The Epic Fail of Second Life Groups
by Pixeleen Mistral on 31/03/10 at 12:17 pm
The hypergrowth needed to create an online mass media continues to elude Second Life – but why? If Second Life is meant to be more than a 3D Potemkin village construction kit, one might expect the group and chat systems to be top priority – yet chat remains perma-gimped due to basic architectural flaws which have gone unaddressed for years. Fanboys may find it painful to admit, but the epic fail in group chat exposes the Lab’s fundamental ignorance of networked social media. Doesn’t anyone at the Lab understand that online social media is about community? Could someone tell M Linden about Reed’s Law?
David P. Reed understands network effects – but does Linden Lab?
Ten years ago, David P. Reed of M.I.T. explained that online social systems utility grows exponentially as the number of participants increase, because of the growth in number of potential subgroups that participants can join. Even if the utility of joining a particular groups is small, the network effect of massive numbers of potential subgroups dominates the economics of online social systems.
How does this apply to Second Life? Anyone who has declined an invitation to a fashion show due to Second Life’s arbitrary 25 group maximum understands that there is something badly broken. By placing an artificial cap on social group membership, the Lab managed to opt-out of the network effect of social media – not exactly the most clever approach when the virtual world’s population is stagnant, at best. The problems go much deeper than limits on groups – the in-world chat system is notoriously unreliable particularly when there are large numbers of participants in the chat sessions.
Is there a good technical reason for this, or are the Lindens doing it wrong? I recently turned to the AWGroupies for comment:
Pixeleen Mistral: I just had to skip covering an event because I am maxed at a pathetic 25 groups
Pixeleen Mistral: think about it
Morgaine Dinova: It’s just their static allocation Pix. They hate dynamic.
Rex Cronon: u can join AU and have more groups
Pixeleen Mistral: and their static allocation is why they have not grown for a year
Hermit Barber: LL screwed up (need I say as usual?) by confusing identity, access, accounting, communication and permissions into one amorphous thing entailing groups, IMs, permissions, database keys, the UI and a factory sometimes producing kitchen sinks but all overrun with poisonous snakes having indistinguishable heads and tails.
Pixeleen Mistral: so as you guys work on the next thing – maybe work out a way to have way more than 25 groups
Pixeleen Mistral: that would be my protip
Morgaine Dinova: You know that the database is visited on every message to create the messaging exploder? We once had an OH where that was confirmed as the way it’s done. No surprise then that it’s utterly non-scalable.
JB Hancroft: Morgaine… say that again?
JB Hancroft: (differently 
)
Pixeleen Mistral: LL architected a huge bottleneck into their messaging because they were clueless about social systems and networked information systems
Pixeleen Mistral: does that help JB?
Morgaine Dinova: JB: according to what we were told, there is not distribution graph created when people join/leave groups (which is infrequent and would scale well). Instead, every time that a message is sent, they visit the DB to see who belongs to the group, to generate the explosion.
Pixeleen Mistral: good lord
JB Hancroft: Yes… details about the bottleneck?
JB Hancroft: (oh… chat lag… a self-referential example)
Morgaine Dinova: lol
Flimsey Freenote: hehe
Rex Cronon: don’t u know that that chat lag is beneficial to u:)
JB Hancroft: the distribution lists aren’t cached? are they insane?
JB Hancroft: oh.. sorry…
Rex Cronon: it protects u from information overload:)
Morgaine Dinova: Bear in mind that the meeting was around two years ago, not long after the start of AWG — things may have changed.
JB Hancroft: is that an Andrew/Simon question?
Morgaine Dinova: We could try Andrew/Simon, they’re nice open guys
JB Hancroft wonders if there is a Messenger Linden
JB Hancroft: and his dark side… ChatLag Linden
Pixeleen Mistral: if things have changed why am I stuck at 25 groups?
Dorie Bernstein: be grateful it’s that many, Pixeleen
While contemplating the 400 million Facebook users and the 300 million Google Mail/Google Chat users, all of whom I can instant message from any standard Jabber client, I wonder if perhaps it is time for the Lindens to replace their proprietary chat with something standards-based – perhaps even open source – or does the Lab plan to remain a walled garden forever? On teh interwebs social network effects are not just a good idea – they are the law – Reed’s Law.
