Yesterday, Linden Lab's interim CEO Philip Rosedale and CFO/COO Bob Komin did a talk and Q&A session in Second Life focused on where things were at, and where things were going. This week, on The Virtual Whirl, we're going to take a look at that session and see if some sense can't be made of it all.

Continue reading The Virtual Whirl: Linden Lab goes back to basics

The Virtual Whirl: Linden Lab goes back to basics originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 31 Jul 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The user interfaces for general-purpose virtual environments get a pretty bad rap. It's not surprising, actually. They've generally been pretty awful. Not that they are actually hard to learn, but they've been far from comfortable to use.

That's not really very surprising. Those virtual environments don't really fit any of the accreted body of knowledge of user-interaction models, and building comfortable user-interfaces is no easy task.

Continue reading The Virtual Whirl: User interfacing

The Virtual Whirl: User interfacing originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 24 Jul 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Virtual environments have a generally poor reputation in many quarters, particularly in the mass-media. Much of that reputation is ill-deserved, and some of it is entirely fabricated (eg: by the mass-media).

I have to ask, what's the big deal?

Continue reading The Virtual Whirl: Ill-repute

The Virtual Whirl: Ill-repute originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 17 Jul 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

So far this year, the Lab's been uncharacteristically quiet. Oh, there are video tutorials and hints and tips and so forth, but most of it has been top-down or just fluff, with very little in the way of conversations happening with markets and users. That said, it has been an interesting year already.

Linden Lab designated 2010 as the "Year of Delight."

In 2010, Linden Lab's errors of measuring economic growth caught up with them. The focus on user-to-user transactions caused them to miss seeing a slowing (and possible shrinkage) in the Second Life economy, until millions of US dollars in revenue had been wiped off their balance sheet.

Yes, we're attributing it to conceptual error. The alternative would be to suggest that Linden Lab was more aware of the true measurements of the Second Life economy and simply lied through 2009/10 by using a metric that was intended to make things look better than they were - and that's not a very nice suggestion. The reductions in growth were apparently obvious to virtually everyone else. Most cases of apparent dishonesty can easily be explained with simple shortsightedness, obstinacy or error, and we think that is also the case here.

As a result the Lab has shed more than 30% of its staff through Q1 and Q2 this year. The Singapore office has closed, the UK office will be closed once the UK labor laws are satisfied, any remaining presences in China, Korea and Japan have been cut, and terminations will continue until roughly August.

Amsterdam, the new EU marketing office for Linden Lab (which opened at the beginning of this year) apparently will be remaining open indefinitely, and is the only non-US office to be retained.

All of this was attributed to "a restructure" and that efforts would be directed towards a viewer that would run in a web-browser, thus hiding the download from potential users. Given the Lab's established track-record on projects, that should be ready around Q1 2012, unless there are unusual delays.

Two new lawsuits started up, which (if I'm counting correctly) brings the total to four current lawsuits against Linden Lab by its users. The new ones are Evans vs Linden Lab, and Fahy vs Linden Lab.

The WSE (World Stock Exchange) that had closed for one month of upgrades at the beginning of 2008, opened back up for business this year after two years, which surprised everyone who noticed. As a part of reopening, the WSE announced a permanent trading halt on all WSE-listed companies.

Linden Lab launched Viewer 2 (AKA Second Life 2) and a new orientation experience at the end of March this year, and we're going to say that it flopped.

No, there's nothing specific wrong with Viewer 2 (although the new orientation experience is too video-heavy for many to find it usable), but that's the point that usage metrics begin a sudden decline.

It is unlikely that these are not related (although perhaps we're committing a post hoc fallacy of our own), although the failure of Second Life's search system to allow you to actually find things is probably a contributing factor - along with the new Terms of Service.

After some reflection, renaming "Find" to "Search" was probably very appropriate. Since the renaming, you seem to do a whole lot more searching than finding.

The Future

There's the short history, sans the hundreds (well, actually thousands) of things that I've skipped over or not included because there is simply too much. There's enough to fill a book, or several. In fact, some of it already has, and if you want a fuller treatment of those early years James Wagner Au's book is probably the best place to start.

So, where is Second Life and Linden Lab going?

Overall, we're expecting the total staff reduction (including voluntary departures) to reach maybe 50 or 60% before the end of 2010.

For layoffs of more than 15-20% it's customary for the point-man (or woman) of the layoffs to be let go as well. It's a cats-paw thing. Removing the point-man allows remaining staff and customers to focus ill-feeling on the unlucky sod, and allows things to continue without so much negativity.

As it turns out, that's what ended up happening, so no real surprises there.

The Lab has always been secretive about its goals and plans, but as a part of announcing layoffs has indicated that it's planning to be more "consumer focused" in future.

Quite what that actually means is unclear. It certainly implies that the Lab wasn't before, and a large part of Second Life's history seems to bear that out, if we're judging the Lab by its actions rather than by its words.

