4 months at the Lab
Monday, September 29th, 2008 at 11:52 AM by: M LindenI recently celebrated my fourth month at the Lab and it has been a terrific adventure so far. As the leader of this amazing company, what have I been focused on? Leading the company’s efforts to make Second Life more relevant, more usable and more reliable.
How are we doing?
We wrapped up a very busy and productive Summer here in the Northern Hemisphere with great results to report. First off, each week since August 31st has brought a concurrency high. Yesterday, the peak hit 71,232 – that’s an increase of 6% in less than a month. Year-over-year, peak concurrency has grown more than 38%. An even more impressive figure is the number of Residents who logged-in during the prior seven days. For the week ending September 19th, we had 505,839 unique log-ins – another Second Life record. Plus daily user-to-user transactions in Linden Dollars continue their steady climb.
What can we attribute this to? We simplified the registration process to make it easier for Residents to join, registrations are continuing at a healthy clip, existing Residents are spending more time inworld, viewer crash rates have declined, teleport failures have declined and database/network/simulator outages are down substantially (for the past three months, simulator outages were 24% of what they were the prior three months).
All are indications that Second Life is becoming more relevant, more usable and more reliable.
What’s next?
First Hour Experience: Shortly after I started, we kicked off a project to reinvent what we call the “first hour experience” (our web experience, the viewer, and the way we acclimate and acculturate users inworld) for new users. We’ve made great progress and will be working with an award-winning interactive design firm to help us complete the reinvention and bring it to life. Yes, we are creating a viewer that is new user friendly! Stay tuned for updates.
Mainland Improvement: Jack Linden has written several blog posts about what we are doing to make the mainland a better experience for Residents so I won’t go into much detail other than to say that we recently banned ad farming which was a blight on the landscape. Our Department of Public Works (DPW) is continuing to make the mainland more attractive by adding roads, parks, buildings and gardens and other great features. The mainland is a crucial part of the Second Life experience and we are taking a more active role than we have historically in ensuring the inworld experience is a great one.
Experience Localization: When I joined in May, I attended new hire orientation at Linden Lab. One of my classmates was the new Linden hired to lead the localization of our product (websites, viewer, support tools). She has made great progress. By the end of the year, the viewer will be fully localized for all our major markets.
Product Focus: Linden Lab, like many startups was born out of a fascination with complex technology. This focus brought innovation and allowed for the breakthrough thinking behind Second Life. We are now at a stage in our development where we need to add additional product strategy, product development and product management experience to help us better tailor our product offering for each of our key markets. We’ve found just the right person to lead this important transition in the company. His name is Tom Hale (he will be called T Linden) and he is a technology industry veteran, having spent the last 14 years at Macromedia and Adobe where he held a variety of product strategy, development and management roles. Tom joins Linden Lab as Senior Vice President, Chief of Product. Read more about T Linden here.
Linden Lab is buzzing with activity. We’ve just completed a major strategy project to define the areas of focus for the next 18 months and we are in the process of translating those strategies into tactical action plans. To support the strategic initiatives we’ve identified, we’ll be hiring 60-70 more people over the next several quarters. This is all part of our commitment to ensure Second Life remains the largest and most successful virtual world.
Thank you for your attention. I will meet you in the forums later this afternoon (sorry, I have meetings all day!) if you have pressing questions or concerns.
Cheers,
M Linden
September 29th, 2008 at 11:54 AM
Don’t forget to continue the conversation in the forums!
September 29th, 2008 at 12:49 PM
[...] Teleports failing less often and this less and that less and the wonderful things in-store… 4 months at the Lab: “Linden Lab is buzzing with activity. We’ve just completed a major strategy project to [...]
September 29th, 2008 at 1:07 PM
Yay.
How about them near-daily asset server problems?
September 29th, 2008 at 1:10 PM
things are certainly improving, however, an easier registration process will never be enough. the whole interface needs to be completely changed if this is supposed to reach normal people. one client for creators, one for consumers, i think that would be the only way to go.
