Linden Lab
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The Sea Monkey experience of avatars
So, as you may recall last week Linden Lab responded about what appeared to be Second Life advertisements that capitalized on the recently-released James Cameron film, Avatar. Linden Lab implied (though didn't actually state plainly) that the advertisements were not intended to cause confusion between Second Life and Avatar. Since about Christmas (just after previews showing the blue-skinned Na'vi began to become available to the general public) IMVU started running some blue-skinned ads of its own. It was when we saw the blue-avatared IMVU advertisement that sprung up during the same period that we inevitably started thinking about Sea Monkeys. There's more similarities going on here than just the visible, so let's rummage around and see if we can't find one of the old advertisements in our files.
Second Life scripted agents to be exempted from traffic this month
Well, it's been a long time in coming, but it is finally just around the corner. Back in October, Linden Lab added a facility where Second Life users could flag the accounts of their scripted agents (commonly called 'bots'). That was in October and the flag itself has had no effect so far. However, along with the search update on Wednesday, 20 January, user accounts (whether they are actually scripted agents or not) who have chosen to turn the flag on for their account will no longer count towards the per-parcel traffic data generated by the system.
Avatars blue, Second Life concurrency and transactions rise
The Second Life user-concurrency and user-to-user transaction figures took a bit of an unexpected jump this week, rising sharply after a year of relatively little motion. Through 2009, user-concurrency has been on a slight, though not terribly significant decline, while user-to-user transactions remained flat and rather unexciting. The sudden rise coincided with an advertising campaign by Linden Lab, where James Cameron's Avatar and Second Life were rather strongly linked in a series of banner advertisements run on YouTube and as a part of Linden Lab's affiliate program.
Educators find common ground in Second Life, for now
There's no doubt in our minds that virtual environments are here to stay, for a significant fraction of the foreseeable forever. Love them or loathe them they're in their third decade now, and like the Web, it's now more a matter of how they fit in to the rest of the world, rather than if they do. In education, virtual environments are now a part of an educator's toolbox and as education continues to combine, refine, and recombine tools, virtual environments will find increasingly better, more effective uses in education. There's no doubt about that among educators, even if the technologies aren't ready for widespread educational uses today.
The story behind the Second Life central database upgrade
Linden Lab's systems administrator, Charity Majors has been with the company for a while – since 2004, in fact – but we've not heard much from Majors previously. That's a shame, because Majors' latest post detailing the process behind the recent Second Life central database upgrade is a real treat. We've not seen its like for a couple of years, sadly. The story of the recent database upgrade (which was originally attempted in 2007, with less than stellar results) is frank, detailed and informative. It's really rather a pity that Majors isn't writing blog posts on policy and economic metrics, because Majors puts almost all the other Linden Lab bloggers to shame for precision and clarity.
Second Life search upgrades in late January
It's always enlightening to hear from Frank Ambrose at Linden Lab. His posts about Second Life architecture, when they appear, are generally packed with information about upcoming plans, pending architecture changes and more. Clear, to the point and generally very few signs of spin (although a bit of distressing a tendency to type 'LAG' in all-caps). Overall, it's what we like to see more of. In a similar vein, there's a notice from Liana Linden about some late-January upgrades to the Google appliances that handle much of Second Life's search infrastructure. There's a few additional benefits in the wings there, to be sure, and well laid-out.
Second Life, the New Year, and real names
Most Second Life users have probably read the New Year address by Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon by now. Judging by the reactions we've seen, well... let's just say that we're not keen to be in his shoes right now. Kingdon wished us all a Happy New Year, and threw some stuff out there about things that might become possible, and things that might be coming up on the schedule this year, and ... well, it was like carrying a big stack of pizzas into an anime convention. I'd hate to be the driver delivering, you know? Anyway, the laser-like gaze of many (including ourselves) turned right away to one particular bullet point, "The ability to choose either real names or fantasy names in Second Life."
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.
Second Life 2009: The year in review
It's been quite a year for Second Life, through 2009. This or that media outlet still pronounces it to be dead, though it is quite a bit less common than last year or the year before. After five years of obituaries with no sign that they're any more credible now than they were before, a number of routine nay-sayers have turned their attention elsewhere, writing obituaries for Facebook and Twitter. From a business perspective, Second Life seems to have had a good year. No major growth, but no major declines either. There's a minor decline in concurrent users over time, though it's hardly become a significant data point. Still, we're very much looking forward to the metrics and time-frames that Linden Lab will use in coming weeks to announce 'strong fourth quarter growth.'
Linden Lab isn't daft
It's tempting to characterize Linden Lab as a goofball organization that consistently makes the wrong decisions, driving their premier product, Second Life, into virtual oblivion. Nothing could be further from the truth. Success is hard to argue with (not impossible, as many people do try to argue the fact of it anyway), and Second Life is a success for the Lab. While the Lab is as prone as any organization to making mistakes that can be described as avoidable or boneheaded, all the key decisions that have allowed it to become profitable and maintain profitability and growth pretty much went right. Second Life remains a success. So why does the Lab look like a goof?