You see, every year the Lab tells us that it is focused (or about to focus) on the consumer, that it is making an effort to simplify things, to improve stability and reliability and all of that. Rosedale said it at the anniversary speeches just a couple weeks ago. Kingdon said it every year he was in the CEO's chair, and Rosedale said it every year previously.

We don't think, therefore, that it's cynical to assume that what we're being told is so much hot air. It's pragmatism born of experience.

Talk is cheap, and Rosedale himself said to judge the Lab by its actions rather than its words. The problem is that the Lab takes a long time to accomplish things, so any visible actions are probably quite a ways off.

We also don't expect Rosedale to actually be involved much in the running of the Lab, interim CEO or not. Most of that will probably fall to the new COO. Rosedale might still be in love with Second Life, but we don't really think he has much interest in Linden Lab anymore.

The Lab must have a CEO, but there's no requirement for him to actually show up for work, or keep the chair warm, and we're really not expecting him to.

What it does do is give the Lab a bit of breathing space, and some much-needed warm fuzzy feelings to tide it over. Very soon, though, the Lab is going to have to show results, or it will lose any confidence that it gained by Rosedale's temporary appointment. Plus, it will need an actual full-time CEO.

So, overall, we're not really predicting or expecting anything to change noticeably in the way Linden Lab operates Second Life. We'd love to be proven wrong here. We're holding out hopes that we will, but we're just not expecting it.

Finally, what does any company in Linden Lab's present position normally do? They generally make new acquisitions, and some sort of new acquisition is what we're expecting to see before the next anniversary. Beyond that, it is hard to say. The Lab is still keeping its goals and directions a secret.

Second Life remains cool, interesting, nifty and valuable, but it ultimately runs on faith and Linden Lab has its work cut out for it to restore that faith.

The Virtual Whirl: A brief history of Second Life (2010 and the future) originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 10 Jul 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

If I had to sum up Linden Lab in 2009 in a single word, it would be 'thoughtless' or perhaps 'careless'. Compared to 2008, that took some doing.

Revolving doors

After Lab CFO John Zdanowski left the Linden Lab, the Lab began to look with increasing favor on user-to-user transactions as a measure of the Second Life economy through the course of this year - an error which would appear to be responsible for the company over-extending itself and then subsequently having to lay off one-third of its staff in 2010.

Kathleen Craig, the Lab's Communications Manager disappeared in mid-conversation with us over an upcoming press-release. We learned later that she had left the company after less than a year, though the circumstances were unclear. The press-release involved the Lab's acquisition of web-based virtual goods markets, OnRez and Xstreet SL. OnRez (the more appealing of the two) was subsequently terminated.

And then came the news that senior vice-president Robin Harper was departing, apparently as a part of the overall restructuring of the Lab's management, which involved a number of high-profile hirings. Also, while we spoke to an upbeat Linden Lab founder Philip Rosedale in April, it became clear that most of his practical involvement with Linden Lab had been terminated by that stage.

Linden Lab and IBM jointly formed an IETF working-group on virtual environment interoperability standards, but it appears that Linden Lab ceased participating in that group before the year was out.

High-profile content developer, Rezzable, took a hike for their very own virtual pastures, and in 2010 would clean out the last and most famous of their properties from Second Life.

Orange closed their island, Telstra did the same with their estate and Linden Lab planned a marketing office in Amsterdam.

Matters of law and policy

The IRS reported to Congress that no new laws or regulations needed to be added to the US Tax Code, as virtual goods, services and currencies were already taxable under existing US Law.

The Herbert Estate cracked down on Dune role-players, and TASER filed a lawsuit against Linden Lab in April (which they dropped again in May) both for intellectual property violations. Which was essentially much the same reason that two high-profile Second Life customers applied for a class-action lawsuit against Linden Lab.

Linden Lab started taking action against bots, traffic-gaming and camping, but apparent progress on this policy remained so slight and erratic through the remainder of the year and into the next that it isn't clear whether anyone at the Lab is working on this at all.

Ironically, while testing the technology to hide broadly offensive content away from users, Linden Lab managed to offend most of them.

Likewise, the Lab made a mess out of even defining their new content ratings by treating their users as adversaries during the process, rather than as partners. At the end of the day, though, the range of content allowable in Second Life was expanded by the new system, rather than reduced.

Come June, the Lab firmed up its content ratings (which essentially wound up being apparently identical to what they had proposed before inviting community-input), released the last of the 1.x series viewers (barring a few emergency security fixes).

In August, Linden Lab published what we'll very generously call a roadmap (in that it fails to provide the basics for a technology or policy roadmap) for content-management and intellectual property, an extremely divisive document, and apparently now a dead one. A few bits made it in one form or another, but there's no sign that the remaining portions are in the works.

The Lab tightened its grip on the Xstreet rules, and changed the way parcel-traffic was calculated to the way most everyone already thought it was calculated.

Amusement or chagrin was had by many when a new avatar surname worked its way through to production, being prison- and underworld-slang for a child-molester. Linden Lab said that it didn't know how the surnames were chosen or approved(!)

