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Linden Lab acquires Avatars United, Enemy Unknown AB
In a move that will no doubt perplex, flummox and befuddle many media commentators and technology columnists who erroneously believed that Second Life was a Web 2.0 social networking tool, Linden Lab has acquired social networking site, Avatars United (and developers of same, Enemy Unknown AB). This also has the side-effect of shooting down any semblance of Wallace Linden's identity piece last week being an overture of a conversation, instead making it look like the usual introduction to a Linden Lab fait accompli. We've written about Avatars United on a couple of previous occasions, but never really had much call to get involved ourselves. The social networking tool includes a large number of MMOGs and non-game virtual environments, being best known for it's strong application support of open-ended space-based MMOG, EVE Online.
The Virtual Whirl: Community guide to Virtual Worlds
Welcome to The Virtual Whirl, a new weekly Massively column covering virtual environments generally. The term 'virtual world' is slowly seeing less use, being supplanted by the more general 'virtual environment', but the world term still has a fair bit of life left in it. Virtual environments covers a whole lot of ground. From William Crowther's original efforts in 1976 that based a game in a virtual version of the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, virtual environments have been a part of gaming, artificial intelligence and behavioral research, modeling, telemetry and process control and more. Nowadays we're seeing Second Life, Blue Mars, There.com, IMVU and others trying to find places in non-game contexts, like content-development and prototyping, publishing and performance, entertainment and social, education and business; efforts that are met with varying amounts of success.
Massively's interview with Linden Lab's Catherine Smith, in Amsterdam
You might recall that, back in September, Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon and the Lab's director of Marketing and Communications Catherine Smith took a trip to Amsterdam, where it was revealed that they were seeking space for a new marketing headquarters for Linden Lab. Well, the new office isn't open yet – that's coming in January – but Ms Smith has already relocated to Amsterdam, which actually made her a bit easier to catch up with for a talk about the new digs and new initiatives.
Linden Lab to disband moribund mentor group
Yesterday at the morning Second Life mentors' meeting, Linden Lab staff announced that Linden Lab's sponsored mentor group, which had been functionally closed (in all but name) for approximately a year now, would finally be disbanded in practice. The move doesn't really come as much of a surprise to observers of the Lab's sponsored volunteer programs over the last eighteen months. Almost immediately more ex-mentor Second Life social groups than we could comfortably count sprang up, as people prepared to maintain their network of contacts without the overarching group umbrella. While there was surprisingly little actual yelling, some members of the organization feel the blame lies squarely at the feet of Linden Lab's CEO Mark Kingdon, though there's not a lot of apparent evidence to justify that.
Linden Lab partners with Dragonfish for non-US payments processing
Virtual environment operator Linden Lab has partnered up with 888 Holdings plc's Gisland/Dragonfish division to provide payment processing for non-US Second Life customers. A spokesperson for Linden Lab told us, "We're working together with Gisland on a cashier interface and other tools that will give Residents more payment options and make it easier for Residents to pay in a wider range of native currencies than they can now. Gisland will also help Linden Lab implement appropriate anti-fraud measures as we expand these payment options. In addition, Gisland will assist Residents directly with payment-related issues, including failed transactions." That last part is fascinating, as that would be something of a first insofar as Second Life payments processing goes, as is the tantalizing hint of expanded payment options – something that is of considerable interest to users outside North America.
Exclusive interview with Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon
Mark Kingdon, Linden Lab's CEO, has been a bit of a mystery figure since his appointment about a year and a half ago. While he has not been uncommunicative, it's been hard to get a very good sense of the man at the helm of Linden Lab, his passions, interests and direction. We were very pleased, therefore, when he took the time to sit down with us and answer a whole grab-bag of questions, about himself, about Linden Lab, and – of course – about Second Life. Bear with us, because we've got a lot of ground to cover.
