The Mission of Linden Lab
Monday, November 6th, 2006 at 8:57 AM by: Philip LindenGiven the recent tremendous growth of Second Life, I thought it might be of benefit to describe, as best I can, the mission of Linden Lab. Few Second Life residents today will remember the early days of the Second Life environment and community, or know that Linden Lab is a 7 year old company with a rich and interesting history. While such rapid growth is, in the words of investors, a “high-quality problem”, it is a problem nonetheless. New residents entering Second Life are choosing to commit their time, aspirations, creativity, and dreams to the creation of a shared virtual world. And very unlike the physical world, this virtual world is a place which, at least for the present, has an architecture and business model controlled by a small private company. The power that Linden Lab has to influence the fabric of Second Life is very great, and so I feel we have the responsibility to communicate, as clearly as possible, which way we are headed. Ultimately, I believe that the clearest possible way in which we do this is in our actions, not our words. But I also think that an attempt to provide a statement of intention which can serve as a guidepost by which to measure our efforts is both useful and ultimately part of the value that I, as founder and CEO, should be delivering in my job. Moreover, if I can communicate a clear vision, then perhaps you, as readers, residents, or employees (and in some cases all of the above) will more easily forgive us when we make the mistakes that in our best efforts we will still sometimes make in following this mission.
It is certainly the goal of Linden Lab to operate profitably, and by doing so create returns for the shareholder-owners of the company. The financial history of Linden Lab is the same as that of many other companies: A set of initial investors purchased portions of the company with the expectation that future financial returns would justify the capital they committed. As managers of the company, we are therefore expected to create attractive returns on those investments, or risk being replaced by others who will. But within the broad confines of expected return on investment, there are many different types of investors. Probably the biggest difference is in time horizon: over what period does the investor plan to own their portion of the company? This time horizon can make a big difference in the sort of pressures that owners put on the managers of the company, and therefore a big difference in the way managers make decisions. My own perspective is that many companies today have investors with too short a time horizon, and that technology companies with big projects are particularly liable to this risk, since they may be working on projects that take many years or even decades to fully return value to investors. Within Linden Lab we have a mix of investors with an unusually long time horizon. Looking back I would say we were at first simply very lucky to have such investors (Mitch Kapor being the best and first example), since I knew very little about how to raise investment to finance a company. With learning and the sound counsel of those first investors, we later were able to be more intentional in finding the sort of investors that we believed would have a long time horizon. There are also some investors who have specific principles that they are willing to stick to independent of the impact that these principles may have on the value of their investments. Examples of such principles would include Pierre Omidyar’s (one of Linden Lab’s owners) desire to invest through his foundation in companies that use technology to improve society, or Warren Buffet’s (not a Linden Lab investor) stated intention to not sell companies once he has acquired them even if they are underperforming expectations. These kinds of investors pursue companies that they believe share their principles. Linden Lab is fortunate to have a number of such strongly principled investors, with their intentions loosely grouped around the above-mentioned idea of using technology to advance people. Moreover, I believe that the principles of the investors in Linden Lab are very well aligned with creating great financial returns.
The investor owners of Linden Lab therefore have a mission which is the product of both a longer than average investment timeline, and a set of principles that are shared by a substantial number of the investors. Linden Lab is a company that has required a considerable investment of capital (about $20M will likely have been spent between inception and profitability), and like many other companies of a similar nature is therefore majority-owned by its investors. In my opinion this is a great thing, because we get as a result a diverse set of highly engaged owners with a fairly well shared sense of what they want the company to become. Though I would certainly describe my own vision, management style, and principles as being very well aligned with this diverse set of owners, I think that the company is more likely to succeed and profit long term with such a team rather than a single person in a position of complete control, however smart that one person may be. This basic belief is echoed by the very structure of Second Life – a world created and controlled by many, not few.
Summarizing the exact mission of Linden Lab cannot, given this broad set of owners, ever be done with perfect accuracy – not all of us will agree on the same set of words. But here I believe that our balance of uncertainly and agreement is close to ideal – we have not chosen an uninteresting goal that fails to attract great people and returns, nor have we set our sights so broadly that we will wander and be unlikely to succeed. Given this prelude, my best definition of our mission is that we are working to create an online world having the exceptional property that it advances the capabilities of the many people that use it, and by doing so affects and transforms them in a positive way. More specifically, since there are so many possible definitions of ‘online world’, we are trying to create a close reproduction of the actual physical world we live in – one that will be easily comprehensible and useful to us because it will so closely resemble ours. The ability to simulate our world on computers means that we can make it different in ways that empower us, allowing us to do things that in the physical world we can imagine but are incapable of. Largest among the new capabilities we seek to create through this simulation are: Improvements to our ability to communicate quickly and accurately with each other, and the ability to rapidly express our thoughts or intentions as shared artifacts within this new world. This mission is both a great business and a great cause. If we empower people by our efforts, we can expect a fraction of the value of those improvements in return for having built the infrastructure to enable them. Improvement to the capabilities, intelligence, or well being of a broad group of people has great value. Indeed, I would argue that the greatest technology-driven business success stories have been those like the personal computer or the telephone, in which technology has directly and broadly improved the capabilities of individuals. Second Life and Linden Lab are on their way to becoming one of those stories.
Beyond the details of financial performance, we will have been successful in this mission if we, in the smallest amount of time and capital, make Second Life work as well as possible given the limits of the underlying computer technology, and reach the largest number of people. You should expect to see the great majority of our efforts directed toward a balance of those two goals. Thus far, I think we have done well. We have certainly made our share of mistakes, but we have managed with a small team to create a very complex software system, scale it under heavy growth, and support the emerging community. As our market space matures and competitors create offerings that are similar to Second Life, I think we will see further validation of the quality of our work.
As a final thought, this mission also suggests things that we will not do. For example, we will not move in a direction that will restrict Second Life as to the number of people it can conceivably reach. This means that we will struggle to have Second Life work in any country, be available to anyone wanting to use it, and work well on a wide range of computing devices. As another example, we will not restrict Second Life by adding constraints which might make it more compelling to a specific subset of people but have the effect of reducing the broadest capabilities it offers to everyone for communication and expression. Both Linden Lab and the community of Second Life residents will likely be tempted with short term opportunities that are compelling, but inconsistent with this longer term mission. I hope that we have built the right company and chosen the right investors to continue to wisely avoid those mistakes. I believe that we have. I thank those who have already joined us in this mission, and invite the rest to join us in the project of a lifetime.
November 6th, 2006 at 9:14 AM
Thank you very much for this, Philip. I’ll leave it to others to start the inevitable debates here, but I’d just like to say that it’s always refreshing to get communication about “the big picture” from the top.
November 6th, 2006 at 9:15 AM
Thank you. I like the communication even if it is a bit wordy. Having a “mission statement” helps not only LL but it also helps the community. Too much of late has been based on rumor and hysteria ( Price Hikes? ) and not enough open communication. Keep it up! I know a few will only use it as armorment for futher Gripe-n-Whine (peers around for a nerdy person) but don’t stop that from letting posts like this one happen more often.
