to most every other game out, and your buying an engine that is outdated with god knows how many kludges patched on top of it to keep it going by LL. Your buying a closed box with holes poked into it to let the light of the internet in, with still no actual inworld web browser and the developer working on it is having to do so in the evenings with a recent post stating that things were going slow.

    Here is what I feel is the real issue behind the hype.

    /rant on

    With talks of how great this sphere is, how it is the future of the internet, the amount of money being spent daily, etc., I am surprised a big name developer hasn’t stepped forward and thrown its hat into the ring. If in two years a new virtual world opened, with better graphics, updated engine, fulling net enabled where you could actually use a web browser inworld, receive your email, watch television, basically do anything you can do on the net from inside the world, and provide the tools to create in a lag free environment with the ability to actually have large scale events, people would leave Second Life so fast heads would spin. This may be a pipe dream, but Second Life is attempting to do this at a glacial pace, if a company with the manpower and the financial ability stepped up we might actually see this in the next ten years.

    Outside of the lag this is the second biggest problem I see about Second Life, it has more of a community on the outside than on the inside. How many of you flock to forums while you are inworld or use them as a means of communication about inworld issues and concerns, or use the web to view information about Second Life? To me it equates to visiting a town, yet to discuss the town or find out information about it I must leave the town. Even now we are talking about this outside of the sphere, with no way to access this information inworld except for work arounds and no way to contribute to this discussion without leaving the world. When the best effort being put forth in this realm is by one man, in his spare time in the evening, I do not look for the feature anytime soon.

    /rant off

  3. Clem Caddiddlehopper

    Nov 23rd, 2006

    I have an idea! Have LL sell out to whoever invented Copybot!

  4. Prokofy Neva

    Nov 23rd, 2006

    I don’t think they’re going to sell it, and least not within the next 90 days, and I think they will wait until they have a few really giant customers with huge island orders before they do that, and maybe a few other stabilizing things.

    If I want to go on the Internet, watch Internet TV, read the Times, look at my yahoo mail, I…um…go on the Internet. I don’t need to drag the Internet with me into SL, which can be laggy when you do that. Why? Let it be a box, with some hook-ups that add value like third-party shopping or search or customized community portals, but why get all obsessed with the Internet? We already have the Internet. Um, tab your SL game screen now and go on the Internet, no fuss, no muss — instant access through what we like to call “Windows”.

    Poking Internet holes in the black box is a very uneven and bloody business, and so far brings us more things like CopyBot that are destructive, rather than real enhancement. There is some half-way house between unscalable walled gardens and gated gardens.

    Whatever they do, I have no doubt that people like Pathfinder Linden or Jeska Linden will preserve whatever empires they’ve managed to create in this time, and we could see Educational Second Life or Community Second Life or something sold separately.

  5. Sativa Prototype

    Nov 23rd, 2006

    Windows? Tabbing? Wow, I need to catch up I guess.

    If Second Life is to be an immersive world we lose that every time we step outside of it. If it is to be a box, then let it be a box. I however invision a virtual world without walls, which is why I continue to wait the next step in this realm, and the company that brings it to us. :)

  6. Tomas Hausdorff

    Nov 24th, 2006

    Selling Second Life? Anything is possible, but it seems highly unlikely to occur within the next two or three weeks. Perhaps within a year: but even then, the people who have put up the capital thus far for SL aren’t the sorts to be looking for a quick turnaround. I don’t see the pressure existing to sell, although new investors may step in.

    Instead, I see the pressure for Linden Labs to make SL a success before someone else comes along with a better platform. Because, like with most concepts of this sort, once its been shown to have merit, once someone has taken the “big” risks, others will surely follow.

    There is a cost of entry to create something like Second Life, perhaps two or three years at a minimum of development time for a well-funded organization with the right skills and visionaries. Second Life sort of started proving the possibilities of the concepts it is based upon around the April or May of this year. I’d speculate that we’ll see at least one or two credible alternatives entering beta by sometime in 2009- we’ll probably hear about them seriously for the first time during 2007.

    That sort of defines the time window Linden Lab has to make Second Life dominant. If they can solve most (not all) of the problems, woo the major players, and keep growing their resident base, then anyone arriving on the scene in 2008 will have a much harder time making headway.

  7. Prokofy Neva

    Nov 24th, 2006

    I asked Khamon Fate about this — he’s always pretty much right about anything.

    And he commented, when I said, somebody thought Second Life was going to be sold, something like, “You mean, their perception of Second Life.”

    i.e. people genereally think SL will fail, or will be sold, along about the time that their own perception of SL fails, or is willing to be sold LOL.

    Interesting comment. It means that as long as everybody keeps clapping for Tinkerbell and keeps believing in the dream, SL will never fail and never will be sold, somewhere, someone will still be logging in to the one server that will remain working with the patched dream…

  8. tp

    Nov 25th, 2006

    How can you sell something when some chineese woman pays for 30+ percent of your servers and claims 1 million dollar holdings worth you fake money?

    We might possibly be chunged here.

  9. Random Writer

    Nov 28th, 2006

    http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/2006/11/27/rosedale-no-plans-to-sell-linden-lab/

    “”"”“I’ve got no plans but to build a solid standalone company,” he said on the Yi-Tan Weekly Technology Call run by consultant Jerry Michalski and technology strategist Pip Coburn. “We’re at a place now, we’re very close to profitability, we have lots of money in the bank.”

    Rosedale’s comments come on the heels of remarks earlier this month by Linden marketing vice president David Fleck, who told the Times of London that Linden Lab was open to an initial public offering (IPO) or a sale. Fleck has since left the company.”"”"

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