In October, after a very long time promoting a Second Life educational wiki, Linden Lab slapped it with a cease-and-desist, forcing it to close down its domain name, and then promoting the defunct domain name to customers for a couple more months. More than one education community distanced themselves from Second Life and Linden Lab before the end of the year. Laying this sort of smack down on prominent users and supporters was becoming an ugly habit.

The Lab changed Xstreet's fee structure and policies, upsetting many in the process and driving them to competitors. After losing a lot of vendors over this in 2009, the Lab would eventually reverse most of these changes in 2010.

Gallery: Second Life Core Gallery

Step UP!

During the year Second Life users staged a major campaign called "Step UP! Against Content Theft", in order to seed awareness about content infringement and for "Linden Lab to see the power of the feeling about the problem of content theft - and to discuss urgently strategies for tackling it."

Some time after the campaign, we spoke to Linden Lab about the effectiveness of it. A Lab spokesperson indicated that the Lab had not taken any action whatsoever in response to the campaign, and did not acknowledge that the Lab had any knowledge or awareness of the "Step UP!" campaign.

Technology

January was the month that the reliable inventory service was supposed to have been rolled out, to help improve user-experience and minimize both inventory loss and the appearance of inventory loss. A year later, and that has not yet eventuated.

Instead, the Lab started the year by explaining that various metrics that had suddenly ceased publication without notice were "misleading." Within several weeks, publication of the figures resumed, and we were told instead that it had been a bug. During that patch, Linden Lab dumped about 800,000 inactive accounts which had been created but never used as a part of a long-delayed cleanup.

The Lab announced a series of initiatives to improve performance, which went into place through the year but so far don't seem to have resulted in improved performance.

In July 2009, the Lab cautioned users to avoid one of its new viewer features. This still hasn't been reported as safe-to-use. The Lab also announced that it felt it had licked the group-chat problems. Again, five months on, there seems to be no improvement apparent to the end-user.

In November, Second Life Enterprise, hinted at back in April, was launched into beta, and we understand that it was not long after that the development team began to be laid off.

In December, the work on script-limiting gained significant momentum, and undelivered "Instant Messages" from throughout 2009 suddenly started appearing, not all of which were delivered to the person to whom they were originally sent.

Media

The Daily Mail trumpeted the involvement of Second Life in a tragic, Italian murder case, but apparently made no such similar loud noises when it turned out that Second Life played no part in the incident, and that they had implicated Second Life in error. Nevertheless, new user registrations did increase briefly as a result of the news. Come March, Reuters closed their Second Life island, but continued to set up a new island for a while.

Yoko Ono unveiled the Imagine Peace tower in Second Life, and SL Relay For Life earned oodles of cash for cancer research again this year. More than ever. We also got our first opportunity to talk to new CEO, Mark Kingdon.

And that, plus about a million other things, was 2009 in and around Second Life.

The Virtual Whirl: A brief history of Second Life (2009) originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 10 Jul 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This week, we cover the final installment of our summarized history of Second Life and Linden Lab (check out the first installment or the second, if you missed them). It's only possible to cover a tiny fraction of the events that took place in the space we have here, but the highlights paint an interesting picture.

We'll be working our way from 2008 to June 2010, and looking at what future directions we expect from there.

Continue reading The Virtual Whirl: A brief history of Second Life, 2008-2010 and beyond

The Virtual Whirl: A brief history of Second Life, 2008-2010 and beyond originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 10 Jul 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Service-based viewers for Second Life are a little different to the standard kind of viewer software that users might be used to. Standard viewers are downloaded to your PC, run on them and talk directly to the servers. Service-based viewers (also sometimes referred to as 'cloud-based') are either running on a remote server through a web interface, or running on a cloud (or other remote system) and sending data and graphics to a thin client that you run locally. The ill-fated Vollee client was one such example, and Comverse is another.

Most Some of the (relatively few) extant viewers for mobile devices (iPhones, iPads, et al), and web-based Second Life viewers like AJAX Life are service-based viewers (as are a number in development), and Linden Lab seems bent on closing them down.

Continue reading Linden Lab guns for service-based Second Life viewers

Linden Lab guns for service-based Second Life viewers originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 06 Jul 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

By 2007, a pattern was beginning to emerge. While Linden Lab was lax (some might say excessively lax) in various forms of enforcement, the Lab wound up closely scrutinizing exhibits at the anniversary and Burning Life events from 2007 on. Frictions between artistic expectations and enforcement actualities caused users and the Lab to increasingly square off as opponents at these events, taking strongly adversarial positions.

This trend has continued through 2010, and is commonly referred to as "nipplegate" among users and bloggers. Linden Lab also decided this year that June would be called Second Life's Birthday, rather than the Anniversary, a trend which continued thereafter, despite previous assertions that June was the Anniversary and that the Birthday was in March.

Linden Lab also took user-created materials for marketing purposes and edited the material to remove the creator credits; and not for the first time.