James Larken Smith
Mar 31st, 2010
I always loath having to give a group the proverbial SL axe. But I’m guessing changing that too would get the critics out in droves….Some people are never happy….
IntLibber Brautigan
Mar 31st, 2010
At the 2007 SLCC I had a sit down with Sidewinder Linden. After discussing Havok 4 issues and offering to add some of my combat and racing sims to the beta grid for havok testing, I mentioned the group limitations issue. He told me that since he was close to finishing up Havok 4, his next assignment was going to be “Groups 2.0″.
“Awesome,” I said, “just the man to talk to…”
Sidewinder continued, “Did you know that when they upped the group limit to 25, that that was an arbitrary limit they set? Once they overcame the original limitations of the first group system, there were no programming limitations to the number of groups you could have…”
“So why the limit?”
“It’s issues with how groups integrates with other systems like messaging… ”
“But you are going to be fixing those?”
“Yes”
So I proceeded to give him my vision of what features that business people and other managers of large groups needed. He asked me to write it up in a spec for him to use, which I did. After that, he and Alexa got the Groups 2.0 project going, and even had a SLDev meeting about it, after which it disappeared into a black hole.
I posted some of the most pertinent features in a JIRA article thats still making progress, but a few months later I heard Sidewinder was leaving LL out of frustration.
Those who want to push progress forward should vote for my JIRA proposal: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-3088 and for other groups related proposals linked to it.
Alex Ponebshek
Mar 31st, 2010
Dear Linden Lab, please follow the following steps:
1) go to the google and search for “open source ircd”
2) use that for your chat system, because ANY ircd will be a billion times better than the imcompetently coded bullshit you use now
Seriously. The only way I can think of to make chat this slow is if all the participants did a three-phase commit for every message. But obviously that’s not happening, or messages would arrive in order. (Also that would be stupid. I’m sure whatever’s really going on behind the scenes is even more so, though.)
Darien Caldwell
Mar 31st, 2010
Funny you should bring that up, as I was just discussing this yesterday. I”ve been researching Application building on Google’s infrastructure, and Google is very open about how they have overcome such issues, especially in the realm of ‘Microblogging’ (Twitter/Jaiku like services) Which in theory isn’t that much different than Groups in SL. (short messages which only go to the ‘subscribers’, or in other words, those participating in the group).
They outline how to do this very simply (at least on Google’s proprietary Big Table NoRel database system) here:
http://code.google.com/intl/de-DE/events/io/2009/sessions/BuildingScalableComplexApps.html
Gundel Gaukelei
Mar 31st, 2010
Linden Labs is suffering from the NIH (not invented here) syndrome. One doesn’t have to invent relayed chat networks, instant messaging or anything else. They didn’t have to even write a single line of code – its all there, well tested, rock solid. IRC already exists and so does XMPP.
Even more funny: their workarrounds.
Inworld shopping sucks because of insufficient search function? No, we are not improving our search function. Lets go buy xstreet.
Group limit sucks? Get rid of that limit? No way! Lets buy some random facebook clone.
Scripting is too limited? There isn’t even a function that returns the members of a group you own? “We are expecting a great future of 3rd party flash based apps”
So it seems they kinda gave up on the whole 3rd dimension thing and all the progress is done in good old interweb.
Ah, and the new viewer, lol: make it green and realign all the menus by random. And the only new feature is making use of -> see above.
Alex Ponebshek
Mar 31st, 2010
On the topic… they should never have created their own scripting language. They obviously have no experience in language design. As far as I know, LSL is the worst programming language that wasn’t invented for humorous purposes.
Dear Linden Lab: Google for “lua”. Use that. Or lisp, or haskell, or java, or ANYTHING ELSE.
Ciaran Laval
Mar 31st, 2010
A few weeks ago at Jack’s office hour I suggested that LL might want people to use more out of world groups, Avatars United for example, for people to use groups because of the limits, to which Jack responded with something along the lines of “What makes you think we won’t provide a new group system”.