November 6th, 2006 at 9:18 AM
I must say it’s quite a relief to hear that the investors of Second Life and Linden Labs are so understanding towards what Second Life really is. I have been worried for some time now that outside influences could potentially bully Linden Labs into doing something for the sake of other companies, and not for the sake of the game and the grid. I’m glad to hear that they are able to let Second Life stay great, and am also glad to hear that they understand that Second Life has a long road ahead of it.
November 6th, 2006 at 9:29 AM
Phillip, I’ll be blunt and direct because I personally think the current problems in SL are your fault, and most likely your managers who work for you.
You speech is a nice “rah rah” rally the troops type speech, but it does nothing for the people in the trenches trying to turn out a complex product under what appears to be, from the outside, limited budgets and poor management decisions. Nor does it do anything for the customers slogging daily through the performance quagmire of SL. Listen to your employees who know the abilities and limitations of the SL infrastructure and do what they suggest.
You started a worldwild PR campaign, so why weren’t you ready to fund the expected growth? Spend money and expand. If, as you say in your speech, its not about making money today, then SPEND money to make your infrastructure work. SPEND money to allow your staff to do more without overworking everyone. IF (and yes, I mean IF because I don’t think you will do it) you do decide to spend money then, in long range, SL just MIGHT be all you want it to be. But one thing is sure, if you continue to nickle and dime everything, then SL WILL fail because people who take the time to investigate it will give up because of the problems and move on to other things
Forget the flowery speeches and work on solutions. You say you want to be an innovator, so go innovate. Find a way to make SL work the way you claim you want it to. Get more help for you overworked employees, get rid of managers who won’t talk staight to you, talk to your employess and allow them to share honest and maybe “not so nice” thoughts and feelings with you.
I hope you will be a CEO who actually solve problems instead of one who talks about solving problems with motivational speeches.
November 6th, 2006 at 9:29 AM
Thank you for this Phillip, it is reassuring to know the Linden Mission Plan, particularly this key phrase: “…we will not restrict Second Life by adding constraints which might make it more compelling to a specific subset of people but have the effect of reducing the broadest capabilities it offers to everyone for communication and expression.”
That there is the reason I came to, stayed with, love and support Second Life. There may be many hurdles along the way, and caution should be taken in individual dependance on the infrastructure, but at the end of the day, if SL manages to maintain a more-or-less working environment for people to express themselves freely - and by that I mean in both monetary and imaginary terms - then it will be achieving great things.
Keep up the hard work, it’s appreciated; maybe could do with some fine-tuning but it looks like the company’s aims are laudable and that alone will ensure my continued support through troubled times.
November 6th, 2006 at 9:34 AM
Phillip, good to see you opening up the communications channel with your customers. This will certainly be a positive step for you. Everyone is aware that investors at some point will seek revenue for their investment but having this mission should help you get there slowly.
Linden, if you dare to expand rapidly, I suggest you open up your doors to your customers by allowing them to host their own Linden lands on their own private hosting servers. Example, instead of buying an island from you, they will license your server software to connect to your grid. Once they connect to your grid, that world or land comes online. Hence it works like a web hosting service. If their hosting server is down then their website is down. Just like that. I think you will earn more money quickly with less headache. Well just a thought and I would love to talk to you guys about this further if you choose to expand in this direction.
-Guna
November 6th, 2006 at 9:35 AM
What is your development roadmap? How will the experience of using Second Life be different in six months, a year, five years, ten years? How do your current development priorities make SL a closer reproduction of the real world? When will you implement Havok 2 (or 3, or another physics engine), since that would make SL more realistic?
November 6th, 2006 at 9:38 AM
I think that LL tends to forget that their customers are “Invested” in the company as well - if we all took our monthly charges elsewhere the Venture Capitalists will abandon ship. You may want to keep that in consideration the next time you put Money over Customer Satisfaction.
I have been on SL since Feb and have only seen a decline in service and quality in product and an increase in charges.
November 6th, 2006 at 9:41 AM
Does it surprise anyone that in all of this, “The Customer” is never once mentioned? Investors are spoken of first and foremost, and it says that LL has a specific duty to those investors to create profitablility - but the only way to create profit is THE CUSTOMER - so where, in this mission statement, do those of us who do the paying fall? Sure, there are some veiled words alluding to us, but how about recognizing us right up front with the investors? Because without us, there IS no profit. Those of us who buy $L’s every month, buy land, pay tier, purchase sims - you know, the cash cows. It would have been VERY nice to see that WE fall in the mission statement somewhere, but at least, there is no hiding the fact that LL is more responsible to those who invest than those of us who pay.
In addition to this, the statement “As another example, we will not restrict Second Life by adding constraints which might make it more compelling to a specific subset of people but have the effect of reducing the broadest capabilities it offers to everyone for communication and expression.” Says a lot to the ongoing and constant griefer problem that never seems to be addressed.
November 6th, 2006 at 9:45 AM
“Thus far, I think we have done well. We have certainly made our share of mistakes, but we have managed with a small team to create a very complex software system, scale it under heavy growth, and support the emerging community.”
I like the fact that he thinks they are adequately supporting the community. *chuckle* It’s cute.
MM
November 6th, 2006 at 9:46 AM
Thank you for your insights, Philip. Very useful background information.
FWIW, much of the grousing we see on this blog when things go wrong, Grid-wise, genuinely denotes the success of this vision, though I’m sure it doesn’t seem that way to everyone at LL or the customers involved.
Meaning to say, people are starting to believe that SL is a service, like cable or electricity, where its implementation and the minutiae within that can go malfunction are truthfully irrelevant. In other words, not a nerd exercise, but a thing of real value to many, both materially and emotionally, approximately as meaningful as RL.
The unfortunate part of that, of course, is that when details like server, colo, or software problems manifest and have to be explained in order to place a less-than-ideal user experience in the right context, it’s very irritating because this is a class of user that has come to expect such fundamental services to be seamless.
So, you can see how this vision is, in a way, ahead of the world it lives in.
You can field SL and it can be all that you desire it to be in the right setting, but any combination of determined griefers and butterfly effects in a large, decentralized Internet can bring it to a halt. I think, truthfully, SL is on the razor’s edge — between desirable and frustrating — which is probably therefore concurrent with that vision.
The beneficiary and victim of its own success. Let’s hope that it continues in this way.
November 6th, 2006 at 9:47 AM
I take you point, Linden Labs is a small company and it is almost inevitable you will get growing pains, I am sure you are aware of (or can Google) the Boston Growth Grid.
But…. sometimes mistakes happen and it is important they not be terminal ones.
Of all the things that have happened in the last year and a half or so, the greatest mistake was Linden tipping off of certain residents about recent potential financial changes and their subsequent ability to profit from that information.
I appreciate the fact you sometimes need to consult…. but I would suggest you use avatars/people who you can absolutely identify in real life (and trust) and get them to sign confidentially agreements that are enforceable.