The FBI, the Lab and gambling

Early in 2007, Linden Lab invited the USA Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to view content and activities in Second Life, particularly those items that Linden Lab found to be "questionable" in nature. The FBI investigators did not indicate that there were any "areas of concern" in the content or activities that they examined.

Nevertheless, it is commonly (and mistakenly) held that the FBI initiated the investigation and that -- post hoc, ergo propter hoc -- the gambling ban enacted by Linden Lab was a result of this investigation finding questionable activities.

In actuality, the several weeks preceding the ban involved legislation regulating online gambling in the UK and particularly the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA) in the USA.

The US UIGEA bill had a bit of a rocky history, and in 2009 was put on hold, and then sent to the House Financial Services Committee, where it now appears to be dead for all intents and purposes.

Banks and pyramids

Ginko Financial was an apparent Ponzi scheme offering too-good-to-be-true rates of interest, operating out of Sao Paulo, Brazil - where it would have been in violation of Brazil's banking regulations. During 2007, the operation folded up along with an estimated 750 thousand US Dollars in user's funds.

Around the same time a number of similar unlicensed banking operations in Second Life were hacked due to poor security and large sums of money taken, though the sums paled in comparison to the Ginko losses.

The number of Premium (subscription) accounts began to fall for the first time, a trend which continued at least until Linden Lab stopped publishing that data.

The Lab trademarked "Your World, Your Way" and began eliminating all traces of the old "Your World, Your Imagination" slogan from its websites and materials. The new trademarked slogan, however, seems to have seen barely any use at all. That might be because the new slogan was already in use for IBM's Websphere Portal (as well as by innumerable travel agents).

In the middle of the year, Linden Lab said it was shifting to an increased consumer focus, with goals of simplifying the user interface and experience, fixing bugs and stabilizing the platform. It was a familiar message, having been recited in previous years, but this time a number of feature-development projects were axed, and staff associated with them were let go.

There's a whole lot more that went down in 2007 that we don't have room for here, but that we've already recapped.

Join us next week for the final installment, as we run through 2008, 2009 and the events of 2010 so far, and look to what the future might hold.

The Virtual Whirl: A brief history of Second Life (2007) originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 03 Jul 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Texture loading issues from the 1.7 update continued along with doom and gloom over point-to-point teleportation. To add to the rocky feeling of things, version 1.9 caused widespread instant-messaging failures. Come the first of April, wearing an all-grey set of textures was a popular jape.

Anshe Chung made the cover of Business Week on the first of May, 2006, which made the 2005 gold rush of new users look like a trickle.

Seven days later, we ourselves started the excellent Second Life Insider. Coincidence or a tawdry cashing in on the rush? Actually, we honestly can't remember which it was that we had in mind at the time. But it takes a lot longer than that to get one of our new websites live, so it must have already been in the works well before the Business Week cover story.

Second Life Insider became Massively in November of 2007.

As a part of the rush that built through May and June, several large groups of new users came from the *chan communities, but never seemed to get beyond small scale goo attacks, cage-guns, flying penises and annoying noises. It was all schoolyard stuff that didn't end up posing any widespread inconvenience, unless you were one of a small number of particularly outspoken and well-known users who were routinely griefed.

Three weeks after the Business Week article, Linden Lab announced that new basic accounts would no longer receive a weekly Linden Dollar stipend. This was presumably because of the extraordinary number of new basic accounts being created.

A Paper Tiger

What's more effective than actual griefing, though? Faked griefing, for a profit. A small corporate intelligence firm set up a group called the Second Life Liberation Army and created a series of faked videos of griefing, using a few friends or alts to simulate victims in acts of terror at American Apparel and other locations.

Press releases were written, democracy for Second Life was demanded and strong anti-corporate sentiments were espoused. People ate it up, especially the mainstream media, who don't know any better, didn't do their research and were completely gulled.

The SLLA used media manipulation to attract a following of disaffected, anti-corporate activists who were then used to spy on corporate activities within Second Life, which was then supposedly converted into saleable corporate intelligence by the shadowy firm behind the group.

Ultimately, however, group members saw through the ruse, the group cut loose from its corporate master, and after promising big things, sank into complete obscurity. While not directly heard of again, the mainstream media continues to recycle its old press-releases and fictitious exploits as if they were true, and as if the attacks had actually occurred. A genuine paper tiger.

Most of the false scares about terrorism and terrorists in Second Life can be traced back to those press-releases that fooled the newspapers, and are now broadly accepted as truth.

Black September

In September (known to many who were affected at the time as "Black September") an unpatched exploit in a piece of software used by Linden Lab allowed parties unknown to access customer information for many Second Life users, including real names, contact information, and passwords. There were reports that an encrypted block of payment information was also obtained by the intruder, and many users canceled their credit-cards and obtained replacements just in case.

All passwords were reset about two days later (just as everyone was starting to breathe a little easier) and many users had trouble obtaining valid login credentials afterwards.

Nevertheless, within days of the news of the security breach hitting the media (and it hit the media very hard indeed) new signups to Second Life more than trebled, and total signups hit one million in October as a result.