Well the Jira on more than 25 groups being open for around three years is one reason, but yeah, they might be upto something with groups and unleash a new system one day.
Gundel Gaukelei
Mar 31st, 2010
@Ciaran Laval
“…to which Jack responded with something along the lines of ‘What makes you think we won’t provide a new group system’.”
I heard quite a lot of more sophisticated responses failed to pass the turing test already
cube
Mar 31st, 2010
40 years ago. OLD media showed us HOW IT WORKED in the famous BRECK GIRLs commercial..
“and she told two friends”/// and so on.
c3
so much for meta gurus and web 2.0
Mimika Oh
Mar 31st, 2010
Dear LL. Integrate. With. The. Internet. Thank you.
Baloo Uriza
Mar 31st, 2010
I think this fundamentally misses the point that Second Life isn’t a social network as much as it is a virtual reality. Not that this excuses the IM and group communications functionality from being the VR equivalent of the aging and obsoleted Bell Systems.
Baloo Uriza
Mar 31st, 2010
The really funny thing is the OpenSimulator folks have it working for pretty large groups at a 100 group limit…
@Alex: IRC is obsolete; XMPP is the future. XMPP is extensible, IRC isn’t. There’s already bugs in the JIRA requesting an XMPP backend. Also, I question your sanity if you consider Java better than LSL. Sure, LSL has it’s problems, but without exception, all the languages you mentioned are just as bad, if not worse.
@Gundel Gaukelei: Shopping doesn’t suck because of search. Shopping sucks because of the vendors. If vendors treated their work as what it is: Graphic design and scripting, and charged appropriately: by the hour, instead of trying to pretend they’re some real-world, bricks and mortar operation selling something with scarcity, the SL shopping experience would be vastly improved.
Gwenette Writer Sinclair
Mar 31st, 2010
Keep in mind the software was designed to handle (see the making of Second Life by Au)an anticipated max sign up of ten thousand with anticipated 2500 concurrent . . . the growth and USES of the platform were not anticipated . . . Groups and original architecture WERE functional for those numbers. Restructuring software from the ground up to accommodate is not as simple as we may imagine . . . just as we are pioneers, so is LL . . . and perhaps the OS functionality model can be transposed to sl , but remember the 100 groups in OS probably have far, far fewer members that the sl groups . . . and for the record: LL uses a third party for inworld voice, so they DO use “not invented here” solutions:)
Mimika Oh
Mar 31st, 2010
@Baloo: Nobody would pay my rates for design and scripting. People ask for custom work then recoil in horror when I quote them. By “pretending” to sell clothes (in fact licensing the rights to wear my items) for a very small amount, I have just about, after three years, made an equivalent amount on my investment of time. And people are happy to get the license for the cost of a doughnut.
Whether or not SL integrates with “social networks” it really should be using interoperable Internet standard protocols like XMPP.
Baloo Uriza
Mar 31st, 2010
Not “nobody.” Just fewer people. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, and generates a larger market for consumers to choose from. Likewise, it simplifies content creation, licensing and customer service for vendors, since you can make the same money off a much smaller, but more appreciative, user base.
Mimika Oh
Mar 31st, 2010
@Baloo: I am not speculating or predicting, I am stating fact. In three years, nobody. Not good enough.
Baloo Uriza
Mar 31st, 2010
I don’t know what you’re doing wrong, then. To date, I’ve made about L$250,000 over four years doing it the way I describe.
Mimika Oh
Mar 31st, 2010
As I say, my customers are happy with my arrangements. Your are clearly happy with yours. I don’t see why you should dictate to others the way they should turn their skills into payment for their work. I won’t say more here since this article is about something very different.
Gaara Sandalwood
Mar 31st, 2010
Well LL probably feels it’s too busy enforcing other certain things in SL to handle this, such as the new updated ToS that says that clients that could be used for copybotting are bannable just by logging in on them, that work must be made completely on one’s own for someone to export items without violating said ToS, and, oh yeah, the very recently added part that says, in a nutshell, “all bans are final”.
