Second Life Corporate Hype Bubble Deflates – Now What?
by Alphaville Herald on 20/08/07 at 8:00 am
Riding a DotCom non-strategy into the ground?
by Inigo Chamerberlin
Recent articles have focused on various issues affecting Second Life of late. But they have simply reported issues and, sometimes, commented on the issues as isolated events. I think it’s about time the causes were discussed, the likely outcomes and potential future moves.
Most of Second Life’s troubles – other than the ever present infrastructure ones which I don’t propose to even attempt to tackle here – can actually be traced to the decision – and it was a decision by Linden Lab, not something that ‘just happened’ – to court corporate America.
Inasmuch as there is no real evidence of a ‘game-plan’ to the development of Second Life, not initially, not even now really, I don’t believe that ‘corporatisation’ was envisaged from the start. Which has led directly to the current situation. It’s a perfect example of ‘if I were planning on doing THAT, I definitely wouldn’t start from THERE’.
An interesting question is: Would Second Life even have got off the ground if one of the original goals had been the wooing of corporate interests? Somehow I rather doubt that. Initially the ‘plan’ was pretty much, ‘I wonder if we could do ‘this’?’ – with a side order of ‘Hey! Wouldn’t it be cool if…’
Would the initial investors been willing to stump up for a ‘corporatised’ Second Life? Reading comments from the parties involved, I somehow doubt it. It was all very idealistic and creative – initially. However, it’s a great pity they didn’t demand a more detailed/structured development map at that point. Indeed, it’s amazing that they didn’t. You’d think they’d have learned more from the antics of startups during the DotCom era.
Of course, several had actually been involved with successful startups, so I guess there was an understandable temptation to reflect on their own success, rather than the fate of the majority. Anyway, here we are. In the present. Things were done that can’t be undone easily. And the fallout of these decisions are becoming very visible to everyone.
‘Hey! Wouldn’t it be cool… to set up a casino?’
No one thought it through. Probably the board wasn’t even consulted. It just ‘happened’. And now, the world, who weren’t even aware of Second Life when that was done, is all too well aware of the current results, which are making Second Life look less and less like an attractive place to invest – or even risk corporate exposure in.
About the only apparently sensible thing LL did in the formative stages of SL was to write a TOS which allowed them to move the goalposts any time they wanted. Of course, since then, doubt has been thrown on the validity of that document – to the extent where a judge has stated that the document is so badly flawed that nothing less than a complete rewrite is required to make it stand up in court – which leaves Linden Lab in a very difficult position.
But, here we all are, now what? There are three broad choices:
1. Continue with the ‘corporatisation’ of SL, despite a lot of former media cheerleaders having caught on to the fact that SL doesn’t quite live up to the overblown claims that were being made and commenting appropriately
This, I think is likely doomed to failure. The media love affair with Second Life is pretty much over. It’s going to need something more than Philip Rosedale and his youthful good looks flashing his boyish grin from a conference podium to rekindle that. Something like a real corporate success story. A corporation that manages to understand what’s going on in Second Life, and gain a real advantage by having a presence in Second Life. Now that might just work. But not while the corporates are being sold a ‘the streets are paved with gold’ scenario.
2. Continue with the ‘Disneyfication’ of SL in hopes of pushing out much of the current population (whom one can’t help feeling Linden Lab have now categorized as ‘undesirable’) and replacing them with ‘middle America’.
Another non-starter I fear. ‘middle America’ – or Europe, Asia, wherever, are unlikely to find the concept of a virtual world very alluring. I don’t think they really see ‘the point’. Second Life appeals mainly to a different section of society. Second Lifers are, by and large, ‘different’. I can’t pin it down easily – but just think about the people you know in Second Life. I don’t think most of them are ‘average’ types, do you?
And, another point to ponder. ‘Average’ or not, why use Second Life? Could it be that the hard core of Second Lifers are looking for something ‘missing’ from their first lives?
Finally, people are all wired up very similarly. Put them in an ‘anything’s possible’ environment and they will experiment. That was, by the way, supposed to be one of the basic principles of Second Life. So, people will experiment with sex. It’s a major human drive after all. People will cross gender. Hey! Everyone’s curious.