Linden Lab began outsourcing support and governance functions to third-party businesses and call-centers, this year, and has since been through at least two third-party providers (and perhaps more).

The Virtual Whirl: A brief history of Second Life (2006) originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 03 Jul 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This week, we cover the second installment of our summarized history of Second Life and Linden Lab (or check out part one, if you missed it). From 2005, there's an impossible amount of material to cover, but there are some interesting stories lurking among it all.

Join us as we work our way through some of the interesting highlights from 2005, 2006 and 2007.

Continue reading The Virtual Whirl: A brief history of Second Life, the middle years

The Virtual Whirl: A brief history of Second Life, the middle years originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 03 Jul 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The last time we saw any statistical data on overall awareness of intellectual property issues, it seemed that awareness of copyright and trademarks was quite appallingly low - and actual accurate knowledge about them was a very rare thing indeed.

Surprisingly few people seem to know their way around the don't-do basics, and with record numbers of trademarks being registered in recent years, it is actually nice to see that some online operators have got a firm grip on things this year.

Honestly, if you tossed a press release on our collective desk touting your virtual environment or MMOG having items or outfits available in support of the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa[TM] ... well, it'd probably cause an avalanche of pizza boxes ... but after we got the mess cleared, we'd probably assume that your promotional stuff was littered with unlicensed FIFA trademarks. It's happened before.

Continue reading Online operators avoid balls-up with football trademarks

Online operators avoid balls-up with football trademarks originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 29 Jun 2010 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In 2004, versions 1.3, 1.4 and 1.5 brought a slew of new features and enhancements: new group tools and abilities, expanded estate controls, new prim shapes and settings, audio streaming on parcels, custom animations, XML-RPC communication with scripted objects from outside Second Life and more.

Version 1.5 was slated as a bug-fix release, but ironically it was perhaps the buggiest version of Second Life to date.

Tringo

In December 2004, Nathan Keir (aka Kermitt Quirk) created Tringo -- a blend of Tetris and Bingo -- that could be played by a large number of players at once, and often involved wagering and cash-payouts.

Tringo was later licensed for the web, the PC, and for the Game Boy Advance.

Overall, a pattern generally started to emerge this year. When we considered Linden Lab projects from conception to production, a timeline of 14-18 months seemed about normal. This overall timeline held true through subsequent years.

2004 is still regarded by some as being something of a Golden Age for Second Life content creation and communities, but in practical terms the scale was very small compared to the levels that it reached just two years later.

2004 may not have been that big a year for Second Life and Linden Lab (though it was certainly a big year for bugs!), but 2005 was something special. Tune in next week for more!

The Virtual Whirl: A brief history of Second Life (2004) originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 26 Jun 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In November 2002, closed beta testing of the newly dubbed Second Life began, and open beta followed in April 2003. The user interface was primarily green in color.

Second Life initially suffered from a tragedy of the commons, so a rudimentary economic system was put in place, initially focused on flat, scaled fees to place objects in-world (not at all unlike the pennies system used in MUSH and MUCK predecessors to control resource utilization), and later followed by a more complex system of taxes.

Users almost immediately began trying to evade taxes, and a tax revolt began in a portion of Second Life called Americana, which did not simmer down until September.

In October 2003, Second Life 1.1 was released with measures to stifle tax-evasion, and Americana was doomed. With this release, though, came a vehicle API, new terrain textures, animated hair and clothes, bumpmapping, and shininess, all of which served to energize content creation in new ways.

The 1.2 release in December 2003 was the big landmark, bigger perhaps than Second Life going into production on June 23rd that year. The tax system was completely abandoned and replaced with a land-ownership model. Land was taxed in either L$ or USD. Scripters were able to create dialog boxes, and the user interface changed color to blue.

There was a tremendous outcry about the new blue color of the user interface, and quite a bit more about the new economic system, which you might recognize as the modern Second Life economy (barring a few adjustments). Many averred that these changes would spell the death of Second Life within months.

2003 also marked a period of severe financial trouble for Linden Lab and a mass layoff of staff. The company struggled to keep operating and offered a lifetime charter membership to raise funds. Charter members received a Linden dollar stipend and the ability to own 4,096 square meters of virtual land forever at no further charge.

Charter members paid US$160 or more. There were enough charter members to keep the company afloat until the financial situation improved.

2003 was the year that Linden Lab adopted the slogan "Your World, Your Imagination" until the deprecation and removal of the slogan in 2007.

The Virtual Whirl: A brief history of Second Life (2002-2003) originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 26 Jun 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Second Life has just seen its seventh anniversary (called its seventh birthday, only it technically isn't -- the original birthday is in March, but the anniversary is in June. There's history there). It's also traditionally a time when Linden Lab and Second Life users most often treat each other as enemies and obstacles; and it is a time for retrospectives and for considering the future.

With the departure of Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon (the press release release says "stepping down," but the day prior to the release many Linden staffers were saying that Kingdon was fired) Linden Lab has hit a turning point -- or the end of another era.