Gundel Gaukelei
Mar 31st, 2010
@Baloo: Shopping doesn’t suck because of search.
Thats missing an “only”. But its a matter of fact if I’m looking for something specific (rather then just want to get rid of this weight in my pockets) I’m looking it up on xstreet. Because xstreet is searchable. SL is looking like my spam folder in 3D.
But talking of SL vendors … every now and then, someone comes up with a plan that he thinks enables everyone to break free from the repressive rules of economy written in all those dusty books in the library. Let me say it with Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Just lean back and watch the reenactment of new economy and others. In the end of the day, whats still up and running is the old school businesses.
Gundel Gaukelei
Mar 31st, 2010
PS: thats why SL isn’t doing that bad. Kingkong is an all old school bean counter. And thats why they’ve got a chance to survive. But its also the the reason why all those “making a better world” pipe dreams are over and gone now. The former residents are now dealt with like they consumers they are.
JustMe
Mar 31st, 2010
@ Baloo Uriza , let them all complain. As you and I know, if you have a product that’s halfway decent, people will buy it.
While my numbers aren’t as impressive as Baloo’s , I can say that I have a free account, have never put any RL money into SL, and I pull a profit every month that gets converted to US Dollars and sent to my PayPal account. Between mid 2007 and last month, I’ve moved about $15,000 to PayPal .. and that is after ALL inworld expenses (DJ tips, shop rent, clothing purchases, etc). I don’t know what the gross number was .. possibly $25,000 or so.
By the way, the products I sell took me about 40 hours to develop back in 2007 and I haven’t changed them at all since then except for one minor update in 2009 which took me about 5 hours work.
And, I don’t advertise at all, this is just from people finding my shops because they saw my products rezzed and in use on people’s land. If I put a bit of effort into it , and if I advertised, I’m sure I could double my monthly ‘take’. But, my use of SL is to have fun, the products were just to fund that fun. The fact that they make a profit is an added bonus.
Keep complaining, everyone, if you must. But realize that SL remains the best VW out there , flaws and all. It’s not the best GAME , but for a ‘world’, nothing comes close.
Strayn Janus
Apr 1st, 2010
@JustMe: SL may be the best virtual worlds platform, but given the current state of the market that’s like saying a collapsing bridge is better than one in ruins. They’re both terrible, but to different extents.
It’s interesting to see how far the OpenSim project has come on. I can see them being a viable platform very soon (unlike SL which seems to be stagnating as of late, at least when it’s not going backwards). Who knows, our beneficent Linden Overlords might even allow us to use the hypergrid in our lifetimes (after all, it’s been out as a standard for some time now). It would make sense for them to move into a more easily monetised side of the VW business, such as providing asset services or hosting, then they can stop spending so much on UI “upgrades”, etc.
LOL
Apr 1st, 2010
Has anyone agreed to the NEW SecondLife T.O.S. apon Login today?
if so, did you read the 3 new sections on Legal Liablity and how apon loggin into SL now you wave any legal rights you have as a resident. Groups are NOT the death and fail of SL, the Terms of Service is.
Strayn Janus
Apr 1st, 2010
@LOL: Yes, but technically we haven’t had any rights for some time anyway (around the time they dropped “Your content” from their strap-line). For the last several iterations of the TOS they’ve had clauses stating that we grant them effectively full publishing rights over anything we upload. They’ve just clarified their “it’s our ball, so you follow our rules or get off the pitch” stance now.
Gaara Sandalwood
Apr 1st, 2010
OH SHI~
I clicked yes on that, I dismissed it as unimportant the second I saw it.
I love this new TOS though, just fucking love it.
It’s obscure. It has a dead giveaway in terms of LL can ban for whatever they want, bans are becomign non-negotiable now.
I heard during the times of Phil, he gave WU a thumbs up to partying in front of Linden Lab. Ah……but now the stream of ideas and dreams has turned into a simple machine.