People will realize fantasies – I mean, who hasn’t fantasized about being something, someone else – A dragon? An elf? A cyborg? A Furry? A warrior? A slave? A nice person – when in RL they aren’t? An evil bastard – when in RL they aren’t?
It’s all possible in Second Life. It’s supposed to be. And sadly, for certain, in public anyway, easily shocked Linden Lab employees, it will continue to happen, even in a Disneyfied Second Life. Human beings who come to Second Life, and find it attractive, will do these things, regardless of impediments placed in their way.
3. Continue as at present, allowing the corporates to learn about SL and decide if it’s for them at their own pace and find ways of fitting in. While at the same time, keeping extreme excesses by users under control as sensitively as possible.
On the face of it, this is the best option. Second Life is like nothing else. And the corporates, if they want to use it, are going to have to do what the rest of us have had to do – learn how it works, for us. They need to discard preconceptions, watch, listen and work out ways that they can use Second Life to further their own interests.
Having seen the results of their being provided with ‘turn-key’ ‘solutions’ by various Second Life entrepreneurs, I think avoiding such individuals and organizations would be advisable. Hiring in-world ‘grunt labour’ (builders, landscapers, scripters) to realize their ambitions is one thing – allowing supposedly experienced Second Lifers to tell them what to do is something quite different. Something which is not showing signs of working in the main.
As for containing the more extreme excesses that have on occasion troubled Second Life, it’s users, and Linden Lab, well, that’s a difficult path to tread. It has to be down to Linden Lab to do this. And it needs a sensitive touch, which, at times, has been seen to be lacking. One of the difficulties has been that responsibility for taking action, for announcing policy, has sometimes been delegated to employees who were, frankly, unsuitable, and often with their own private agendas.
Fortunately that seems to have stopped now and, whether you agree with the actions and policy changes or not, at least they seem, currently at least, to be controlled by a single individual who has the merit of being reasonably even handed (if irritatingly vague at times) and publicly accessible. The important thing though is not to try and ‘clean up’ Second Life to suit what Linden Lab perceives as ‘corporate sensibilities’.
The danger here is in driving away the very resource that the corporates are interested in – the users of Second Life.
Personally, I think number three is the way to go – if you hadn’t guessed. By all means let the flirtation with corporate involvement continue – without the stupidly optimistic ‘hard sell’ that the sector has been subjected to until now.
Make it clear that Second Life is – as it is, warts and all. If there’s a way in which corporates can use Second Life to their advantage, leave them to figure it out for themselves. They will, eventually. And, possibly, in the process, they will come to be seen as assets, a familiar presence in Second Life, rather than demonized as they often are at present.
The only snag with this rosy picture is – well, Linden Lab.
Sometimes you’d think their mission statement is to ‘never miss an opportunity to shoot ourselves in the foot, never to think the implications of a decision through’ and, occasionally ‘never make a clear-cut decision’. But, it’s easy enough to criticize I suppose. I suspect that managing Second Life feels much like herding cats – while being lead by someone who’s in a world of their own.
I certainly wouldn’t want to be one of the cat herders right now. As for being the leader – well, I’ve always thought anyone who wants to be in charge is probably the last person who should be
Tizzers Foxchase
Aug 20th, 2007
VERY interesting article. I believe that the fairy tale phase is over, and Linden Labs needs to start re-thinking their business model. As stated in a previous Herald article, LL main source of revenue generation is through the sale of new islands. Their business model is flawed, in the sense that unless they continue to sell more and more sims, revenue will begin to slide. Aside from say, being acquired by a larger company (such as Google) I see this whole thing ending very badly.
So what is the next step? If the metaverse hopes to be seen as anything more than just a video game, it needs to embrace some form of practical application that the non-technophile can use, and first life corporations can benefit from. From an educational standpoint, metaverse technology has endless potential for distance hands-on learning. I’m not going to discuss Woodbury, because that’s not the point of my post.
It is time to start thinking beyond virtual sex and casinos. How can this system successfully integrate and enhance our first lives?
