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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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 Feb 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

There's a been talk going around among users that a Linden Dollar bonus made to users that sign up for Second Life premium accounts is not paid to users who are upgrading an account from basic to premium. That is, it was said that only users creating a new premium account got the bonus and users who upgraded did not, despite Linden Lab's advertising material apparently promoting it for both.

A number of you wrote in asking us about that yesterday, and we contacted Linden Lab for you to get an answer one way or another. That line of questioning bore some definitive fruit.

Continue reading Rumor: Bonus payment premium incentive not being paid to upgrading Second Life users? [updated]

Rumor: Bonus payment premium incentive not being paid to upgrading Second Life users? [updated] originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 02 Feb 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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.

Continue reading Second annual Linden Prize announced

Second annual Linden Prize announced originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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.

Continue reading Linden Lab to raise Xstreet fees, loses vendors, products

Linden Lab to raise Xstreet fees, loses vendors, products originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

While online economies can seem to be (and often are) fundamentally different from AFK economies, there's a key component that makes any online economy function in ways that are all-too-familiar.

That's us. You and me. People.

Whether bags of treasure fall out of dead rats, or the economy is reliant on texture artists, modelers and scripters, it's people that make online economies with fundamentally alien premises work in some very surprisingly quotidian ways.

Continue reading Five regrettably true things about online economies

Five regrettably true things about online economies originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The store is a fairly ordinary store in Second Life terms, except that it appears to sell objects that are mostly available for free elsewhere in the virtual environment. Reselling 'freebies' in Second Life is generally considered to be a reprehensible practice, but it does happen. This particular store is one of the places we routinely check out to evaluate the effectiveness of Linden Lab's harder-line policies on gaming traffic (and thus search-rankings) within Second Life.

In front of us are a row of 53 avatars, camping out. The provision of such camping facilities being one of the things that are prohibited under the new policy. We tried for a little while to get the attention of one of the camping avatars to see what they might think, and finally succeeded. As it happens, the avatar who responded was a bot - actually one of 70 bots being controlled by a single user who declined to give us a name. The bot-operator was, however, happy to answer a few questions for us, through the remotely-controlled avatar.

Continue reading Second Life traffic gaming: A chat with a bot-operator, and dire portents for Lucky Chairs

Second Life traffic gaming: A chat with a bot-operator, and dire portents for Lucky Chairs originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 03 Jun 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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%.

Continue reading Second Life November metrics: Nothing gained

Second Life November metrics: Nothing gained originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 12 Dec 2008 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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.

Continue reading Second Life October metrics: More falls

Second Life October metrics: More falls originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 19 Nov 2008 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The published, key metrics for Second Life for the month of September are now available as both an Open Document Spreadsheet and in Excel format.

Your key takeaways this month are an increasing fall in total premium accounts, a fall in total user hours, zero mainland (Linden owned estate) growth (but a 7% increase in privately owned estates), and a reduction in economic activity. A more detailed summary follows after the jump.

Continue reading Second Life September metrics: Mostly falls

Second Life September metrics: Mostly falls originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

It seems a simple sort of question doesn't it? Is the Second Life economy in a boom or a bust? Is it stagnating or recessive? What the heck is it doing, exactly?

Well, life is never simple, and the Second Life economy certainly isn't. In the main, the Second Life economy follows the same basic rules as any national economy might, because well ... it is full of people doing what people do with and within economies. The differences are in the axioms. The Second Life economy is to regular economies what geometry would be if pi were (for example) equal to exactly three (circles would have a whole lot more sides, for one thing). The familiar set of rules produces vastly different results if the underlying constants are different.

All economies have some level of striation. There's always more than one kind of economy operating under the hood. The fundamental circumstances of the Second Life economy, however, lead to a greater disparity in the striated economy than is the norm elsewhere.

	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.

Continue reading Is the Second Life economy in a boom or a bust?

Is the Second Life economy in a boom or a bust? originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 16 Oct 2008 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

We feel a little odd about this one. Not because we're giving you a warning about a scam to steal your Second Life account information, but because you'd have to be just a bit retarded and greedy to fall for this ... or maybe just unsophisticated and ignorant would be enough. Certainly a level far below our regular discerning and informed Massively readers.