Gwyneth Llewelyn
Apr 1st, 2010
I wonder if perhaps it is time for the Lindens to replace their proprietary chat with something standards-based
… yes, something we’ve been asking since 2004 (at least) and there is even a JIRA for it dating back to 2007!
Gwyneth Llewelyn
Apr 1st, 2010
Whoops sorry — I guess this WP install doesn’t like the “quote” tag. If it wasn’t obvious, I was quoting Pix
HUH?
Apr 1st, 2010
The new TOS is only protecting both Linden Labs asses and ours from people suing them and ruining it for all of us..( I.E Serpentine)
A lot of it is the same but I do welcome the new one about data collecting. (JLU,CDS) What confuses me about all of this. Why is everything Licensed? Any clues about what this means? or is this a way to take things or enforce the TOS by making it this way?
HUH?
Apr 1st, 2010
“It’s obscure. It has a dead giveaway in terms of LL can ban for whatever they want, bans are becomign non-negotiable now.”
This is nothing new, they have always had a ban for any reason clause as far back as I can remember.
Jumpman Lane
Apr 1st, 2010
wow i really need to read the new tos lmao, since serpentine has been champing at the bit to sue me of late. wonder if my Linden pals are gonna pullmy ass out of the fire after all. hehehe THEY OWE ME! (heheheh just kidding, but thanx Phil, thanx M -and I amnot Blondin he just looks like me!)
SL Gamer
Apr 1st, 2010
Great title for a story, just has 1 too many words, drop “Groups” and your bang on!
Strayn Janus
Apr 1st, 2010
@HUH?: The reason they say everything is under license is so that from a legal standpoint, they retain all rights (licensing negates the doctrine of first sale for example). Yet another ass-covering move from Lawyer Lab.
Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia
Apr 1st, 2010
I agree that the 25 limit is limiting the growth of SL and that they can do something about it but choose not to.
@HUH?:
“Obscure legal language” is a redundant phrase. All legal language is obscure. I’m not saying that the new TOS is a good thing. The SLDev mailing list has been able to flame about little else since the changes were announced. Being “obscure” seems like the weakest argument against it, IMHO.
Baloo Uriza
Apr 1st, 2010
“Thats missing an “only”. But its a matter of fact if I’m looking for something specific (rather then just want to get rid of this weight in my pockets) I’m looking it up on xstreet. Because xstreet is searchable. SL is looking like my spam folder in 3D.”
So, it’s exactly like shopping in real life.
Baloo Uriza
Apr 1st, 2010
“and perhaps the OS functionality model can be transposed to sl”
I’m hoping the Lab makes the decision to move to OpenSimulator in the future. My understanding is they have some test regions running OpenSimulator on OSGrid already.
Baloo Uriza
Apr 1st, 2010
If you’re concerned about the new ToS, I invite you to take a look at osgrid.org.
Darien Caldwell
Apr 1st, 2010
“If vendors treated their work as what it is: Graphic design and scripting, and charged appropriately: by the hour, instead of trying to pretend they’re some real-world, bricks and mortar operation selling something with scarcity, the SL shopping experience would be vastly improved.”
I’d really like to hear how you charge people by the hour for a dress or a shoe.
Baloo Uriza
Apr 1st, 2010
If you can’t make a time estimate and keep track of billable hours, I question your business practices right off.
Wayfinder
Apr 2nd, 2010
Not a “walled garden” I think. More like a walled junkyard.
Alyx Stoklitsky
Apr 2nd, 2010
@Baloo
>“If vendors treated their work as what it is: Graphic design and scripting, and charged appropriately: by the hour
Did you even think this through? Atall?
Let’s throw some approximate times it might take the average content creator to make various things in SL:
Skin: 5 hours.
Clothing: 5 hours.
Clothing with prim parts: 8 hours.
Sculpted clothing: 15 hours.
Accurate model of a real world weapon: 18 hours.
Scripts to fire said weapon: 5 hours.
Now, it shouldn’t take a fucking genius to see that if SL’s content creators valued their labour at even something as laughably low as 50 cents an hour, the average price of in-world goods would shoot up like a FUCKING ROCKET.