Accordingly, over the next couple of weeks, we're going to look at the history of Second Life, starting back in 1999 and continuing to the present day. Or at least as much as we can cover the ten-year history of something so rich and diverse in the available space.

Second Life is quite legitimately a phenomenon (and even won an Emmy award). It was also something of an accident, since it wasn't what Linden Lab started out to make.

Continue reading The Virtual Whirl: A brief history of Second Life

The Virtual Whirl: A brief history of Second Life originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 26 Jun 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Most things in the world operate on faith. Governments, currencies, intellectual property, human rights and brands all require certain minimum levels of belief and confidence in order to function.

When it comes to virtual environments, as I've maintained in the past, faith is critical.

Continue reading The Virtual Whirl: A crisis of confidence

The Virtual Whirl: A crisis of confidence originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 19 Jun 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Hot topic of the week would be the Linden Lab layoffs. 30% of the staff (roughly 110 or so individuals) were laid off this week in a round of layoffs that we spotted ahead of the official announcements. Additional staff have been shed since the beginning of the year.

Staff have been dropped from market-development, business development, engineering, quality assurance, human resources, community and executive management. Hardest hit this week are community and customer-advocacy roles and quality-assurance/testing.

What isn't hard to see is why these cuts were made, and in fact, why they are vital to Linden Lab as a going concern. At least it isn't hard to see when you're looking in the right place.

Continue reading The Virtual Whirl: The bottom line

The Virtual Whirl: The bottom line originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 12 Jun 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Back in April, we observed the departure of what we estimate to be approximately 5% or so of Linden Lab's total headcount. Some churn is to be expected, of course, especially in a tech company. It seemed a little odd that the positions didn't appear to have been advertised or refilled, but sometimes that happens out of sight. Last week, a Lab spokesperson confirmed for us that the Lab still had in excess of 300 staff.

This week, however, we're actually becoming quite concerned as there are signs of what seems to be a significant series of layoffs in progress at Linden Lab.

Continue reading Linden Lab laying off staff, closing Singapore office

Linden Lab laying off staff, closing Singapore office originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 07 Jun 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

It has long been a matter of considerable debate among virtual-environment pundits about what constitutes an 'active user'. In some ways, subscription MMOGs have it a lot easier than many other kinds of virtual environment. You can always count paying subscribers, and that's all that matters.

In a general-purpose virtual environment, free-to-play or 'freemium' model, though, counting active users is important. Trends in active users measure the health of your user communities, as well as allowing you to credibly measure your virtual-world's e-peen compared to that of the competition.

Continue reading The Virtual Whirl: Is one hour enough to be considered an active user?

The Virtual Whirl: Is one hour enough to be considered an active user? originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 05 Jun 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The online arm of the San Francisco Jose based "The Tech" museum has been announced as the winner of this year's second annual humanitarian Linden Prize. The Tech Virtual museum will collect the US$10,000 prize for projects that "[elevate] the human condition through using Second Life," and "improve the way people work, learn, and communicate in their daily lives outside of the virtual world."

The Tech Virtual (which has been open now since 2008) acts as a center for the creation of reusable (and frequently interactive) science and innovation based concepts and exhibits, and offers US$ design prizes for exhibits which demonstrate fundamental principles in a variety of areas. Even the museum design itself is a collaborative effort, and the museum is providing prototypes for the construction of physical museum spaces.

Continue reading 2010 Linden Prize winner: The Tech Virtual

2010 Linden Prize winner: The Tech Virtual originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 03 Jun 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In just a few more days, the winner of the second annual Linden Prize is going to be revealed, and the ten finalists have been announced. The stated criteria for the Linden prize are projects that "[elevate] the human condition through using Second Life," and "that improve the way people work, learn, and communicate in their daily lives outside of the virtual world."

Therefore, I feel it only natural that I was rather astonished to see sionChicken/sionCorn in among the finalists, since it apparently does neither of these things.

Continue reading The Virtual Whirl: Linden Lab short-lists viral poultry for humanitarian prize

The Virtual Whirl: Linden Lab short-lists viral poultry for humanitarian prize originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 29 May 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Virtual environments evince a significant lack of mainstream adoption. Relatively tiny percentages of the world population are involved in them in any way online. There's something clearly missing.

At the present time, virtual environments simply lack any compelling reason to exist that motivates mainstream users and might drive mainstream adoption. There's no killer app, or secret sauce that gets large numbers of people thinking "I want to get me some of that!"

Continue reading The Virtual Whirl: The secret sauce

The Virtual Whirl: The secret sauce originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 22 May 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Second Life is an immersive virtual environment. That is, it fosters attention and a quality of focus. You might subscribe to alternative definitions of the word "immersion", but focus and attention are the sense being used when developer/operators talk about an "immersive environment". They might intend one of the other meanings at other times - the word is a pretty slippery one.

The problem is that for most general-purpose virtual environments (eg: Second Life), that immersivity - that quality of attention and focus - kicks in pretty late. Only after you understand the basics of the context in which your actions, activities and experiences are taking place, do you have the satisfying sort of immersion that comes so easily to flat spaces like the Web and Facebook.