However I accept you apologised for that error, so no disrespect intended this time
Regards
John Horner
November 6th, 2006 at 9:48 AM
it’s a project of a lifetime, and beyond…most likely. this is still in it’s infancy and the world will see much more of this and other virtual worlds in the many decades to come. 20 years from now we will all look back to the beginnign of this and inevitably say, “oh my, how primitive we were back then!”
i don’t expect to live for another 20 years, being 52 and in bad health, but until i pass on i expect to live in a virtual world like this, and see it’s growth, and be a part of that growth in what ever way possible. to me, this is just as real as anything. our minds, our emotions, are just as real in SL as they are in RL. so i encourage new people to think of this as not a free-for-all sex party because it seems like a cartoon game, but an opportunity to stretch your minds, to interact with other “real” people in real ways…to grow and help others grow.
i want to make a good name for myself here so that, just like in the real world, people will remember me after i am gone and say, she was a very nice, REAL person.
thank you all you investors, and you hard working managers, for having a long time horizon vision and mission. *big hug*
November 6th, 2006 at 9:50 AM
One question I’d like to ask is, what makes someone an “investor”? is it solely the act of investing money in the corporation as a stockholder, expecting a return on that financial investment? Or would someone who has invested considerable time, money, and prims, into creating their own little chunk of this world that they can be proud of, also an investor? Would someone who’s come up with an idea for a new virtual product to sell within the constraints of SL, developed a plan for marketing it, built a store, and opened for business, be an investor?
If “investor” includes all of these, then I’m afraid you’re really falling short of your goals at Linden Labs. There appears to be a growing consensus among the content creators that we are getting the shaft because of severe performance issues, a perceived or real lack of customer support, and price hikes (some of which are, let’s face it, extremely massive).
I believe in the potential of SL, just as I did on the day I signed up (incidentally, yes, I did sign up with a free account, but it took me less than two weeks to decide to go premium and buy land, for those of you who wondering if I’m one of those “bandwith leeches” that are so often sniped about), but I can see major problems which as of yet do not appear to be anywhere close to being solved. It would go a long way towards helping relations with those of us who have invested in other ways besides being a stockholder, if real progress could be made in those areas too, please.
November 6th, 2006 at 9:50 AM
Mr. Linden, while your article is very well-written and filled with wonderful thoughts for the future of Second Life and the technology as a whole, I believe it is the final paragraph that is the most informative, and the most troubling.
You made it crystal clear that as a priority you will try to give every single person on the planet the ability to play/run SL, and to not restrict anyone in any way. How will you do this?
So far you have done it by removing verification. Yes, it WAS done by Credit Card which is the most common way, but there are other methods. Many posters to the various blogs of late have laid them out. Removing verification “opened the floodgates” to new users and made great strides toward your “Everyone gets to play” goal.
This increase in accounts flooded your servers and bandwidth causing a number of related issues. Technically a “good” problem to have certainly. But I would posit that the relative number of new premium accounts did not go up at the same rate. In other words, the vast majority of the accounts were (and are) non-paying accounts. This is not necessarily a bad thing. And this is not a diatribe (not sure I used the word correctly, forgive me if not) on verified vs non-verified, or pay vs non-pay accounts. It is simple economics. Costs shoot up, but income stays relatively unchanged. This IS a bad thing.
So you (LL) look to increase your revenue as all good companies must do. As far as I know, there are only 3 ways LL gets actual US$. 1) Premium Accounts 2) Land Tier and 3) Buying from Lindex.
Buying from Lindex, though often thought of as where free accounts spend their money - is also where a lot of paying accounts spend theirs. So I would call that more or less a wash.
Premium Accounts - well increasing the cost of an account may drive people away, thus moving LL away from their stated goal of Everyone Plays - No Restrictions (like a restriction of a pesky monthly/quarterly/yearly fee).
Land Tier. Hmmm. There’s an idea. How about you DRASTICALLY increase the cost of owning land. Using the “80/20″ rule, you decide to gouge 20% of your customers (premium-land owners) for 80% of your revenue. This is a BAD thing!
I seriously still cannot wrap my brain around this Mr. Linden. The most obvious solution, or at least PATH to a solution, is to totally rethink the way you have handled accounts. All accounts.
Among a number of other things:
* You need a steady stream of revenue.
* You need verification of some kind (not necessarily payment-related, just a way to tie an account to a person).
What you need to do is restructure your accounts into a Trial-type, Basic, Premium, and perhaps Corporate. Trial would be totally free, but limited (in time and abilites). Using that verification I spoke about (and you NEED), this cannot be abused extensively. Basic would have *most* abilites of a Premium except land ownership. Perhaps some other limitations, but that’s another topic. And Basic would have a nominal fee associated with it - perhaps half that of Premium. Premium accounts would be much like they are now. Full priviledges, land ownership, etc. Corporate … I dunno what they need - but you seem to be wanting it. Perhaps their own server, so otehr island-owners don’t have to suck up their costs. (For what it is worth, I am just a “normal” land owner. An island, even at the old cost, is out of my reach hehe)
What this does is spread the costs out across many people. Each person doesn’t have to shoulder the burden of the costs of your mangement decisions. LL makes another bone-headed move thus driving up costs again … well you only have to gouge … err “pass on” to the rest of us a small increase. No need to stick a small number with the whole bill as you are currently doing.
Restructering the accounts serves so many needs to LL and SL that it utterly amazes me that you refuse to do it. Your rationale seems to be “But it may drive one person away, so thats a bad thing.” Listen, I am a programmer, so part of my job is to think in extremes - boundary testing. At the extreme, if you continue to alienate and outright lie to your customers, and then on top of that decide on a whim to raise their prices by over 50% … then at some point - on this course - you will end up with a susbscriber base of free accounts and no premium accounts to support them.
Then who will pay for this utopia you dream of?
November 6th, 2006 at 9:51 AM
[Inappropriate comment removed — please read our Official Linden Blog Guidelines. Let's add value, thank you!]
November 6th, 2006 at 9:54 AM
Yay!
Thanks Phillip to what amounts as a propspectus for LL. Again, I am encouraged by the meaning and intent of LL. As I said, nowhere do I feel as well informed as I do here in SL. Yes there have been difficulties in the short time I have been a member, but I feel positive about the direction and capabilities of the LL team. I do feel pride in being a premium member, and land owner of Second Life.
November 6th, 2006 at 9:56 AM
Thank you Phillip.
Your timely statement may go some way to securing future potential investors. We all now know what is forefront in your mind, the financial resolve of the Company and whether or not, your investors are going to reap the rewards initially agreed to when they made their initial investments.
I don’t want to offer criticism, but I will use a degree of brevity in responding to you statement.
A short paragraph, in simple vocabulary, for those who are not familiar with ‘corporate speak’ would perhaps have been a good idea. As such a simple offering to your customers is absent, it might lead one to believe that it has not yet been created, or, if it has and is a part of you corporate creed, then it may have sufficient shortfalls to be far too embarrassingly hung out to air.