Also, ITT srs bsns.
Coughran Mayo
Aug 20th, 2007
I am not condoning nor encouraging headlong rushes into any new arena for corporate types, but hey, the investment in establishing a presence in SL is MINIMAL for most companies used to splashing their message across mainstream media. Compare the cost of a television ad campaign or several full-page magazine spots with what it costs to “buy” an island in SL, fees and all, trick it out, and have it occupied with live help.
The Island and annual fees are about US$5,300. Very straightforward. If you are a not-for-profit (like my organization) looking to establish a presence, the cost is half of that.
Include some additional cost for build out and perhaps some good advice about what (not casinos of course) might draw people to your island. Think activities, surfing, bowling, hanggliding. Draw a crowd! I guess the sky is the limit on your build-out, but an expenditure of $US 1,000 – 10,000 should cover almost anything you could think of!
Consider recruiting an in-world workforce so that there are live representatives at your sim to answer questions. Hire people if you need to. Avatars will sit in camping chairs to earn $L24 per hour (the equivalent of about US 10 cents) What if you paid 10 times that much to get trainable staffers? It would cost you less than $10,000 annually to be staffed 24/7.
So, for US $25,000 per year and some oversight/organizational time to make sure things are running well, you can have a location that is appealling and attractive, and has full-time staff in Second Life. That is the equivalent cost of about 1.5 seconds of TV time at the Super Bowl. Not bad!
As an investment in the future, it might be priceless. I’m not ready to suggest that Second Life is the Web 2.0 app of the future, it may just be the precursor to what will end up as the dominant application. But cutting your teeth now for under $25,000 annually would seem to me to be a pretty good strategy for any forward thinking group.
CM
The Grid Live
Aug 20th, 2007
Second Life News for August 20,2007
Kristina Dell Cant Get the Box Off Her Head. Ive been rather annoyed with Time magazine the past few days. I cracked open an issue to read the interview with Drew Carey, and then several pages in I was assaulted with an article about Seco…
Morgana Fillion
Aug 20th, 2007
Back when there first started to be noise about companies utilizing SL, I never even envisioned the idea of buying an island as a virtual billboard – the web works quite capably for that now.
What I did envision – and I’m disappointed that it seems not to have happened – was a virtual workspace for teleconferencing and the like. A place where coworkers and clients who are separated by space can get pseudo-facetime and save the expense of traveling long distances for what might be only a two hour meeting, or dealing with the hassles of conference calling.
You don’t *actually* get the added cues of facial expressions in SL, but it definitely does give a sense of immediacy that is lacking email. With the addition of voice, it has the added benefit of having everything conference calls do, with the ability to set up visual demonstrations and again, get in that face time that is often desireable.
I think it’s too bad that companies only saw it as a place to advertise without using the interactivity of SL in their advertising plan. (If you are going to try to capture my eyeballs, you have to indicate that you care about my SL experience and make things event driven. If I just want to see your new ad, I can go to your website and be gone again a lot faster than wandering your sim in SL). I think most of us have an automatic irritability trigger at ‘outsiders’ coming in and just seeing us as commodities.
But meanwhile, companies – and LL, in selling to them – need to be looking at the benefits to their internal organization to have a presence in SL. Even the cost of buying the necessary bits and pieces to create an avatar that physically reflects each of your staff members would be cheaper than flying even one of them across country to sit in a conference room together, and would pay for itself repeatedly.
Arnold
Aug 20th, 2007
The largest cause for the corperate hype-bubble surrounding SL is not LL themselves I think, or the way they handle buisnesses interrested in Second Life, but the corporations themselves, their marketeers and what they told eachother about Second Life (regardless if they actually knew anything about it in the first place, or just made stuff up from rumors by colleagues)
From what I’ve read in some management magazines, it seems it’s indeed the corporations that created the big hypebubble, not only media, but also other fields. People found out about SL, told their colleagues about it’s possibilities, who shared the info with others, and before you knew it all marketeers were talking about SL without ever having set foot inworld themselves, creating the whole myth of SL being a marketeers wonderland, writing aticles about it’s wonderful features and the fantastic possibilities to instantly reach people from all over the world.