September 29th, 2008 at 1:13 PM
The distinction between “creators” and “consumers” in SL is fuzzy at best. And that’s one of the best things about SL.
September 29th, 2008 at 1:19 PM
It’s a nice post, M, but you might want to get someone to proofread your writing before putting it out in public. There are several errors. It’s a shame to have the meaning of your words degraded by minor errors.
I hope someone will give some thought to the problem of a user that doesn’t speak English having to look through their inventory and see names of items all in English that they can’t read. Objects, textures, etc., all need to have multi-lingual name fields. Machine translation needs to be embedded in the chat system and throughout the interface.
It’s good to see the attention given to translanting the interface and the LL volunteer groups efforts towards translating things. Quite a challenge to take on.
September 29th, 2008 at 1:23 PM
Any chance you’ll share which these are?
We’ve just completed a major strategy project to define the areas of focus for the next 18 months and we are in the process of translating those strategies into tactical action plans.
September 29th, 2008 at 1:23 PM
The concurrency peak is almost entirely due to the record number of bots/models/alts etc in use in virtually every “popular” store and club.
Boasting about a false statistic is completely pointless.
Congratulations on the crash stats because they’re actually real numbers and have some relevance.
Now do everyone a favour and bring Torley and other important information such as new viewer and service annoucements back to the blog where they belong.
September 29th, 2008 at 1:33 PM
[...] Kingdon announced that an outside design firm is hard at work on a new, user-friendly viewer for Second [...]
September 29th, 2008 at 1:37 PM
I’m with Vint - we look forward to the “traveling road show” on your strategic focus so that Residents can get engaged with building the future.
I’m also curious as to what “product” means in the context of the Lab and SL. Is SL the product? Immersive Spaces? SLim? And will a product focus mean a change to the organizational structure at the Lab? To JIRA?
You’ve whetted our appetites and it’s exciting to see and hear about the progress, and what seems to be 4 months in which you’ve kept your priorities clear and consistent. Thanks!
September 29th, 2008 at 1:37 PM
[...] Linden on the official Linden Blog says we - err.. Linden Lab & the grid - is doing fine: ‘All are indications that Second [...]
September 29th, 2008 at 1:44 PM
It’s interesting to see the contrast between concurrency numbers and ranking of Secondlife.com as reported by Alexa.
Alexa is showing traffic down to roughly one third of what it was a year ago in a steady decline. (Click on my name then choose ‘max’ to see)
Would any armchair analysts care to speculate on this? Are there really that many bots in SL or are people just never looking at the SL web pages anymore?
September 29th, 2008 at 1:55 PM
Good job M. Linden, seems like you are heading things in the right direction, I have been following the recent LL hires and I have to say I am impressed, I am glad to see that you have brought in top industry executive to help with the growth.
September 29th, 2008 at 2:21 PM
Localizations for all major markets? That means my private translation will be replaced… I can’t sit here anymore. sl-dev I’m coming!
September 29th, 2008 at 2:26 PM
I really hope this doesn’t mean screwing with the viewer again. There are so many exclusive bugs (in that they didn’t exist in the 1.19 series) to the previous series of RC clients it was laughable, along with how many RC viewers there were. The number of bots and the like are surely messing up the stats, just like the number of voice hours. Actually used versus just being turned on (especially by default, which surely added a ton of time). The registration process 2 years ago was as easy as signing up for anything else on the internet (Orig. register October 3rd, 2006), so the so-called simplification of the sign-up process leading to anything is just silly o_O. I dunno what localization is, but it doesn’t sound like it’s going to be handled well….Please just leave the viewer alone.
September 29th, 2008 at 2:44 PM
Whoelse feels like a dog? 4 months feel like a year, it is probably the speed of Second Life that let’s you experience literally millions of things in a short period of time.
In April 2008 SL was a mess, 10% failed deliveries, inventory loss, downtimes …you name it.