Nonetheless, some people are going to fall for this. Some people always do -- and it is a very convincing copy of one of the Second Life Web-pages. Remember, though, the only Web-sites that legitimately prompt for your Second Life password are at secondlife.com. If you think win-lindens.tk could be an official Second Life website, think again.

So, here's the drill. Feel free to sing along:

• If you give your account details to any third-party, regardless of the proffered incentive, you should probably cancel your account -- because heaven knows, they can lock you out of it and keep it, or do whatever the heck they want with it.
• If you ever get the urge to do so, because someone is offering you EXP, game-gold, Linden Dollars, free items, or whatever, go find someone responsible to talk you out of it. That would be pretty much anyone else.
• Short version: No. No, no, no, no, no.

Got all that? Odds are, dear readers, that if you're here reading this then you aren't one of the poor unfortunates who really needs this advice.

The offending site (which we'll not grace with a link) is http://www.win-lindens.tk/ which is using one free Web-host in Amsterdam, and another in Italy for their nefarious deeds. We wouldn't be surprised if it was the same people that were behind freelindensnow.

	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.

You probably didn't need that Second Life account anyway originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 12 Oct 2008 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab has been granted another trademark on their hand-and-eye logo. This time for a credit card. Specifically, trademark registration 3378449 covers "Online financial services, namely, offering a fictional-dollar-denominated credit card to charge online purchases".

Of course, 'fictional-dollar-denominated' would mean Second Life Linden Dollars (L$). Exactly what sort of card this might be is uncertain. You may recall that in 2006, MindArk released an ATM card for Project Entropia (now called Entropia Universe) allowing access to Project Entropia Dollars (PED) and supported by the Versatel cash-card network.

There's no indication whether Linden Lab is (or was) planning a physical card, or some sort of non-physical card, how it would be backed or where it might be honored.

	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.

Continue reading Linden trademark for credit cards

Linden trademark for credit cards originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 22 Aug 2008 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mitch Kapor's announcement of the Linden Prize at Second Life's fifth anniversary was rather surprising. Out of roughly 27 and a half minutes of presentation, the "very important announcement" got all of two and a half minutes of talk-time before Linden Lab's staff ran to the fire exits.

There wasn't actually any fire, of course, but it was certainly astonishing just how fast they wound up and departed the event, especially in contrast to Rosedale and Kingdon's speeches on 23 June. It bordered on the unseemly.

Continue reading Thoughts on the Linden Prize

Thoughts on the Linden Prize originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Meet Jay. Jay started in Second Life in April this year and was interested and involved enough to get himself some Linden Dollars via a currency exchange. A lot of Linden Dollars.

Unfortunately, Jay is now out-of-pocket by US$110, and is being told conflicting stories.

Continue reading Peering Inside: A cautionary tale

Peering Inside: A cautionary tale originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 16 Jun 2008 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Remember this website? Well, apparently they've given up on trying to scam people through assorted survey fakery. They've stepped up to straightforward theft, and want your account credentials -- in exchange for L$25,000 (which, quite obviously, you would never actually receive).

You'd have to be unspeakably naive, or somehow functionally retarded to actually provide them with your account details. Right now, they're spamming across the grid with a domain name that redirects to this site.

Continue reading Free Lindens now

Free Lindens now originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 16 May 2008 23:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Dubai Women's College is, as far as we can tell, the first educational institution in the Middle East to open a campus in Second Life (are we wrong? There's a lot of educational institutions with setups and sites on the grid).

The island, Dubai Women's College, isn't, as yet, a whole lot to write home about -- a mosque, some signs, some classroom-platforms, out in the middle of community-college-ocean. There's a college map, and a museum-under-construction.

Oh, and a sign out front that proclaims: 'The extent of a teacher's imagination is the only limit to what or how teaching can take place in this learning environment.' Well, that and a functional grid gets you a virtual-world-enabled education.

Continue reading Dubai Women's College

Dubai Women's College originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

So, whose site do you think the above image comes from? No, definitely not from Linden Lab. Over the last week there have been a number of accounts (all apparently now banned) that have been spamming out a link to this site, or links that direct to it. We assume Linden Lab is even now sharpening their pens for cease-and-desist letters, based on use of trademarks alone.