Companies expected a lot of SL, which of course it couldn’t deliver. Once they found out it wasn’t all so fantastic and a great place to make tons of money, the bad revieuws started coming, articles about how much SL is unsuitable for a real life corporation even for advertisement, and the rest is history.
Of course, with the user numbers displayed on secondlife.com being misguiding to say the least, helped in the myth, as well as the little information you’ll find elsewere on the site, as well as the screenshots… But the bubble was mainly blown out of proportion by marketeers themselves, who don’t know what the **** they were talking about.
Corporations and marketeers indeed don’t ‘get’ SL. But that’s their own fault mostly.
I agree with the statement that LL should indeed just let everyone figure SL out for themselves, and focus on their biggest group of customers, the users, and not the few corporations around. Simply because it’s the users who pay the biggest part of LL’s income.
(Disclaimer: some of my above statements may be inaccurate, I have no idea of how LL talks to corporations, I based it completely on what I read in several articles in magazines for marketeers and the advertising buisnesses in the Netherlands, as well as advertisements for an advertising company in said magazines using an SL screenshot.)
Nicholaz Beresford
Aug 20th, 2007
Well, I guess WoW is profitable. After watching the recent video about Philip on the OSCON, I thought that he’s heading for trouble trying to be the (metaverse) world leader. Many many companies are living perfectly in profitable niches. If they would care more for their users, I think most of the user base would be loyal bordering to religious zeal and not fuzz much about $9.95 or even $15 per month. Heck, I’m paying $7 per month for a premium account for an internet radio I’m hardly listening to. Less users probably, less strain on the infrastructure, more income. Healthy solid growth, rather than whipping this thing forward at breakneck speed and if not breaking your neck, at least spraining ankles ever second step.
Btw, did anybody notice that concurrency doesn’t climb as it used to? Totals yes, but concurrency doesn’t seem to be growing as it used to earlier this year.
Doug Randall
Aug 20th, 2007
Actually the reason I came to Second Life in the first place was to *get away* from corporations, mass media, and all their unwanted advertising. Being free from all that crap is the reason I stay and the reason I like SL so much.
I love the Second Life live music scene. If it wasn’t for the RIAA, Clear Channel, IP laws, etc RL would be the same. I think the Second Life music situation is more natural. Thomas Jefferson would have approved.
I’m not anti business by any means. In the long run corporations like IBM and Sun will make great metaverse infrastructure providers. It makes sense for them to be here and get familiar with virtual worlds even though their activities currently look more than a little silly at times. I’m sure eventually someone will come up with the virtual world equivalent of Amazon or Ebay and I’ll love it.
The thing is, the current situation resembles being back in 1994 and watching spam and banner advertising being invented. The advertisers didn’t listen then and they won’t listen now. Does anybody remember back when Joshua Quitner of the New York Times proposed that a company could get rich quick by charging 5 cents every time somebody clicked on sports scores ? The current talk about branding in virtual worlds represents about the same level of understanding. And the marketers haven’t learned to listen yet either, even with the 30 second commercial in danger of extinction.
And Pontiac, gee whiz. Great Sim guys. Too bad nobody will buy a car because of it. Try making better cars than the Japanese and stop trying to change perceptions.
My conclusion is that I don’t have to worry about anything this time around. There’s nothing a corporation can do that I can’t easily ignore. And the Able Edition is under development just in case.
Not At This Time
Aug 20th, 2007
“…And, another point to ponder. ‘Average’ or not, why use Second Life? Could it be that the hard core of Second Lifers are looking for something ‘missing’ from their first lives…”
I don’t know exactly what I expected when I got an account, but I did expect to be able to claim a little virtual turf to build things and play around. When I discovered that its the same in SL as it is in RL (I *can’t* afford any real estate to play with) I pretty much gave up.
Why should I pay $$/month for a SL only to be reminded that its much the same as RL…..I can’t afford anything cool, I can’t get a home? Now I mainly just log on to shoot people. Thats fun. Go figure.
