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Celebrating Easter in Second Life
While many of you may have spent yesterday coloring eggs or biting the ears off chocolate bunnies, many people celebrated the holiday virtually in Second Life. For those of you too busy in real life to enjoy virtual life, we've captured some of Second Life's Easter celebration in pictures. Visit giant bunnies, hunt for eggs, join in an Easter parade, and color eggs of our very own all without leaving the safe confines of your browser! So what are you waiting for? Let's get started!%Gallery-19041%
It's Sunday and the Second Life grid is behaving badly [Updated]
We shouldn't be surprised really, but after a few good weeks of shopping, rezzing, teleporting, sending money, group IMs and the rest, many of Second Life's In World Services are acting up. There are about 57,500 people online at the moment (depending on exactly when you try to log in and get the numbers) which is a slight increase in the peak concurrency from last week, and it appears just enough to make the asset cluster scream in agony for the first time in a few months.No word on the official blog as yet, but be warned your Second Life experience may be rather poor at the moment. Update: The official blog has been updated to say they're experiencing a temporary interruption of In World Services and, "Please refrain from land and L$ transactions until we give an all clear."Update #2: Though Linden recently gave the all clear, they're now reporting there are still some functionality issues. We don't have any specifics, only, "We are looking into this and will update you as soon as we have information."Update #3: As of 5:19 PM EST (2:19 SLT), "In world services are beginning to resume. Some transactions were delayed and are catching up."Update #4: As of 2:47 SL Time the problem is re-opened. Do not conduct land or L$ transactions.Update#5: As of 3:15 SLT it is meant to be fixed again. Some caution might be in order, but back in the pool everyone!
Economies of scale don't apply to virtual worlds?
The Economist returns to Second Life, exploring several facets of the fascinating virtual world. If you've been asking yourself, "What's the big deal with Second Life?" the article answers that question by giving several examples of how the virtual world makes an impact. The piece is too big for us to break it all down here, so instead we'll use this space to argue with Philip Rosedale's statement that, because Second Life lacks economies of scale, local artisans are safe from the likes of Nike in the Second Life marketplace. He argues that local artisans who craft shoes are protected from Nike because producing one digital pair of shoes costs the same as producing two billion pairs of digital shoes. That's not actually true. First, Nike's presence in virtual worlds will never be separate from its presence in this, the real world. Nike's brand-building activities on Terra Firma do benefit from economies of scale: because Nike buys so much advertising, it pays less per unit than a company that buys only limited advertising in a local market. As a result, Nike's cost of per unit of advertising is lower than the local artisan's. This means that Nike will always have a scale-granted advantage in brand building. That advantage then spills over into virtual worlds where Nike's brand recognition continues to influence consumer behavior. Second, it takes time to design, produce and market shoes. Nike's already got teams of people who do just that, day in and day out. Because of the size of these teams, they've got spare capacity that they can tap for new ventures in virtual worlds. There's no incremental cost to that labor, as they've already paid for it. Here again, Nike's got an advantage as a result of scale. Second Life's denizens are concerned that the entrance of big business into the world will drive them out. They're right to be concerned. Their businesses are as at risk as the local bookseller's business before Barnes & Noble comes to town. [Thanks, substrate9] [Image from SL Universe.com]
Second Life's user database breached
Hackers broke into the Second Life user databases on Thursday, according to this post on the official blog of Second Life parent company Linden Labs. Intruders gained access to Second Life account names, real life names, contact information, encrypted account passwords and encrypted payment information. So what? Well, there's something scarier about this theft. Name, address and credit card information is stolen daily from various inept ecommerce sites. We're kind of accustomed to that level of theft. But how many of us are really comfortable with data stolen from the place where we spend our leisure time? To put a finer point on it, what happens when archived MMOG chat logs are breached? It's going to be ugly, like AOL ugly: "I swear honey, that Furry meant nothing to me. It was totally just research for my new book. I'll sell the teledildonics equipment on eBay first thing tomorrow." Gamers haven't been paying much attention to privacy of in-game communications. Given how intimate some of those communications have become, maybe it's time for more scrutiny of privacy protection measures taken by MMOG providers. [Via Techcrunch] [Image via furry.wikia.com]