Apart from a vague statement about growth inhibition relating to steering the company, I saw little of worth in your statement. Phillip, we are not all southern Californian boys and girls logging in for an hour or to in the evening, some of us have placed considerable investment in time, money and creative effort, the very least you could have done was to give a mission statement that had substance and something, lord only knows why, but something we could all measure your success or failure at driving the company.
River Ely.
Customer.
November 6th, 2006 at 9:59 AM
I like the “in it for the long haul” tone of the message since that adds needed stability for the membership. However, I think the membership has to be considered as part of the formula since as residents of the virtual world we are in some sense investors as well and not merely customers.
Philip stated, “For example, we will not move in a direction that will restrict Second Life as to the number of people it can conceivably reach.” It is admirable to open SL to the world with the intent to reach as many people as can be included, however, a system where one small segment of the population carries the financial burden for the rest is problematic.
The thousands of members present on free accounts far outnumber the numbers of members already paying significant amounts of money to buy land and for the monthly tier. Asking the smaller paying segment to cough up significantly more money to cover the costs resulting from managing all the new accounts is unfair.
SL requires pretty sophisticated hardware and a broadband connection to operate. Those present on free accounts are not impoverished and in all fairness LL should look to those accounts for some small monthly payment to cover costs rather than raise the prices on those already paying to carry the free accounts.
There are so many payment methods available now worldwide and there is no reason why a major credit card cannot be used to make minimal monthly payments from just about any country. Perhaps offering a 30 day free trial to new accounts, after which the account holder could decide whether to pay for a membership would be one way to maintain an open door policy of inclusion while reserving the right to ask them to pull their own weight. Other options might be to limit access to content or areas for free accounts in order to lessen the burden of these new accounts until and unless they pay their fair share for access to content.
After spending more than three years in SL, and being part of the evolution from the early “small town” feel of the world to the current expansion, I agree that all the additional people present in SL is a wonderful thing, but the smaller land owning tier paying members who carry the free accounts should not be burdened further without first asking the free accounts to pay something for their presence in world.
November 6th, 2006 at 10:05 AM
Thanks for the mission of LL. Altough it explained very little of the recent move to raise the island costs. Well, apart from the obvious part of being profitable.
Don’t get me wrong. I do want SL to be profitable. But I feel, and as do others, that the current way is NOT the way for LL to be profitable.
Why not? Simple, raising the price of islands on the assumption that all island owners are corporations is plain wrong.
As you said SL was, and is, build by dedicated people who wish to be creative, or build a community. Most, if not all, communities have purchased islands for various reason. Be it privacy, commercial interests, lag avoidance, control or something as simple as having your own little place.
Therefore most communities hardly break even on the costs as it is. Those communities have a common goal, a common dream. A dream that now is being shattered by the very same company that made it possible. The costs are simply unaffordable to most communities, and the mainland is not an option because of all the lag it (can) create.
Alot of viable options have been offered as an alternative to help LL be profitable. Some might not work, some might work. But alot of people feel that LL is not taking us seriously anymore. Heck, most people wouldn’t mind an increase in the Island prices, but 51%?! And as Zee said, current operation costs are equal to rates, so that means that 51% goes to LL directly.
Now if corporations are willing to shell this out, then let them. But LL does NOT realise that non-for-profit communities can’t afford those islands anymore.
LL also keeps very very silent on all the alternatives that have been brought forth, like LL doesn’t even want to consider the community and simply barge over it.
Now I saw that you and Zee are having a townhall meeting. The first thing I thought was FINALLY! But I was very dissapointed in the small print. Only big land owners are welcome. To add further insult to injury comments are not allowed. After the last town meeting I can see why you would want to do it different, but to exclude people is plain wrong. Let everyone who wants to be there send an e-mail, and kick the people that are disruptive or immature.
After all, communities are what makes SL. And everyone wants LL to be profitable so SL can exist. But please, don’t share us under the same heading with a corporation.
A corporation is a cold entity that only sees SL as a method of enlarging it’s own profit.
The communities see the true potential of SL along with LL, they build/script/design out of passion for SL.
Please, reconsider some alternative tiers for communities. There are alot of smart people out there in SL, and there are smart ppl at LL too. They can think of something that will make the larger part of the community happy and still satisfy LL’s need for profit.
November 6th, 2006 at 10:10 AM
Thank You for taking the time to communicate with us. If I may suggest one strategic point concerning your statement “Largest among the new capabilities we seek to create through this simulation are: Improvements to our ability to communicate quickly and accurately with each other, and the ability to rapidly express our thoughts or intentions as shared artifacts within this new world.”, the former will be greatly enhanced by the faciliatation of browsable profiles.
Profiles contain loads of data in personal and pick descriptions, checkbox values, first life information, and personal notes. This feature seems utterly critical to a social platform seeking to improve our ability to communicate quickly and accurately with each other. We can only communicate effectively with each other if we can find, and refind, each other via searchable critera. Is there a reasonable explanation for Linden Lab not devoting resources to the implementation of this mechanism?
November 6th, 2006 at 10:16 AM
I se my self as a investor in SL-I invsted in 2 isle-i invested in buldings i payed for to ppl that helped me build-I invested my time. Call me a “acitive Investor” Them that “invest” cash in forms of shares are “passiv investots” thay look for a future proffit, thay take a risk,and so do i.
But i do not plan for a future big proffit..i do this SL for fun..but a i tested out if it was possible to make some cash in SL i did build a mall and got some shops..and yes,,it is possible to make cash also for a SL user.The challage for Linden Lab are now to get up the speed on servers and nettwork, cuz if not Isle-Malls-Shops loads/rez there are wery little business to do in SL as non can shop.A few weeks ago there was 7000-8000 online at top prime time in SL–we se now 12.000-14000 online at top primetime and the SL lagg horrible all over. There are neer 1,3 mill nick in SL ,in a few weeks from now we will se ner 2mill nicks and 20.000-25.000 online at top primetime..are Linden Labs ready for this? If SL cant as soon as possible get HW to handle up to 50.000 users in,,the we will not be able to even logg in.
November 6th, 2006 at 10:18 AM
Thank you for speaking to us. I hope that your vision for Second Life is fulfilled beyond your (and our) wildest dreams.
One concern that people have is that a lot of recent changes by Linden Lab seem to be about getting more money out of residents. The large fee increase for private islands is the most obvious, but the various stipend cuts and the money sales by Supply Linden are others. It may be true — it’s difficult for us to tell from outside — that the costs of running Second Life exceed the amount of money you get at present, and that price increases are necessary to make the economics of Linden Lab work. But if that is true, we residents would appreciate a bit more information about the company’s costs and revenue, so that we won’t feel that is is simply an attempt to charge all the traffic will bear. Keeping the cost of being a Second Life resident as reasonable as you possibly can will move you toward your goal of realizing the Metaverse more quickly, and increase the happiness of the residents.
Changes that decrease the value of premium membership also concern me. When someone makes the commitment to membership, they are making an investment in Second Life, especially those who choose the annual or quarterly plans. Making this sort of commitment increases the likelihood that they will stay in Second Life, invest time and energy in the community, and make it a better world; therefore I would like to see a move in the direction of making premium membership more attractive. This could involve benefits other than tier or stipends; things that will cause more people to make the commitment to stay in Second Life without damaging the economy or Linden Lab’s bottom line.