Linden Lab to step up Second Life marketing with Amsterdam office
Over the last few days, Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon, and Lab director of Marketing and Communications, Catherine Smith have been in Europe, where Kingdon is reportedly seeking office-space for Linden Lab in Amsterdam. The office is intended to start as a small marketing headquarters for Linden Lab. At NIMK, Catherine Smith told De Hoeksteen Live! that Linden Lab was planning to launch the new office in January next year. Linden Lab's marketing efforts for Second Life hitherto have largely focused on placement of speakers at conferences and events, and – prior to 2008 – on minor registration incentive programs. More recently, efforts have focused on the revamped Web-site and assorted press-materials and white-papers.
Philip Rosedale: "Try to work with us. Let go a bit"
It seems these days that you can't have a Linden Lab employee give a speech to Second Life users without some included warning label of rough times ahead for them. It's almost relentlessly axiomatic nowadays. At this year's Second Life Community Convention, Rosedale gently urged users and Lindens to support some necessary changes to come: "Try to work with us. Let go a bit." Ironically, he has encapsulated the same core message that Second Life users have been trying to get Linden Lab to hear for the last several years.
Second Life in a box, now in preliminary beta
After Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon's announcement of a standalone virtual world product (essentially Second Life, but able to be run on private servers and with no connection to Linden Lab's virtual world) at the last Virtual Worlds London, the Lab's new director of enterprise marketing, Amanda Van Nuys has followed that up with an announcement that the product (codenamed Nebraska) is now in preliminary testing by a number of organizations. The beta test (Linden Lab calls it an alpha test, but there's no denying that it is a preliminary beta) is being conducted by such organizations as IBM, the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC), the New Media Consortium (NMC), Intel, and Northrop Grumman.
Second Life November metrics: Nothing gained
November metrics for Linden Lab's virtual environment, Second Life are available for examination. September and October were relatively poor months, and November's results don't look great at all. In fact every one of Linden Lab's key metrics fell in November. Land size, user-hours, transactions, PMLF. The only gain is an infinitesimal increase in the Linden Dollar exchange rate of 0.3%.
Second Life October metrics: More falls
October metrics for Linden Lab's virtual environment, Second Life are not yet formally available, but Lab CFO John Zdanowski wound up giving out a link to the information in advance, so we have the figures to work with. September was not a good month by these metrics, and we were interested to see how October panned out. Your key takeaways for October are a continuing plunge in premium accounts, and a reduction in overall economic activity. User hours, however were up. A more detailed summary follows after the jump.
Premium accounts and the Second Life business model
Much has been made of a statement recently by Linden Lab's new CEO, Mark Kingdon, that 'Premium subscriptions are immaterial in our overall business.' You see, in a sense that's pretty much spot-on. Unless a premium account owns more than 512 square metres of the Linden Estate (colloquially known as the Second Life Mainland), that account is either only very small revenue for the Lab, or actually represents an ongoing cost to them. Linden Lab's CFO, John Zdanowski said, 'The revenue we generate from premium subscriptions is largely offset by the stipends we pay out to these account holders, so this decline doesn't have a material impact on our business.' Either you're on an older premium account with a 500 Linden Dollar per week stipend grandfathered in, or you're on a newer premium account with 300/week. There's also a choice of plans, ranging from monthly to annual. Let's take a look at the relative values.
Kingdon's Second Life updates: What's missing?
New Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon is still making irregular postings to the official Second Life blog. It's all heady and exciting stuff, to be sure. Growth, focus on improvement of the new user experience, simplified registration, and so on. Yet something seems to be missing. What's missing is anything that excites you if you're already a Second Life user. There's plenty here to entice those who aren't already users, but if you're already one, there doesn't seem to be anything much in them for you to get excited about. Put together with some other pieces, however, it certainly creates an interesting picture about future direction for Second Life. Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.
Linden Lab responds to blog back-off
You may recall our coverage of the state of the main Second Life blog this week, which drew a very prompt response from virtual environment operator Linden Lab. The Second Life blog has been steadily transforming from a communications tool that conveys information to users into a marketing and promotional tool, whose target audience seems to be those who do not currently use Second Life, with an increasing number of posts that seem to be purely promotional. Lab CEO Mark Kingdon's post in July seemed to be little more than a brochure in the final analysis. Granted, Linden Lab seems to have no other prominent venue for publishing this sort of material, but the ongoing repurposing of the blog from communications tool to promotional tool is an interesting process to watch over time. Indeed, the Second Life blog seems to have now completely shuttered except for marketing and promotional purposes, though Linden Lab's response to our story indicates that they have other plans for it -- though quite what, is not made completely clear. Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.