When M took over the wheel he had to be a noob at first which is probably the best case scenario, he experienced all the things by himself combined with his business background and his passion for design so many things have changed that the average joe wouldn’t even notice. His team has made long overdue adjustments to dozens of things like creating a role to moderate the group chat to name just one. The stability is a lot better and the Open Space land is such a motivation for many people with smaller pockets to create their own business on low costs but lots of space which keeps them longer in the game, motivates others to follow to do the same.
I am glad SL is now seen as a product and not as a vision anymore, SL needs fresh people because otherwise in a year we will only have creators and designers and that wouldn’t support the economy i suppose
Keep em coming we are ready 
September 29th, 2008 at 2:45 PM
A fine note and we all appreciate the update.
Of course we all also have our suggestions as to what would make our SL experience better. So I’ll throw my own pet issue on the pile as well.
How about giving creators better tools and support so they can protect their intellectual property rights more effectively?
September 29th, 2008 at 2:50 PM
Things have improved. They really have. Remember that. Because by perverse bad luck you put this out on the night that tps fail, the database eats our inventory, regions mysteriously vanish .. etc etc
Ok .. that’s just really unfortunate timing.
What’s not unfortunate but inexcusable, it’s that this has been going on for four hours plus without a word on the blog. Doesn’t anyone in there notice when SL is broken?
September 29th, 2008 at 3:00 PM
Teleport failures have declined for who? I know loads of people who still can’t even TP to their home lands. I sometimes have TP issues, I crash more times than I care to even think about and with upside down floating cats currently drifting around my home, I’d say that SecondLife is getting worse, not better.
It also amazes me that what has to be one of the biggest and hottest JIRA topics, the infamous ‘More than 25 group’ issue still hasn’t been sorted. Yes, it would take a major effort to fix this oversight, but don’t we have a right to get these issues resolved as paying customers?
September 29th, 2008 at 3:20 PM
Looks like SL is heading toward becoming a real business. They certainly have the lingo down.
Cautiously optimistic, as always.
September 29th, 2008 at 3:24 PM
[...] talking Linden Lab, CEO Mark Kingdon has provided a heads-up on progress toward a more usable Second Life. Lots more improvements are promised, the biggest one [...]
September 29th, 2008 at 3:41 PM
Ad farms were actually banned in February, sometimes actions speak louder than words.
Crashes have generally been less problematic for myself and I am experiencing less teleport failures so it’s good to see the stats suggesting that’s more the norm.
Good news on recruiting Tom Hale, that sounds like a positive step, it would be nice to hear more about this strategy project.
Group limits, they are a serious pain, rethink the whole system, some groups don’t need land permissions.
SLURL’s not working in the forums is frustrating, especially when a recent blog was highlighting their usefulness.
The lack of updates here has coincided with a lack of comments. Bring back the old blog, warts and all, it generated more interest. Moving the status updates elsewhere hasn’t worked well and most of all bring Torley back to the blog!
September 29th, 2008 at 3:53 PM
4 months in the office
then it is time to take all the complains about the grid serious for exsample fopr about for months we have bouncing cams when somethingor someone is behind us I know many have complaind about it in here as well in bug reports.
when the asset server is down we wont get warned when transactions dont work we dont get warned inworld but when we step in a updated sim we get anoying warnings why giving the useless information but not the warning that when you spend money your buys wont arrive
Why is every upgrate still a disaster after so many years you would think people at the Lab would have learned from their mistakes how naief am I
but now your here for four months maybe you still are ambitious enough to something about all this and if you want to add something uefulls give us a way to lock off IM’s
I wish you a lot of succes for the nest four months
September 29th, 2008 at 4:08 PM
[...] Posted in Blog, Business, English, Media, Polemik, Press, Thoughts | In teh blog, M Linden just announced the new Senior Vice President and Chief of Product (whatever that is), T Linden (Tom Hale). Tom is [...]
September 29th, 2008 at 4:17 PM
Wow, an award winning interactive design firm, building a new user friendly client, that sounds cozy.
But wait, do they have enough Mac and Linux developers on board?