November 6th, 2006 at 10:24 AM
Your push to make SL available to all ‘at any cost’ will ultimately kill it.
You are attracting new users, who pay nothing, subsidised by paying members, on something like a 90% free - 10% paying ratio. It’s only a matter of time before more and more people get pissed off with subsidising other’s gameplay, and that gap narrows - your costs increase, and income goes down.
There is not one mention, that I saw, of how valuable us paying members are in creating your world for you to promote. It’s quite clear that what you told me in the June Town Hall about how you value everything including those who are not here for commercial reasons, was just smoke and mirrors.
Those of us who are here, paying, building, playing daily, are your most precious and valuable resource - yet it seems that Linden Lab repeatedly and consistently fail to recognise this fact.
Instead of telling us, repeatedly, what Linden Lab want… how about asking your players what we want, and more importantly, doing it?
I note that you also mention the ‘investors’ who are the VC’s throwing money at you. How many of those play daily? I thought we were the most valuable investors that you have, because after all, without those of us creating content and places and things to do, SL is nothing but a desolate empty wasteland.
Lewis
November 6th, 2006 at 10:27 AM
I think it’s no surprise to see the comments which have already popped up, but I really do think that this is a good start. Perhaps there is some generic roadmap that you could share with us?
So many criticisms are leveled at things when the ‘big picture’ - the vision - is not understood. Public perception whiplash is coming for various reasons, and the only way to fight FUD is with facts. I think LL and a lot of other companies have suffered a lot of FUD under ‘Doom and Gloom’ prophets (who are, arguably, profiting in their own way from the exposure). Not unlike the Open Source and Free Software communities, the SL community is mainly about community.
FUD exists where there are disconnects between communities, be it between proprietary software and open source or between the Middle East and the United States. The connection needed isn’t a stream of words, it’s true communication with a feedback mechanism. I think the feedback mechanism in a virtual world is something everyone has to get used to… but I would offer that the first thing to be addressed by everyone is that feedback mechanism.
Of course, getting people to communicate what they think is tough enough. Getting them to listen to what they don’t want to listen to is a lot more difficult.
November 6th, 2006 at 10:29 AM
Mission (or investors relations) statements are fine, but i would like to see a roadmap!
On the Sl birthday and some time ago there was talk about open sourcing the SL client and server development. I wonder if that is stil la goal, or if this mission statement, that lays focus on the return on capital invested, is a change in paradigms that happened since the SL 2nd birthday.
As Maldoror said we clients also invest in SL, eventualyl plan to make larger investments based on this platform. We need a stable perspective and thus a roadmap of development. And of course it is of eminent interest to know what LL’s own business model is, thus the question if the open source idea is still on the table and how LL desires to create revenues to ensure stability of investment of their customers.
on the secondlife insider was an article with statements that LL is open “to be bought or do an IPO”, which surely falls in line with the focus on investor relations the above statement has. Both opten have very significant differences, what they have in common is that the investors could realize the revenue of their investment. It would be interesting to know if LL indeed is seeking such an option. I say “seeking”, because i find it hard to believe that a company policy can be based on a “whatever happens” approach.
November 6th, 2006 at 10:33 AM
I have invested a lot into my projects in SL both financially and time wise. I have never ever had anything but positive experiences within the month I have been on Second Life. Just yesterday I spent almost 2 hours with Dustin Linden showing him my SL town ( size of 1/4 a sim ) and my plans to bring a new user assistance project into SL. I was able to get a ton of positive critiques and he enabled me to generate some great new ways and ideas on how to tackle some issues with security, griefers, and other problems that most SL communities face.
From my experience if Linden Labs does something they are doing it for the benefit of the users, cause they know the more something benefits the users as a whole, the more it will benefit Linden Labs. LL invests in a manner or style in which I like to refer to as “Person Life Investement” meaning they invest in improving the lives of the users the best they can by improving their product the best they can and also giving personal attention to the customers and real life people as much as possible.
Linden Labs has created something remarkable and beautiful, and no matter where you go there will always be someone that cannot appreciate the blood, sweat and tears infused into the effort and outstanding determination to create something of such a magnitude.
Second Life is something Linden Labs, and its investors took a risk to create, some of us for some reason blindly believe that Linden Labs is the only one that reaped benefits from the creation of Second Life, when we should all realize anyone that uses SL, has been experienced or enjoyed the benefits of the investements into this project.
With great appreciation,
Cody Rauh, Lead Artist / Project Director for Iota Studios
November 6th, 2006 at 10:33 AM
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November 6th, 2006 at 10:36 AM
Philip, first of all I appreciate you taking the time to publish that mission statement. And I found nothing that was bogus or “smoke screen” in anything you said there.
I love the diversity of Second Life (although many people have commented that the unbridled diversity gives much of SL the appearance of a cheap cathouse). I think it is great that people can purchase a private island and set up whatever sub-world there they want to set up. On the other hand, I dislike that we can’t even get 25 vistitors to those worlds without lagging the sim to a near standstill (that is just sad). But as far as the basic concept behind the way SL is set up… allowing sim owners to control their own content… that’s a nice thing, to say the least.
However… like many others who have already posted, I wonder where the customer fits into the SL investment plan. If you were to take the total amount of private islands purchased, the total amount of monthly tier fees, the total amount of man-hours spent by CUSTOMERS to make SL what it is… how much would that investment comprise? Yet in company operation and goals, to be truthful, the customer seems to have very little say overall. We have some, but from the overwhelming negative response to the blogs lately, apparently customers– your biggest investors– are becoming frustrated.
Why? A few people above mentioned primary reasons. You folks have designed a world, supposedly to mimic the real world, with a strongly entrenched FINANCIAL base. However, you provide NO legal system (aside from the oft-questioned value of the “abuse report” system), no judicial system, no court system. It is literally possible for a person on Second Life to blatantly steal thousands of dollars from others (you know what I’m talking about) and there is NO recourse in the matter. Linden Lab tells its customers “If the matter is serious, take it to secular court”… which in itself shows a complete lack of understanding of reality. With the international-base of Second Life, taking offenders to court becomes a financial and logistics impossibility. Linden Lab absolves itself of responsibility for user conduct… but it’s YOUR world. There is no one more responsible for what is allowed to transpire on Second Life than Linden Lab. Not offense… just fact. Absolving yourselves of responsibilities for unethical activities on Second Life makes for very angry customers. It turns avid fans into enemies… as you have seen happen over and over again.