The site itself contains some material that might not be safe-for-work or suitable for those under 18. The majority of content, however, is probably not safe for anyone much, really. It's a sub-site of a site that involves imagery that is quite definitely NSFW.

It's one of those fill-out-surveys-to-get-Linden-Dollars sites, and we've yet to see one that wasn't some sort of scam -- so we've got no reason to believe that this isn't also one. Given that, we cannot recommend that anyone give this site a try.

Don't go there originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 27 Apr 2008 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Luke Connell's 'fictional' stock exchange, the World Stock Exchange (or WSE) has abandoned the use of Linden Dollars for reasons which seem a little confused and unclear other than apparently fear, uncertainty and doubt. The exchange has been closed for some time for a software refit that seems to be taking a lot longer than anyone expected.

If you had Linden Dollar balances with the WSE - well, tough. They've been converted to World Internet Currency (WIC) and you can try to cash them out for some value (that is if people want to spend real money on valueless game-tokens) - when the WSE goes live again (a date that is, as yet unclear. Maybe March. Maybe not).

But since Connell asserts that all the businesses, money, shares and all that that are involved are just role-playing, that's no loss to anyone at all, right?

WSE abandons Linden Dollars originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 25 Feb 2008 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Archipelis' SL Exporter allows 3D model importing into SL originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 12 Jan 2008 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The Metaverse Journal has an unedited interview with LukeConnell Vandeverre, owner of the - as he puts it - fictional World Stock Exchange. In it, Vandeverre asserts repeatedly and firmly that the WSE is a game, and nothing more, and that no real profit is available through the WSE.

"[I]t is not real, holds no real value and it is not an investment and does not provide investment opportunities." - Vandeverre.

The interview is full of contradictions. Vandeverre appears to claim that the 'fictional' currencies have value in the real world, albeit indirectly, and then reverses course and appears to claim that they don't.

Continue reading Vandeverre says: WSE not real. Not an investment. [updated]

Vandeverre says: WSE not real. Not an investment. [updated] originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 12 Jan 2008 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab cracks down on Second Life Banks originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 08 Jan 2008 14:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In response to our piece on the both speculative and historical use of fraudulent funds transfer in Second Life as a griefing tactic, Peter Gray of Linden Lab's PR agency, LewisPR sent us an unsolicited statement yesterday.

In it Gray begins, "The policy stated at http://secondlifegrid.net/programs/api/risk seems to have caused some confusion. .... The policy stated at the above webpage is directed at operators of Linden dollar exchanges; if Linden Lab identifies that the operators of these exchanges have PURPOSEFULLY purchased fraudulent L$, Linden Lab may recoup 150% of the amount. The fine mentioned on this page is a potential repercussion of an exchange operator purchasing fraudulent L$ where Linden Lab has identified an intent to collude in fraudulent behavior. To date, this fine has never been levied."

Which is all very well - but actually has nothing at all to do with what we are talking about.

Continue reading Linden Lab responds on fraudulent funds griefing

Linden Lab responds on fraudulent funds griefing originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 04 Jan 2008 14:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Linden Lab today have a lengthy set of warnings about possibly fraudulent third-party exchanges for the purchase of Linden Dollars for Second Life . In it are listed a number of common-sense precautions and warnings. However there are two particularly that we think are worth comment.

Firstly, there's this "You therefore purchase these third party L$ at your own risk: if they are discovered to be fraudulent - in effect phony - we will recoup them from your account." - well, that goes just a bit further than you might be expecting.

Continue reading Linden Lab warns of fraudulent currency exchanges

Linden Lab warns of fraudulent currency exchanges originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 02 Jan 2008 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

We have some reports (and I've also experienced it myself in the last couple of hours) of L$ payments not showing up immediately for Second Life users this-evening. The money is there, but account balances in the top corner of the screen are not updating until you've paid someone at least one L$.

More confusingly, L$ transactions of L$1 and higher dated 4 November SLT (US Pacific) tonight are not necessarily showing in the transaction history unless you include at least November 2 (or earlier) in the search range. Some users say that the transactions show up after an hour or so, some have to increase the search range several days in order to see L$ transactions that took place this-evening.

[Update: 11:30PM SLT (US Pacific) - We are starting to receive reports of problems with inventory transfers as well. No word from Linden Lab at present]

Second Life transaction notification problems originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 05 Nov 2007 01:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.