Linden Lab skips orientation
Wednesday through Friday this week, Linden Lab decided to skip starting some new Second Life users on their Orientation Island, as an experiment, and land them straight onto ten updated Help Islands instead. We use the term 'updated' rather loosely here, unfortunately. Help Islands 201 through 210 had a few more exit signs placed around the island, and some SL-in-your-own-language signs. And ... that's about it, apparently. Given that the orientation HUDs keep breaking, we can only guess that someone figured maybe going without instructions might be better than with instructions that are out-of-date or not working.
Peering Inside: A media campaign
While the announcement of the Google Lively public beta may have taken many by surprise, apparently it did not take Linden Lab unawares -- their Second Life messages were already lined up and ready to go. Indeed considering that information about Lively's launch was available to a number of people who were close to Linden Lab, either as partners or ex-staffers, it seems silly to suggest that Linden Lab might not have known Lively's public beta launch date, unless those contacts were aflame with considerable, searing resentment. Wheezing, clanking and dripping oil from dark and unnameable apertures, one of Linden Lab's most neglected subsystems -- the marketing machine -- arose from it's years-long slumber and went about it's ponderous, mechanical business.
Kingdon feels the fear
Linden Lab's newly-minted CEO, Mark Kingdon, has posted another communique to Second Life users, and it isn't hard to see a certain fear in the phrasing and timing. 'The possibilities of Virtual Worlds have attracted a slew of entrepreneurs and even some Internet giants,' writes Kingdon in his second paragraph, 'Some are offering a simple, visually appealing chat solution. Others are more ambitious. Second Life offers something no ones else does - an astoundingly rich array of user-created content and a large, diverse and ever-expanding virtual economy.' And it isn't hard to see which Internet giant and what visually appealing chat solution he might be referring to, especially considering the timing of the statement.
Rosedale: You can't do it
Linden Lab Chairman, Philip Rosedale and freshly-minted CEO Mark Kingdon gave an introductory speech at 10AM Pacific time to open Second Life's fifth anniversary for 23 June, 2008. While some have considered the speech to be somewhat bland and uninspired/uninspiring, it was pretty much what you'd expect, and you can still smell Rosedale's passion through his anecdotes. Interestingly, Rosedale referred (with characteristic Linden Lab not-actually-mentioning-it-directly obliqueness) to the troubles that arose from Linden Lab's takeover of the anniverary event from resident-organizers.
Cinemassively: More Linden parodies
Apparently employees of Linden Lab are easy targets, because there are not one, but two parodies on the menu today! The first machinima comes from Crap Mariner, and it introduces us to his version of M Linden, who recently signed on as the new CEO of LL. In Crap's Second Life, he's a sassy little M shape with wandering eyes.The second spoof is another special episode of Bobby Lee Linden, everyone's favorite dimwitted, lovable redneck. This time, with the help of machinimator Code Tracer, he weighs in on the hiring of M Linden, as well as tips on using camera controls. Due to some adult content, we're just linking to the episode instead of embedding it. If you haven't experienced the madness yet, don't forget to add Secondlie on Twitter. With an average of over 50 tweets per day, the workdays will seem much shorter when you're laughing the entire time. Parodies have never been so good!If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them.
Linden Lab lands Kingdon: new CEO
In the last couple of years, Linden Lab has grown from around 50 people to (we are told) around 250 people. It is a growth stage of companies that most do not survive, as usually they do something lethally boneheaded in the process. Another stage that many companies do not survive is their first change of CEO. It is a massive change for the company's table of organization, reporting chains and corporate culture. The first CEO change generally sees a large staff turnover. That's what usually happens, anyway. While we're not predicting sudden death for Linden Lab, they're getting their first new CEO today.