Second Life user-concurrency spends year in slow decline
Back in March this year, Second Life was closing in on Everquest in terms of peak popularity. Everquest itself peaked at approximately 90,000 concurrent users during its most popular period and Second Life came within a whisker of that at 88,199. Since then, though, Second Life's user-concurrency (as you can see in the chart above, covering the last two years) has been slowly declining.
Blue Mars limited-term pioneer pricing plans announcement
Avatar Reality Inc, the operators of Blue Mars, are today announcing limited time "pioneer" pricing for developers, digital entrepreneurs, educators, and businesses for space on the Blue Mars virtual environment platform. Space on Blue Mars is allocated in "cities". A Blue Mars city can be any size up to 16 kilometres on a side (a total of 256 million square metres). A city is more or less a discrete environment, or pocket "world" (if you prefer the term) with its own custom terrain, interface, rules, controls, items, themes, dominant language, and activities.
Second Life's Nascera now nascent
Nascera, which we know sounds uncomfortably like nasal and viscera jammed together in some rather bizarre agglomeration, is the name for the new continent which is hosting Linden Lab's experimental house and land incentives for premium Second Life users. The beta buildout is done and you can go see the results for yourself. Mind you, if you already have rented or owned land in Second Life, the Nascera offering really isn't for you. You, like us, really aren't the target demographic. Nor is anyone we showed it to, which is probably why they all made those nasty faces when we did.
Property, Second Life, backups and you
When we're logged into Second Life and discussing various products, items, goods and clothing, we'll often refer to owning something that we've purchased. It's a very natural sort of metaphor. We're not, however, under any actual illusion that we own the items in question. We read the Second Life Terms of Service when we signed up, and we're well-aware that we haven't been given ownership of the virtual goods we paid for, nor has any purchase taken place in the legal sense.
Long-delayed Second Life script-limitations back in the public eye
It's now just over one year since Linden Lab announced that they would be implementing a some manner of script limitations over and above those which are presently a part of Second Life as it stands today. It is just over eleven months since those limitations were rescheduled to go ahead in Q3 2009 – which time has definitely long passed. Nevertheless, the script limitations system is alive and well and coming up, apparently in 2010. This constitutes good news, very good news and not so good news (in roughly that order).
Is Linden Lab wasting its time on the existing Second Life population?
Going over the Second Life metrics that are available to us, it seems clear that this virtual environment has reached one of its most significant growth plateaus, and one that it doesn't seem to be able to push past. User-to-user transactions, active users, weekly/monthly logins, all remain very flat. All the while, more than 9,000 new user accounts are created on the service every day, though the retention rates appear to be extraordinarily low, making up only for what appears to be an almost negligible attrition in the medium- and long-term user-base.
Linden Lab to test new house/land incentive for premium Second Life accounts
While the growth of Second Life new-user registrations remains steady, as do active users, the number of premium accounts in Linden Lab's virtual world had entered into an accelerating decline, last time we had any data available to us. This is hardly surprising, as tweaks to the land-centric Second Life economy over time had largely eliminated the need for many users to have a premium-account. The Lab is announcing the creation of a new continent (name and location not known at present), which will contain a number of unfurnished homes on 512sqm parcels of restricted-use land that do not share a border with the parcels of other users.
Second annual Linden Prize announced
Linden Lab has announced that applications have opened for the 2010 Linden Prize, and submissions will be taken until 15 January 2010. The Linden Prize is awarded for Second Life projects that improve the way people work, learn and communicate in their daily lives outside of the virtual world. This annual award is intended to align with Linden Lab's company mission, which is to connect all people to an online world that advances the human condition. There are a couple of changes this year, one being that the $10,000USD prize will be definitely be paid in US Dollars, not in Linden Dollars, "with the aim of giving the winner some more options in the rough real world economy" according to a spokesperson for Linden Lab.
BBC asks: What happened to Second Life?
You don't see nearly the amount of coverage of Second Life (or as we call it in these parts, PlayStation Home's creepy, aggressively pornographic uncle) these days as you used to, and BBC did a little digging to find out why. Their discovery? Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but Second Life sucks. It's overly complicated to control, it's full of some truly horrific human beings, there are many better social networking hubs and (perhaps most importantly) companies that sunk a bunch of money into it rarely got their investments back. What the BBC seems to be implying is that Second Life was largely a media-created phenomenon, with journalists and public figures so smitten by the idea of a virtual world, no one stopped to notice that it was a wretched hive of scum and villainy. Besides, everybody knows that HiPiHi is where it's at.
Linden Lab to raise Xstreet fees, loses vendors, products
This week, Linden Lab announced that it was going to start charging listing fees and minimum commissions on its Second Life Xstreet Web-shopping adjunct in the near future. Within hours, vendors took down thousands of products, many abandoning the service entirely in favor of alternative services. It's unclear just how many vendors have abandoned the Xstreet SL system, but it apparently was enough to temporarily overload the Web-sites of third-party sites such as Slapt.