Anonymous
Aug 20th, 2007
“I’m not going to discuss Woodbury, because that’s not the point of my post.”
Then why even bother to bring it up period. You had a good comment going until you threw this unneeded bit at the end. Let it go.
Tiffany Wilder
Aug 20th, 2007
Well I had a fair chunk of land (20K) with rentals plus a nice chunk for myself and was meandering along nicely making enough for tier on the rentals plus my 12k plot and a touch extra.
Things have of late become very shaky I feel in the SL world. I have slowly sold off the land (thanks to land inflation at a nice profit too). All but a nice 4K parcel for myself to putter around in, so if it does go belly up at least i won’t lose as much.
Well except for the $$$L in shopping I have done of course, a girls got to have her 10k inventory items worth of clothes you know
.
I hope SL will be ok and I will keep coming and keep buying (clothes at least) and building etc. i would say odds that SL will be ok are about 70 to 30, so don’t give up hope but don’t bet the bank either.
Just one persons opinion, i am no expert at any of this, except for shopping, I could teach a masters degree in that.
humanoid
Aug 20th, 2007
I signed up for an SL account when I heard Reuters had opened a sim. I wanted to see if it was true. The idea of a RL corporation spending money to have a presence within a game struck me as absurd. And it still does.
I think it’s a bit different for IT companies, though. I can see why IBM would be interested in owning a few sims. It’s their job to be interested in new forms of technology.
Victorria Paine
Aug 20th, 2007
A most interesting article.
I think that there are a few reasons why corps have had limited success in SL. Perhaps the first one is something you identify: namely, that many people are in SL precisely because it is *not* RL, and see these RL corporate presences as uninteresting or perhaps even intrusive. I think that a lot of the “core” users of SL are, in fact, a pretty different demographic than what some of the corps are aiming for, to be honest.
A second reason is that the way many seem to do it (buy a sim, deck it out, and hope people will come) seems like a pretty stupid way to go about things. I mean, if the sim is designed to appeal to what SLers want to do (some nice events, some interesting areas to explore and experience), then it can be more successful (The Weather Channel’s sim comes to mind here), but if it’s an “if you build it they will come” mentality, that just doesn’t work in SL because of the completely disconnected geography. The general rule of advertising is to put ads where they will reach either a specific targeted market, or as broad a market as possible — in SL, it’s impossible to target the market really, and certainly not by buying one of thousands upon thousands of islands that someone has to specifically seek out in order to go to, and will not just stumble across — you’re asking your target to find you, which is the exact opposite of targeted marketing. And of course if you’re going for the broad market reach, generally the most *populated* areas where you get the higher traffic are areas that the corporate advertisers don’t want to be associated with. I mean coke, pontiac, nissan, reuters, etc., would all get a lot of eyeballs on their brand names if they had visual ads in sex clubs in SL, but they certainly don’t want to advertise there for brand-related reasons. The sort of “mainstream high traffic sim” where a corporate could advertise more easily and hope for exposure due to random walk-bys and fly-bys is just pretty rare in SL. Much more common are ghosttown sims. This is a problem due, in part, to LL’s island strategy, which destroyed any real contiguous geography, which in turn pretty much ruled out the possibility for developing natural areas of congregation outside of places like the Help Island. It’s also exacerbated by the low limits on the number of AVs that can comfortably be present in one sim at any time. But more fundamentally, because SL is such a free-for-all for the most part, there are just too many “no go” areas for the advertisers, and too few areas where they can naturally expect a lot of traffic which are not “no go” areas.
I think that the potential for corporates to use SL as a way to reach customers is rather limited in SL, because of the nature of the medium. (I do think that there is greater potential for corporates to use SL as a means of internal meetings and that sort of thing — but it seems very few are interested in that, probably due to reasons of confidentiality among other things.) People are not reliant on corporations to provide the content they want to experience in SL, whether it is building and creating, land management and speculation, club ownership, socializing, sex, roleplaying — people can do these without anything that the corps bring to the table in SL. If a corp were to come to SL with the ability to provide content that people in SL wanted to experience, that would be one thing — but it’s likely that for the most part the content will be so sanitized, so Disneyfied, that it won’t hold much interest for many SLers. Many of us are here precisely because we want something different from our RLs in various ways when we come here, and in various doses — and to expect RL corps to be able to market successfully to our SL personae is .. frankly quite a stretch.