In addition to this absolution of responsibility (which has caused more than one group serious financial harm), there are the continual platform problems, the continual lag that goes on month after month, lost inventory — and failure by Customer Support to respond when someone reports such. I myself reported a 4,000+ item loss, and it took 3 emails, two phone calls– and THREE WEEKS to even get Customer Support to respond– and I’m a SIM OWNER. In addition are textures that take half an hour to rez (really, that is a simple bug that should have been corrected months ago– basic programming). That is a very visible problem that LL has failed to fix. Without textures rezzing, merchants can’t sell. If merchants can’t sell, they can’t afford land. All of my merchants associates have reported decreased sales and they all know why– customers can’t SEE what it is they’re selling, become frustrated, and leave. These problems Philip, unresolved and/or ignored by Linden Lab, are what upset people.
*Your customers are investors too*.
Then what really, really upsets us, is when we bring things to the attention of Linden Lab and are “fed a line”. When a sim is running perfectly fine one day, absolutely no changes are made to that sim, and the next day is lagging to perdition, and a LL employee tells us “Oh, it’s customer content. Too many textures. Too many scripts”… that’s when we become really irate. Because while LL appears to think it’s customers are limited-knowledge amateurs, some of us actually have degrees and an extensive history in the computer field. Some of us are programmers, consultants, and even business owners ourselves. And we know better. We do have ability to analyze data, we do have ability to draw conclusions based on that data. So it can be understood it irritates people when they are told things they already know are not true.
This is the source of a lot of negative commentary you have been receiving lately. On one hand we are told that current sims, even if resold, will have current tier grandfathered in. Then in another post, we are told “as we have already said” that the opposite is true. Customers do have the unique superhuman ability to read two posts and determine that they directly contradict one another. Being treated like idiots angers people. Business 101.
There are many, many people out here Phil, who have given everything they’ve got to the SL platform. There are also many people who feel they have been betrayed by LL policies and attitudes. There are many people who feel they have been misled (or even lied to). There are many ANGRY people (read the blogs, for crying out loud. These are not happy campers). Since customers are your largest investors, Linden Lab would do well to recognize this one fact: if you lose the confidence of your customers… you lose SL. The #1 thing Linden Lab should be doing at this time is listening– not to the big-money-pocket investors (do those folks EVER even USE the game?). You should be listening to the people who pay the bills, the customers, the ones (as one user put it) “in the trenches” who not only support your system, but have BUILT your system.
Without the much maligned “client content”… there would be no Second Life. So it falls to LL to make sure that client content works as smoothly and correctly as possible. Pay attention to what your customers are saying. Ignoring that mass-voice is self-destructive.
November 6th, 2006 at 10:40 AM
And for the record… setting people on “moderate all posts” status because we speak the truth as I did in this post here, is blatantly dictatorial in nature. I have never once lied, or use obscenities, or misrepresented anything in my posts here. I’ve told the bottom-line truth. And I’ve said more than once its in an effort to help LL improve its customer relations. Amazing… over the past two years, in my forum posts and responses to LL polices… I’ve turned out to be right over and over again (as have many others). I’d think LL would welcome such observations instead of attempting to censor them. If you think such decisions are going to make for loyal customers… well, that’s why you’re having these problems, isn’t it?
November 6th, 2006 at 10:41 AM
So, there’s no proper place to say this stuff (that I can get to, anyway. Thanks for having the roundtables in the middle of my workday), so I’m going to say it here..
I am a private island owner. I also have a set of void sims. I have bet more money on LL by ordering another sim. That’s $3900 up front and $600 a month that I can’t really afford, but I find a way anyway because I enjoy SL so much. It’s not a lot to LL, but it’s a lot to me, and I can’t take a price increase.
Philip’s post of a vision is nice, but it seems like an attempt to shake off the old posts, rather than say anything new. I know LL is out to make money. Duh. I don’t begrudge them that, so I don’t need it explained to me.
However, I don’t like hearing that my prices MIGHT go up suddenly. February 1 is sudden. I’m not a land baron, nor a economic powerhouse in SL. Most of the stuff I create, I give away for free, or next-to-free, so the concept of profiting form SL is as alien to me as the concept of breaking even is. It’s just not going to happen any time soon.
From my perspective, LL is more interested in getting numbers than having a community. Every day I have to ban some stupid griefer from my estate. Every day, the same ones come back with a different name. Happily, they ARE stupid, so it tends to be pretty easy. But those alts are counting toward your numbers, and they’re not paying for them. Instead, because of the huge number of people involved, I, as a private island owner, am expected to cough up more money for my PRIVATE island, so that Joe Griefer can create a new account and be a royal pain, either to me, or to the grid, or to somebody else out there, with no repercussions.
I don’t want to pay more for my islands. In fact, I won’t. Considering the constant performance problems, the fact that 25% of the time I can’t cross a region line IN MY OWN ESTATE without it crashing, and the constant flood of multi-account griefers, I don’t feel LL should be asking me for more money right now.
Why not ask for $5 per free account. That’s like five million right there, isn’t it? And you can use that as part of the verification system. Give us incentives for paying more. But don’t go after your big-ticket people first, and even if you do, don’t try a 50% hike.
Personally, I want you to grandfather existing islands in under the original price. Maybe say that as long as the islands aren’t transferred, the price won’t increase for at least, say, one year, and that we will have at least, say, six months notice before the price increase takes effect. That will give me time to sell off what I can, and invest some money in some other hobby.
November 6th, 2006 at 10:43 AM
Well, maybe not “blatantly dictatorial”… but hey, it sure isn’t friendly, is it now?
November 6th, 2006 at 10:47 AM
There so much complaining about what LL does, it’s ridiculous. The Internet and all of its services will never be entirely free. It must be paid for somehow. Whether that’s through advertising or subscriptions, people must get paid. A lot of startups offer discounted or free services during startup to attract patrons. Those startups slowly change the way they provide their services as they move towards profitability. Linden Labs, Second Life, etc. will be no different.
Go ahead and cite various obscure instances where the above isn’t true. By and large it’s a fact of life - “nothing’s ever free”.
If Linden Labs fails, it may just be because of all this complaining. Try to understand what a difficult position it is to be in, answering to investors’, your employees’, and your customer’s needs/wants/gripes/whining, and trying to balance your responses to all that bitching all at once. Investors want ROI, employees want better working conditions and more money, and customers want all of the company’s services virtually for free. That’s three parties in a tug-of-war making the Captain’s head spin. It’s an incredibly stressful position to be in. Every move you make will certainly upset one or more of the 3 parties.
So as you write your next complaint, please consider that the fearless leader that provides you with your escape from reality must deal with his reality of many investors and many employees often whining louder than you.
November 6th, 2006 at 10:48 AM
” we will not move in a direction that will restrict Second Life as to the number of people it can conceivably reach.”
Other media that allow free access use advertising to cover costs. Have you considered having free accounts view ads while loading during teleports? As stipends shrink, it would add new value to paid membership.
November 6th, 2006 at 10:54 AM
The time spent writing, and probably reading over this piece of crap mission statement, could have been better spent maybe fixing a few bugs or interviewing QA staff.
SL QA is off the wall ludicrous. You want to know what to do to fix customer service? Freaking respond to requests for a response. LL has a piss poor response time, so for me it’s time well spent to figure out my own workaroudn to a problem, than report the piece of shit to LL.
