Linden Lab To Generate Short-Term Income While Hoping For Takeover by Real Software Company
by Alphaville Herald on 10/06/10 at 10:27 pm
Company’s last-ditch plan to include gutting the virtual world experience, joining doofus nation at Facebook
By Chainsaw Al Linden
SAN FRANCISCO, June 9 – Linden Lab®, creator of 3D virtual world Second Life®, made blood run in the gutters of the city, as well as Brighton England and Singapore, to increase focus on the company’s consumer business, selling ticky-tack suburban boxes to blingtards who need a humpy bunker to sate their chairbound lusts. And buy shoes from the company’s flea market online marketplace.
Now that the company has sacked a third of its staff, the product, engineering, janitorial, and joy divisions will be combined. The software development teams will be consolidated in a shipping container waterfront suite of offices near Fisherman’s Wharf and fed as many Cheetos and Mountain Dews as they want. Customer support will consist of the nearest wino be reconfigured to provide even less of what residents have come to expect from the company.
"We’ve emerged from a two-year investment period during which, among other things, we’ve burned through the rest of Mitch Kapor’s allowance while having Nerf-ball fights. Today’s announcement about our blood-letting will help us make Second Life® more appealing to someone with a panel truck and enough cash to buy our servers and pull all the plugs on the once-vital virtual world," said Mark Kingdon, chief executive officer of Linden Lab.
Kingdon says that a potential buyer has already offered $100 for the lab’s hardware and database, and that she plans to set up the system in her apartment once she relocates her 30 cat boxes.
According to Kingdon, if this deal falls through, the restructuring also better aligns Linden Lab for two desperate goals. First, the company aims to create a browser-based virtual world experience, eliminating the need to download software. This will be made possible by recoding aspects of an advanced broswer codec known to insiders as Mosaic 1.0. Initial tests indicate that the two default avatars, Mr. and Ms. Pac-Man, can indeed eat, avoid ghosts, and have pixel sex online. “The next step,” Kingdon added, “will be to enable more advanced avatars we call Mario and Luigi to interact fully with the world’s physics, powered by a revolutionary video technology those computer guys, who know all about this stuff, call Commodore 64.”
Secondly, Linden Lab will look to extend the Second Life experience into popular social networks. "Ultimately, we want to make Second Life more accessible and relevant to a larger population of drunken college students, laid off middle-class males, and horny soccer moms," he said.
About Second Life and Linden Lab
If you are bothering to read this, you already know Second Life is. Largely ignored by outside media outlets for three years, the 3D virtual world environment has gradually declined to a haven for pornographers, shagging supermodels who are actually fat naked men living in basements, artists and academics backing up their inventory while migrating to OpenSim grids, virtual hillbillies squatting in the ruins, camper bots, and other malcontents. Second Life has become one of the largest targets for jokes in I.T. departments worldwide, and the frequent subject of conversations that begin with “Oh, I thought they were gone!” and “They were big once.”
Privately held Linden Lab, founded in 1999 by Chairman of the Board Philip Rosedale and headquartered in San Francisco, developed revolutionary technologies that could have changed the way people communicate, interact, transact, learn and create.
Goodbye to all that.
IntLibber Brautigan
Jun 14th, 2010
The thing that really killed SL was all the assholes bitching at the drop of a hat about people being on their e-lawn, about all the nasty advertising that other people had on their own land (shock that people are permitted to use their land how they see fit), and generally, anything said by Prok. Prokofy was absolutely the most toxic and poisonous personality in the entire metaverse. If the lab had banned her back in 2007 we would have avoided a whole lot of problems.
Scylla Rhiadra
Jun 14th, 2010
Yes . . . if only SL had realized its full potential as a sort of giant strip mall, with huge billboards, endless supplies of pointless consumer goods, and more opportunities to fleece the unsuspecting.
Oh brave new world . . . !
Al the Pretender
Jun 14th, 2010
Int…..go suck a Lemon
Karen Palen
Jun 14th, 2010
@IntLibber “…anything said by Prok. Prokofy was absolutely the most toxic and poisonous personality in the entire metaverse. If the lab had banned her back in 2007 we would have avoided a whole lot of problems.”
I could not agree more!
I can’t remember a single useful or interesting thing she posted from of all of her rants! Well all that I read anyway LOL
One of the nicest things about leaving Second Life was to get away from her!
Eva Ryan
Jun 14th, 2010
Can we have more cupcakes?
Pappy Enoch
Jun 14th, 2010
@Eva,
I got some Shine. Dawg ate the dang Lil’ Debbies again.
hobo kelly
Jun 14th, 2010
Wellsum, now I’m a wonderin’ iffen them bees bein Chocolate Little Debbies. I’d almost bees willin ta go in aftern’ them Debbies iffen theys bees bein the chocolate ones. I’m in a helluva mess this mornin’. Wake an’ Bake and pound down some Debbies thats what I always say, ‘cepten I got the Wake n Bake part down this mornin’ I reckon, now Ize gots me a powerful hankerin for some delicious little chocolate cakes but I reckon my waltzing matilda bees bein empty soz I reckon that thar coolabaugh tree over yonder will just have to suffice for sum shade whilst I contemplate the weird things in this here universe, and all, likem rumblin tummys… and like that thar Crazy Cat Lady what likes to prance around that thar fake world like they own the damn place one minet, and then that thar Crazy Cat Lady cusses the holy hell out of them thar folk that built the damned fake place to begin with. Don’t make no sense to me no way, no how.
Pappy Enoch
Jun 14th, 2010
You am sho’ nuff a poet, Hobo Kelly, nigh unto that-there Allen Gunsburg feller who done howled that time.
Don’t mess wif that Crazy Cat Gal: she’ll tear you a new one, boy.
As for Lil’ Debbies: Candy Cakes make first-rate. Snack Cakes come in second.
bobbby
Jun 15th, 2010
They did it to them self’s if only they fix the bad things and left the good things alone but noooooo.
Father Jones
Jun 15th, 2010
They act like crooks because they still support massive illegal gambling (maffia) through high roller Zyngo gaming. They will go down with the crooks as the crooks they are becomming themselves. We are putting pressure on numerous organisations and governments to uncover their support to illegal gambling. If there is anything else we can do to help you going down with it completely Linden Lab, just shout…
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