Nicholaz Beresford
Aug 21st, 2007
)) Actually the reason I came to Second Life in the first place was to *get away* from corporations, mass media, and all their unwanted advertising. Being free from all that crap is the reason I stay and the reason I like SL so much. ((
So true. I still remember the moment when I saw a first life brand logo in SL for the first time (I it CBS or NBC, I get these mixed up), or more a place with a lot of poles with flags of these logs waving. For a moment I had this creepy thing up my spine, this “Oh no, *they* are coming”, not about that company in particular, but the corporate world in general casting their shadow over the land like when you might hear that Saruman’s army was coming.
Chav Paderborn
Aug 21st, 2007
Very good point in the comments about the lack of a “monopoly” on creation in SL. If I want a car in RL I need to buy from someone with the capacity and technology to make cars, whereas in SL I can make one from plywood or buy one cheap from a hobbyist who enjoys making cars in SL for low profit margins. Corporations need to stop and ask themselves what they can offer that isn’t currently available in-world and/or what can they do much better than their resident competitors. A clothing company, for instance, faces the problem that the market for clothing in SL is fairly saturated, and knock-offs are relatively easy to make. So what could they offer when they have to work with the same technology that we work with?
Etaoin Barcelona
Aug 21st, 2007
Interesting article. And this morning I got through my in-box an article from IBM (whom I have a business relationship with, and owner of about 40 islands in SL–search “IBM” on the Map) about how business can use MMORPGs, and includes a paper that seems to be focusing on World of Warcraft: http://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/www_innovate.nsf/pages/world.gio.gaming.html
IBM appears to be taking it slow and steady. They have set up a Sears and Circuit City presence, mostly an enhanced catalog operation to order RL goods. You can also order your US$250,000 server from one of their islands!
Inigo Chamerberlin
Aug 21st, 2007
Some interesting comments.
Yes, bearing in mind how ridiculously cheap setting up a SL presence is, in corporate terms, it would make sense to employ residents as representatives, with suitable training of course. All the systems to ensure it works, time clocks for instance, already exist. In some cases it might even be possible to re-employ retired employees. Sooner or later some one’s going to do it too.
The concept of offering ‘real’ attractions for SL residents is good too. A group of four ‘clean’ sims (specially designed for minimum lag) made available to live performers would work for instance.
Another possibility, which is pure transfer of RL PR techniques into SL terms, would be sponsorship of events, possibly providing facilities as part of the package as well…
This is the sort of thing I meant by corporates becoming part of SL, actually becoming involved and providing things to interest residents, rather than expecting us to come running to their sterile reproductions of RL.
Still, they are going to have to dig a wee bit deeper in the corporate purse to do this. At the weekend a friend and I ran a modest event ourselves to promote the opening of a new sim complete with a new, bigger, store. First time for both of us for an event like that.
Nothing fancy, a treasure hunt, a couple of live performance sessions and a DJ filling in. And of course the obvious personal contact with potential customers.
I have to say it was pretty hard work! Between dealing with an overcrowding provoked sim crash mid-way, a single griefer, policing excessive script usage by some guests and a few other unexpected issues, we both concluded that more ‘staff’ are really needed, even for such a small event.
Something else corporate users will have to learn, like we did, from experience. Of course, this is likely to spawn yet another group to milk unwary corporates – inworld event organisers – charging far more that the corporates could do it for using their own staff…
Oh well, as I said previously, the ones who will make it work will be the ones who figure that out and meet SL on it’s own terms.
It remains to be seen which corporate is going to be the first to ‘get it’ and build a real SL presence.
Dire Allen
Aug 21st, 2007
I don’t mind the idea of Corporates coming into SL. It’s just that I have yet to see one where I thought “wow this is cool”.
