Linden Lab delays blog and forums revisions

The Grand and Unified Blog and Forum that was to serve Second Life users and was touted to be introduced in October has apparently suffered from some delays. October, it seems, is going to slip by, and though apparently it is "on track" we're no longer sure what that means in this context, as October only has a week remaining, and the notice gives the impression that October isn't the target.

We're not sure what the delay might be. We don't think that it would be the single-sign-on authentication being added to the blog, which constitutes an afternoon's work and about a week's testing for a focused Web engineer with access to adequate resources and well-supported internally. Then again, given that conjunction and juxtaposition of preconditions, perhaps it just might be a sticking point, at that.

The main blog apparently will remain "Linden Lab's public face, for policy and other important announcements, and updates from our executive team members." Many users we've spoken to believe that translates to "messages that have had the useful and interesting content boiled out of them by the legal and PR departments."

That's a position that's hard to argue against.

Instead, we're promised a set of sub-blogs, apparently bringing us full-circle back to 2005, where key staff members had their own trackable blogs to follow, where they would say interesting and useful things, and some semblance of feedback was possible.

Despite the additional information, however, there still isn't a clear picture of what the users will be getting at the end of the day, or how it is all supposed to work together to improve communications and feedback. We're also evincing a great deal of curiosity as to how this fits into an overall communications strategy that hasn't been communicated to the very users that we are told are supposed to be benefiting from the strategy itself.