Continue reading The Virtual Whirl: Immersion, virtual environments, Facebook, and the conceptual hump

The Virtual Whirl: Immersion, virtual environments, Facebook, and the conceptual hump originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 15 May 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

A change is as good as a holiday, they say. Seriously, I don't actually know anyone who says this other than myself; though I'm assured that there are some folks out there who do.

With that tragically underutilized platitude in mind, then, last week I posed a question to a spread of well-known virtual environment users (at least to those that I felt would actually respond) and collected the responses.

The question put to the respondents was "What's the single thing that the operators/developers could do to make you feel more satisfied with their virtual environment offering; what thing would help an operator keep you as a customer, or that would make some other operator more appealing than the one or ones you already have?"

Continue reading The Virtual Whirl: Vox virtualis

The Virtual Whirl: Vox virtualis originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 08 May 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

"Nothing is certain but death and taxes"; a rather sardonic and bleak proverb, quoted and paraphrased by a number of famous figures over the years. The earliest on record was Daniel Defoe, in The Political History of the Devil in 1726.

Well, this week the death part doesn't concern us so much as the taxes.

Many Americans have spent this month scrambling to get their taxes filed, and for many of the rest of us our own turn comes due in just a couple of months. With that in mind, I thought I'd talk about the taxation status of virtual assets.

Continue reading The Virtual Whirl: Death and taxes

The Virtual Whirl: Death and taxes originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 01 May 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Today, Linden Lab is releasing the quarterly metrics for Second Life, showing overall performance for Q1 2010, and contrasting that with the performance of previous quarters.

Linden Lab claims that Q1 2010 was an all-time high for the Second Life economy. We'll drill down through the metrics and see if that's so.

Continue reading Linden Lab hands down Second Life metrics for Q1 2010

Linden Lab hands down Second Life metrics for Q1 2010 originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 28 Apr 2010 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

It's certainly taking time for people, organizations and businesses to learn how to obtain benefits from virtual environments, and it will take quite some time yet to figure out how to optimize those results. On the plus side, there are many hundreds of thousands of people working on that.

Working out how to effectively operate and manage virtual environments for large numbers of people, well, that's actually taking a lot longer. There are far fewer people actually involved in the process, and the same wheels are being reinvented over and over - and quite often, they seem to be square ones.

Continue reading The Virtual Whirl: More Marriott, less Microsoft

The Virtual Whirl: More Marriott, less Microsoft originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 24 Apr 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Just to strain our collective brain here at Massively, there's a new lawsuit that has been leveled against Second Life operator, Linden Lab. Plaintiffs Carl Evans, Donald Spencer, Valerie Spencer and Cindy Carter have applied for a class action lawsuit against Linden Lab on property ownership, misrepresentation and fraud.

The plaintiffs are represented by Jason Archinaco, of Pribanic, Pribanic, and Archinaco LLC of Pittsburgh. You may remember Archinaco's name as the man who represented Marc Bragg in Bragg vs Linden Lab on similar issues. That particular case was settled, and the terms of the settlement remain unknown - but appeared to be favorable to Bragg.

Another name you might remember is our second-favorite USA Federal Judge, Eduardo Robreno, who heard the Bragg vs Linden Lab case, and is now hearing Evans et al vs Linden Lab. It's almost like old home week! Glee!

Robreno found issues with the Second Life Terms of Service, and with the Terms of Service likely to go on trial in this case, it could have far-reaching effects for similar boilerplate EULAs for other virtual environments and MMOGs, as well as for Linden Lab's own new Terms of Service.

Continue reading Evans et al vs Linden Lab: The new lawsuit on the block

Evans et al vs Linden Lab: The new lawsuit on the block originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 21 Apr 2010 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The other day we covered a lawsuit by Corey Fahy (AKA Belial Foulsbane in Second Life) vs Linden Lab, various third-party viewer developers, content creators and others.

While there doesn't seem to be any case to really answer (because you can't copyright a name, method, process or algorithm, and Fahy seems ineligible for legal costs and statutory damages in any case) things definitely took a turn for the weird last week.

Continue reading Fahy vs Linden Lab: This just gets weirder

Fahy vs Linden Lab: This just gets weirder originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 20 Apr 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This week, in The Virtual Whirl, I'd like you to join me as I take a stab at a virtual environment user's bill of rights. It's a perennial topic given that service operators have a very unbalanced power relationship with users.

I don't believe that users should make unreasonable demands or boss their VE providers around, but certainly there's a list of things that I believe are important to look for in a general purpose virtual environment, and that the lack of one or more of them should certainly get you thinking about alternatives.

Continue reading The Virtual Whirl: A virtual environment user's bill of rights

The Virtual Whirl: A virtual environment user's bill of rights originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 17 Apr 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Last week, on Thursday 8 April, Corey Fahy in Philadelphia filed a lawsuit against Linden Lab and more than 25 others, in the Pennsylvania East District Court (case number 2:2010cv01561, assigned to judge Joel Harvey Slomsky). Fahy alleges that an algorithm in one of his Second Life products has been subjected to copyright infringement, accompanied by the usual requests for damages, statutory damages, ten times damages, attorney's fees and all that.