But I had one idea once for SL and Corporations making a buck at the same time. You know how there is web hosting on the web? What if the same could be done for land in SL? This would probably be good a good idea. Pay a monthly, or annual fee, with a various fixed acres of land to offer. They could host the servers, as you would any web server (this is how LL gets paid). And if you really wanted to experiment with the idea, provide free advertising paid, 512 sq Land. I’m surprised something like this wasn’t done in the beginning. Now I am sure, someone will chime in here and tell me that probably wouldn’t work. After all I know nothing about how advertising, or running a company works. But it was just an idea.
csven
Aug 21st, 2007
“can actually be traced to the decision – and it was a decision by Linden Lab, not something that ‘just happened’ – to court corporate America.”
I’d actually like to know on what you base this assertion, in as much as it relates *directly* to the Main Grid (which eliminates their attempt to set up an isolated Stagecoach Island for Wells Fargo).
Not saying you’re mistaken, only that I recall a lot of teeth pulling before LL made a public statement that effectively opened up the MG to companies.
Hiro Pendragon
Aug 22nd, 2007
It’s an extension of the Internet. How difficult to understand for you, or big media companies putting out both the pro and anti SL articles?
Poianone
Aug 22nd, 2007
Inigo, very good points in your article. By the end, I thik is possible to predict a fourth option:
4) Second Life will be chucked out by the market, if a competitor of Linden Lab will run a metaverse and will be able to partner corporates. Indeed, every firm, marketer and “Second Life newbies” in general, have underrated the fact that Linden Lab doesn’t offer any sort of support or service to those interested in joining the platform. Think about it; firms such as Microsoft and Google, and also Apple and Sony (for the Playstation) built up their success on offering services and support to third parties firms. Partnerships have been the key. For example, the success of the Sony’s Playstation is partly determined by the capability of the firm to offer services and support to third party games publishers, such as the possibility of benefiting of multi-million dollars marketing campaigns. The success of IBM, Intel, AMD in the computer industry took place thanks to the complementary role charged by software providers, and Microsoft in particular.
Here is the problem: who does Liden Lab complement? The simple answer is: no one. In other words, Linden Lab didn’t take advantage from the possibility of being the partner of all those interested in develop and produce content in Second Life. Probably, it is undoubtedly true that LL didn’t imagined the “corporate-colonization” phenomena; but, more important, they didn’t have (and don’t actually have) the resources and capabilities to manage this role of complementarship. What do you think about?
Timothy Zapotocky
Aug 27th, 2007
Supposedly, even with all the technical and other problems, LL is already making money. That’s what Philip Linden said at an inworld conference not long ago.
The technical problems are partially because the company took on a huge project with a fairly small staff… and even though this means that fewer new bugs can be introduced, it also means that existing bugs take longer to be exterminated. The small staff means that LL is not burning through its money as fast as it could.
Repurposing the Grid as a venue for Soulless Multinational Corporations seems like a bad move: the SMCs have an agenda which is at odds with SL’s culture. And there is the danger that the current customers will be driven away.
Two interesting things about LL which haven’t gotten much attention are that, while building SL, they have made significant advances in two peripheral areas: they have developed a micropayment system (with its own transnational quasi-currency) which people actually use (and which works pretty well.) Also, 3D voice is a major advance in the boring yet ubiquitous technology of conference calling.
Timothy Zapotocky
Aug 27th, 2007
Supposedly, even with all the technical and other problems, LL is already making money. That’s what Philip Linden said at an inworld conference not long ago.
The technical problems are partially because the company took on a huge project with a fairly small staff… and even though this means that fewer new bugs can be introduced, it also means that existing bugs take longer to be exterminated. The small staff means that LL is not burning through its money as fast as it could.
Repurposing the Grid as a venue for Soulless Multinational Corporations seems like a bad move: the SMCs have an agenda which is at odds with SL’s culture. And there is the danger that the current customers will be driven away.
Two interesting things about LL which haven’t gotten much attention are that, while building SL, they have made significant advances in two peripheral areas: they have developed a micropayment system (with its own transnational quasi-currency) which people actually use (and which works pretty well.) Also, 3D voice is a major advance in the boring yet ubiquitous technology of conference calling.