This entire mission statement, to me, sounds liek the entire mission statement of LL is to eventually make money. Oh, and to “make Second Life work as well as possible given the limits of the underlying computer technology”. Holy shit guys! Don’t set your sights TOO HIGH. I mean, jesus, money is DEFINITELY more important than making sure that SL works within the limits of computer technology, but if you ask me, every single software application what has ever been released in any sense, has been released “within the limits of current technology”
I’m amazed.
November 6th, 2006 at 10:54 AM
i supposed we should be grateful for the “hug” Phillip, but pardon me if i brush it off. You cannot honestly sit there and have me, and the others who have invested thier time, money and efforts(the customers, which has already been pointed out several times, you have failed to mention, not Your investors)that you didnt expect this to grow to the size it did. You cannot expect me to believe that you had no clue, and were not prepared, for the word to get out about this game, and not have the necessary protocols in place to handle it.
i have been a resident since May and have seen a steady decline in service, and a rise in bugs. with no end in sight. So please Mr Linden, save the rah rah speeches for your staff meetings. i would much rather have an update dealign with the issues of making the game more playable than profitable.
another thing that i found disturbing and have seen mentioned before on here is the programmers get to pick and choose what they wish to work on? Correct me if im wrong but so they work for You? or You for them?
i see the posts, some saying this is a “great start and shows that linden labs is really trying” and the opposite view. i for one could care less about rah rah speeches. to me the proof is in the pudding: if You truly do value what You have here, show us. fix the outstanding bugs. reimburse those who have lost monies during these last few months of glam fixes and no real fixes. get some programmers who truly want to “make a better batter”, rather than work on the icing. then and only then Phillip Linden, will Your words ring true. right now You sound like Capt. Bligh rallying the crew before the mutiny.
November 6th, 2006 at 10:55 AM
Thank Phillip for being here.
Just a short one for me : SecondLife isn’t ready to stay open to the “largest number of people”.
So, please, just stop this Unverified Account sillyness.
I’m tired of banning griefer all day long.
November 6th, 2006 at 10:58 AM
Second Life covers such a broad range of cultures and interests. How would you propose that such a advertising system be rigged?
Delivering advertisements based on descriptions and names of parcels would only work so much especially given the amount of hodgepodging that has occured of late in many new areas of the grid.
Also: this is in no way a reflection on your skills as a CEO or someone helping to hold the Metaverse together, Phillip Linden… but could you split up your future blogs a little more? Online reading is more tiring than words on paper. This means most people lose the plot on paragraphs exceeding two or three sentences at a go in anything to be read online.
Thanks in advance on that.
November 6th, 2006 at 11:02 AM
lets see all i read was stuff about investors , invesments blah blah blah
what you dident mention was anything about how much your company is getting philip the only thing your talking about is just the stuff that comes out of a bulls backside
you forget that the TRUE investors are the ppl paying for sims the sim monthly rentals and the paid customers not the big buissnesses like toyota , mcdonalds , genral motors , nissan and of course the 7 figure rent from Electronic arts sooo phil this so called LL mission is a bunch of bull
i have read the interviews from your employees to big news corps like the bbc , cnn the stock exchange bloomberg , reuters that the plan for secondlife is to make it into a virtual marketplace but for y0ou to do that you need to get rid of the small ppl by taking things away making prices that are out of reach for all the ppl except for land barons like anshe chung and yes we found out that anshe got 2 weeks notice not one week from what we were told and yes we know that shes bought more than half of the sims that were kept in stock and then you tell us that the ppl on the old prices would stay there for good then you tell us that febuary the 1st everyone would be paying the new prices reguardless of what class of server they are on.
so phil stop with the bull and tell us the truth
November 6th, 2006 at 11:03 AM
Philip, even if your full-fledged mission statement took 7 years to formulate, better late than never. As you say, your actions speak louder than words.
Here’s my take-home from your message:
o A lot of your views have always struck me as collectivism/socialist tending toward oligarchic, and this reinforces the impression. You’re willing to be awed by $20 million in investments over 7 years by wealthy individuals with ideas from big companies. But out of the 4000 servers you have spinning now, not counting Governor Linden land, at least 3500 are tiered by individuals who aren’t wealthy (and in many cases not idealistic, either) — and their investment amounts to a total of a staggering $8.19 million in tier on sims this year alone (not even reflecting the many millions in purchase price of auctions and sale of private islands). Hey, if you want to be idealistic and group-oriented — what of THAT investment by THOSE investors and THEIR rights to shape the company? Why aren’t THOSE investors called owners, too? Or are they doomed always to be dismissed as blingtards and evil arbitragers?
o You can envision yourself as leaving this company or remaining in it only as an advisor because you see management as a “team”. Normally, even corporate “team” approaches still have strong leadership. You seem to lead more to “collectivist” or “magic circle” ideology where your own role is magic, or is a Cat-in-the-Hat balancing routine, but you also see it as able to be absent — and therefore the company able to be sold. Can you assure your $8.9 million dollars’ worth of investors that when you sell this company or make it public, that we will be transferred to, with all our land and inventory intact and accessible?
o Like many revolutionaries in history, you seem to be in love with masses, with the abstract ideas of “the improvement of humankind through communication” etc. and in love with being in every country under the idea of the betterment of humanity. You love humanity, but you hate human beings — the actual tier-paying human beings. Human beings are what you have now; you don’t feel any particular commitment to their actual needs now because that would involve short-term strategies which you say are tempting but which you disavow. Therefore, you don’t see any need to keep their land value and would be happy to merely roll it out for $5/m like shelf paper merely as the substrate of content, which you think is more important — or reach the point where you merely sell it off — at which time we cannot be assured that either land or content will be recognized as transferrable.
o I’m happy to get this articulate of a vision — it’s perhaps excessive to demand more. But what IS your idea of a Better World? Better communication…for what purpose? Communication is good, but it’s only a medium. What is the message?
It seems to me that your idealized fascination with the idea of lifting third-world kids out of poverty through programming and designing content — something that is readily happening now on Second Life — makes you unwilling to concede the need for thousands of part-time Wal-Mart employees and stay-at-home moms in middle America who just want to have fun and turn a buck to pay for their games. You fleece these people; you are Lenin hanging them with the rope they sold to you.
Is this a Robin Hood venture, converting their devalued labour (by printing Lindens in the millions) to enable wealth for third-worlders…but also curiously enabling ROI on their backs for your venture capitalists? Or…what is it, exactly?
Philip, you may be the first person in history to successfully create a machine that converts socialism into capitalism and transfers it back into socialism again. It’s globalization on crack!
As one of the thousands of unrecognized investors in Second Life paying you the $8.19 million a year in social capital, I urge you to heed some of the things we are saying, too, and not dismiss our concept of “a Better World”. Chiefly, this means not destroying the world for the sake of the platform. If it is true you all take the long view, then your island price hike of 50 percent with such short notice; your breakneck crash to get more than a million subscribers and dozens of huge corporate presences in the world with such disastrous consequences to the quality of life, just don’t hold up to scrutiny.