Where do we even begin? We'll spare you most of the cruft and go straight to the heart of the problems that we can see with this particular lawsuit.

Continue reading Fahy vs Linden Lab: No case to answer?

Fahy vs Linden Lab: No case to answer? originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 14 Apr 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This week, in The Virtual Whirl, we're looking at people, worldviews, stereotypes, public perception, technology angst, and ... most importantly, we're looking at that guy. Trust me, you'll know the one.

Continue reading The Virtual Whirl: You know that guy

The Virtual Whirl: You know that guy originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 10 Apr 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This week The Virtual Whirl virtual mailbag is stuffed to overflowing with queries about the new Second Life Terms Of Service (TOS) that launched slightly behind the new Second Life 2.0 viewer. The new version has grown from 7,500 words to more than 30,000 words across no less than 18 separate documents, all of which you must agree to in order to use the service - and golly, it has raised some questions.

Continue reading The Virtual Whirl: The emperor's new terms

The Virtual Whirl: The emperor's new terms originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 03 Apr 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

As we previously predicted, the Second Life 2.0 viewer is going live today, meeting the originally slated release target of Q1 2010, if only by a few hours. The 2.0 viewer has been in public beta since 23 February.

In addition to the new viewer, its rearranged user-interface, slate color scheme and slick Shared Media implementation, today sees the launch of two new Orientation experiences and a selection of new starter avatars to select from (we wonder if any of them are blue).

Continue reading Second Life 2.0 goes live today

Second Life 2.0 goes live today originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 31 Mar 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This week, in The Virtual Whirl, we're looking at a major business pitfall, and one which afflicts many virtual environment and MMOG developers/operators at one time or another.

Continue reading The Virtual Whirl: Cornered!

The Virtual Whirl: Cornered! originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 27 Mar 2010 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Back in 2008, quite a big thing was made of Vivox's lightweight voice/IM client for Second Life, called SLim. That buzz continued through 2009, with the announcement of voice fonts, SLim-to-SMS, and client-side recording (all scheduled for the second half of 2009) and conference calls, group text/voice chat (via SLim) and browser-based voice applets on the Second Life Web-site (scheduled for this year).

Yesterday, the news came down in a mailout from Linden Lab about the status of the SLim beta. "The program has been a great success," said the Lab and, "we have decided to end the SLim beta program, effective immediately."

Continue reading Linden Lab axes Vivox SLim Second Life client beta

Linden Lab axes Vivox SLim Second Life client beta originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Last week, the promised update of Linden Lab's Third-Party Viewer (TPV) policies crept out onto the Second Life Web-site with little fanfare. After the fuss caused by the tangle of legal incompatibilities, muddled terminology and ambiguous phrasing in the first version, the Lab said it would go back and address the problems, and get the policy document fixed.

So, you'd think they'd have gotten it right this time around, right? We certainly did. We were wrong.

Continue reading Second Life third-party viewer policies get an update but still fail to do the job

Second Life third-party viewer policies get an update but still fail to do the job originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 22 Mar 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This week, in The Virtual Whirl, we're having our monthly roundup of news items. Things that got missed, things that didn't make the cut, things that got buried, and things that really should have gotten your attention anyway.

Continue reading The Virtual Whirl: News of the Whirl

The Virtual Whirl: News of the Whirl originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 20 Mar 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In a sense, script memory limitations aren't coming to Second Life; they already exist.

What's going on is the process of Linden Lab making those limits predictable, and setting things up in such a way that script memory usage doesn't cause simulator processes to thrash madly (from paging memory to and from disk).

There's some interesting side-effects emerging from the overall prototype implementation, however. Mono (and, eventually C# when or if it becomes implemented as a scripting language) look like the losers.

Continue reading Second Life script limitations to prejudice against Mono?

Second Life script limitations to prejudice against Mono? originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This week, in The Virtual Whirl, we're asking "Why virtual environments?" - Not why are they anything specifically, but just why.

Depending on your definition of virtual environments, people have been building them and using them for decades now, since before the Web; since before the advent of the personal computer. To make a virtual space from a real space, or to fabricate an entirely original virtual space from whole cloth - what's driving that and where is that going?

Continue reading The Virtual Whirl: Why virtual environments?

The Virtual Whirl: Why virtual environments? originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 13 Mar 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This week, in The Virtual Whirl, we're going to take a selection of reader questions that we've received in comments and in the virtual mailbag and do our best to offer up some useful answers. Join us as we whirl through the mail. Not surprisingly, the two most frequently asked questions involve the demise of virtual environment, There.com.

Continue reading The Virtual Whirl: Questions from the virtual mailbag

The Virtual Whirl: Questions from the virtual mailbag originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 06 Mar 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.