Baloo Uriza
Apr 2nd, 2010
@Alyx: Yes, I have thought this through. I might not have many customers, but the ones I do actually pay a decent wage for it. It’s called “not short-selling yourself.” You should try it some time: You get more money for having to deal with fewer people.
Wayfinder
Apr 2nd, 2010
Just as a thought: “billable hours” has nothing to do with the Second Life environment– unless someone works by the hour. The comments above assume that all work is billable and payable by the hour… which is incorrect.
Second Life is completely different from RL marketing. There is little or no cost of production, no material charges, and the rent is very low. Using an example above, taking 5 hours to make a skin becomes negligible if one sells 2,000 of those skins. The point becomes moot.
Second Life charges are hardly ever based on hourly fees, with the exceptions perhaps of escort services and works for hire. Second Life prices are based on “what the market will bear” and are quite usually the whim of the creator. One creator decides to sell a dress for L$300 and makes their money in quantity. Another sells a dress of similar real value for L$2000 and makes their money in perceived rarity and quality. There is no price guide, no standard of charges, no “blue book”. They charge whatever they feel like charging– and what they feel their customers are willing to pay. That’s the long and short of it.
Baloo Uriza
Apr 2nd, 2010
“Just as a thought: “billable hours” has nothing to do with the Second Life environment– unless someone works by the hour. The comments above assume that all work is billable and payable by the hour… which is incorrect.”
SL folks seem to be the only ones who do graphic design and programming who *don’t* think they can do billable hours. That’s what’s incorrect.
“Second Life is completely different from RL marketing. There is little or no cost of production, no material charges, and the rent is very low. Using an example above, taking 5 hours to make a skin becomes negligible if one sells 2,000 of those skins. The point becomes moot.”
Still costs money to feed you, and pay for the electricity and bandwidth. Time is still scarce as it is in real life.
cube
Apr 2nd, 2010
the epic fail of meta economics.
Wayfinder
Apr 2nd, 2010
Sorry Baloo… I don’t see any point actually being made there. The fact someone has to eat and pay electricity and internet charges (which they’d have to do regardless of SL), is irrelevant to marketing on SL.
I do think to call SL builders “graphic designers” is a far stretch of imagination.
For those who do custom work, if you’ll re-read my post– they do often charge by the hour (or a project cap fee). For those who script professionally, they often do charge by the hour. So your statement that SL people think they can’t charge by the hour is simply inaccurate.
I don’t see the point you’re trying to make. Maybe you could sum it up for me without use of generalized statements. What is the point exactly, you’re trying to make and how does it apply to the thread?
Alex Ponebshek
Apr 7th, 2010
Baloo: I got no problem with xmpp… that’s another good option… but irc is not obselete, it still works just fine for what it does. xmpp is an exercise in tripling the bandwidth cost of chat protocols without adding any momentous features.
In response to you questioning my sanity, I’d like to suggest you actually *try* writing some lsl. I’m sure you’ll agree that java, for all it’s (admittedly numerous) flaws, can at least without hesitation be called a “programming language”, and you can in general code up anything you could code in any language. In lsl, something as simple as a binary search tree is going to require some ugly list acrobatics, and end up being just as slow as using flat data, since lsl has to copy the entire list to change one element.
skeppppticccal
Sep 12th, 2010
Thank you for offering to fix the problem Pixeleen Mistral. Linden Labs would love guru’s like you on their team. What would the code look like which fixed this? do you, or your friends, have a sample to show us?
The code is all open source so it should be easy for great coders like those you interviewed to get stuck in and show the labs the way.
Hats off to pixleen for showing us the light. At last someone who isnt just farting hot air into the night sky a true code genius come to our rescue
LOL i think you get the message
SecondLife 102: What SecondLife Residents Do « Consensual Hallucination
Jan 14th, 2012
[...] You can have up to 42 groups in SecondLife, and this is up from 25 when I first joined, but it is still not enough for people who build in a lot of groups and hang out with a lot of other groups. Linden Lab limits the number of groups arbitrarily because they don’t seem to understand how network effect works. [...]