It is our world, and our imagination, and we paid for it, too.
November 6th, 2006 at 11:05 AM
“If we empower people by our efforts, we can expect a fraction of the value of those improvements in return for having built the infrastructure to enable them.”
True. But every decision LL has made for the past few months has done nothing but degrade service, impede progress, and raise the cost to players. Second Life’ growth is a bottleneck to its performance; thus Linden Labs’ expansionist policies are at odds with what its CEO claims are its stated goals.
“(LL’s two main goals are)…make Second Life work as well as possible given the limits of the underlying computer technology, and reach the largest number of people… Thus far, I think we have done well. ”
No, you haven’t. You’ve been consistantly thwarting the first goal in your haste to meet the second. These are the actions of a desperate comapny run by a desperate CEO. Frankly, if Linden Labs’ finances are in such bad shape that you need to take a knife to quality like this, you ought to be charging MORE for corporate users. You could make up the difference overnight… ah, but not if those same corporate users are also on your board of directors, I suppose.
“… competitors create offerings that are similar to Second Life…”
I for one would sure like to know what’s TAKING them so long. I’ve been waiting for a competitor to pave over SL ever since I found out that the glitchy Poser 5 models could never, ever be fixed. I honestly didn’t expect SL to last this long. It should have been one-upped years ago, the way SL one-upped ActiveWorlds. What gives here?
“As another example, we will not restrict Second Life by adding constraints which might make it more compelling to a specific subset of people but have the effect of reducing the broadest capabilities it offers to everyone for communication and expression.”
Um, dude. You’ve kind of already done that. The specific subset of people is “rich folks,” and the capabilities for communication and expression are called “bandwidth” and “packet loss” in the layman’s terms.
November 6th, 2006 at 11:05 AM
[Inappropriate comment removed — please read our Official Linden Blog Guidelines. Let's add value, thank you!]
November 6th, 2006 at 11:06 AM
I know its hard for everyone to have a way of verifying accounts, it would be noce if there were more ways to do it…hmm
SL has opened a lot of opertunities anda little bit of extra money for me, building, creating, scripting…..trying to make better and better virtual products, and of course interact with others.
Though it is far from perfect, I can understand how difficult it is to maintain.
November 6th, 2006 at 11:10 AM
[Inappropriate comment removed — please read our Official Linden Blog Guidelines. Let's add value, thank you!]
November 6th, 2006 at 11:12 AM
oh and one more thing
secondlifes motto WAS
“Your World Your Imagination”
now its
“our World Our Reality”
so theres the truth you have killed off the residents hope by making sure that Your World Your Reality by making it a 3d marketplace devoid of communitys
90% of secondlife is built on communitys they have furry communitys which has over 10,000 ppl in it even tho they are in diffrent areas of sl they are all one community and you phil keep talking about communitys being the stronghold in sl….well looks like you’ve killed the community spirit by the ever degraded customer service live help ppl who dont have a clue about the simplest things degrading network problems increased downtimes…..3 weeks ago a 5 day downtime due to an upgrade that went wrong in 30days of service sl is down for at least 18 days philip you dont see this because your to busy out playing golf with big companys btw how was your trip to scotland and england i heard that you ended up being 20 over par at st andrews
anyways get your head out of the clouds and back to reality you either bring back stuff you took out like the developers incentive or lower fees or this will be the beguining of the end for secondlife and linden labs
November 6th, 2006 at 11:15 AM
stormthunders Says:
November 6th, 2006 at 10:48 am
” we will not move in a direction that will restrict Second Life as to the number of people it can conceivably reach.”
Other media that allow free access use advertising to cover costs. Have you considered having free accounts view ads while loading during teleports? As stipends shrink, it would add new value to paid membership.
stormthunders, someone should pay you for this idea.
November 6th, 2006 at 11:17 AM
kerunix,
If you’re not prepared to allow griefers on unverified accounts ruining your day, there’s room for banning all unverified accounts from accessing parcels that you own using the Land controls.
The problem with doing so is that some of these people on unverified accounts are perfectly legit and contributing members of the grid. Sure they may not have the pocket to fund a premium account, but they still code and build surprisingly well once you’ve given them access to the initial free lessons and room to occasionally liaise with skilled mentors on the subject, as well as a sandbox to play in.
Are you prepared to also ban these people?
Also, there are certain members of the Grid that are lifetime members due partly to their significant contributions in the early ears of Second Life. If you ban based on the absence of payment info, you may be also paying short service to these veterans.
…. decisions, decisions.
November 6th, 2006 at 11:24 AM
1. People need to remember the truly grand vision and promise of this place (even if it sounds a little like Spaulding Gray’s visionary dinnertable speech in Byrne’s “True Stories,” without the illuminated rotating shrimp). A lot of people dreamed big and stuck their financial necks out for this, and they are to be commended.
2. The commitment to Universal Access is beyond commendable; compared to current RL global trends (of class polarization, assault on basic human rights and freedoms, and the vile eruption of conquest, torture and profitable mayhem) setting the metaverse on an egalitarian track of opportunity-for-all represents a real ray of hope. Do you really want to darken that hope, and undermine that principle, because you resent paying a few extra dollars a month so that smart, creative, but in many cases desperately poor people can get a leg up? I meet people every day in SL who never thought they could model, animate or program - but now they can - and they can make some money in SL, or take those skills into the RL marketplace, avoiding continued poverty (and in the RL that *does* mean sickness, crime, prostitution, addiction, suicide - not just lack of comfort). As SL grows, and as internet access generally grows, this really is what’s at stake: a free, global university, and a chance for anyone, anywhere, to earn at least a modest living. I think this prospect will attract more people (and the right kind) than are alienated by a modest price increase. We’re all lucky to be a part of this, still at it’s beginning - no matter how much or little we pay.
3. That said, I have a free account, and can’t get my premium for another few months; and in thanking everyone - the investors, the paying members, the LL team, the content providers (that’s everyone, including free riders like me), the first person to thank is PL, the primium mobile, the guy with the vision thing. Trust him to do his job, invest in SL and not just your corner of it, and support PL/LL’s goal of Universal Access. It will ultimately enrich SL, and *you* if you have the vision - or failing that, the guts - to stay on the bus.
November 6th, 2006 at 11:25 AM
I’ve wondered for a while how LL could be so bad at satisfying their customers. Your mission speech fully explains it. You do not once use the word “customer”, and you lead the troops.
Without the extremely creative and talented customers you failed to mention, you have nothing unique to promote. I am reminded of the killing of the goose that laid golden eggs.
You do realize that creative people are the sort of people that are drawn to exciting media when it is available? See how they flock here? Without a change of heart, you are a single competitor away from mass migration. Then what.
November 6th, 2006 at 11:28 AM
Over my years in the technology profession (and I have had several), I have had a good chance to see in early versions the coming technologies, the big ones you know, PC’s, the internet, music sharing, video sharing, etc.. but there have been tons of little ones too. I have become pretty darn good at picking the ones that are gonna be big ahead of time, and SL in concept is one of them. <