September 29th, 2008 at 4:45 PM
The latest Mac clients (both general release and RC) are unusable! They crash way too much! Crashes from immediate to after 55 minutes of use. Try to build and runs businesses like that! It is especially frustrating when there is no indication of a crash: here I think I’m doing something, only to relog and find that I’ve wasted my time. Trying to start a voice conference is a sure crash, left-clicking on an object is a dangerous adventure (!!!) TPs now require taking a deep breath and hoping to arrive!
Oh, and bring us back Ctrl G with edit! Bring us back the tools menu visible even if not in build mode!
Agreed on the need of more than 25 groups! Been saying that for over a year!
It does seem that new people are better informed and not so lost when they first join.
September 29th, 2008 at 5:02 PM
Has anyone noticed the lack of questions and descent among the commenters here?
Would you like to know why?
It seems that Linden Lab has stopped these people from commenting because Linden Lab has no answers for valid questions.
What does that say about Linden Lab in general and M Linden in specific?
I wouldn’t put much faith in what M Linden says, seems to me if he could back up his “assumptions” he wouldn’t have put out bogus numbers saying how great things are.
September 29th, 2008 at 5:04 PM
The Numbers Say WHAT?
I find it increasingly frustrating that the so-called NEW CEO at Linden Lab spins the numbers to make them look as if everything is alright in the world.
Let’s take them point by point shall we?
First Hour Experience: This is the load of crud you tried passing off on the community last week, but you shied away from answering them, will you us now? You think that the SLURL program will make the FIRST HOUR experience so wonderful for New Residents. How man New Residents did you speak with to see if they even knew what a SLURL was? Comparitevly how many New Residents where there in the time you were speaking to these other phantom New Residents? I ask this because college statistics say you must meet at least 7% to get a decent sample. Did you obtain 7%, and just how did you do that?
The problem is, and you can verify this for me, is you didn’t talk to a SINGLE New Resident about this program did you? I kind of know what New Residents are thinking, I have been doing a New Resident Q&A for over 5 years now, and from experience, because you see I asked them, NO New Resident that I spoke with last week knew what a SLURL was in their first hour. The only one that knew it the first day, was someone doing a Search and found them that way. So, let’s drop your pretense, and get back to work, this time you should actually TALK to New Residents, instead of just assuming what they might want. You would be surprise what their answer is!
MAINLAND IMPROVEMENTS: I’m sorry to ask this question, but just how many more PRIMS have been added to the MAINLAND and did you survey the Residents that live around these “improvements” before acting? Did you actually check to see if any of those Residents wanted those “improvements”. Let’s not forget, the more PRIMS you guys stick in the world, the slower it gets for those that live around where your so-called “improvements” are. While it’s nice to have a finished road after 3 years, does it really work out in the end? The only thing I can see Jack Linden doing is adding MORE LAG to the GRID.
Experience Localizaton: Since apparently you don’t know what this person really does, you just gave us a fluff piece. There’s nothing to see here, please move along.
Product Focus: Well, you said a mouthful there. The thing that worries me is the “Product Enhancement” line. You see, everytime your “competent” staff tries to add something to the world, it either crashes and kicks everyone off the Grid, or your “competent” employee’s let slip a number of bugs and have to remove the newly added “enhancement”. Just how many tries was it to get version 1.24 in place? 5 or 6? If you really are thinking that this is a good thing, well then we all know you are nothing more then a mouth for Philip Rosedale to talk thru.
Now, let’s go back to your “celebrating” some of those numbers. You brag that Viewer Crashes are down, but have you compared the viewer count to people who have decided to get a 3rd Party viewer and say at a lower level of version since that is more stable then the one’s your “competent” staff have brought out? If not, why not? Have you noticed that as online numbers increased, the more lag and crashing the rest of the world is doing and the number of failed logins are occurring during this time period? Why not? You see that would be something to celebrate, but since you didn’t mention that, I assume you know those numbers and are afraid to announce them.
Finally, your cash issues. It seems to me, and to most merchants in-world, that the Linden Dollar has dropped off and people are buying less. There was a time in-world that the money passing hands was greater to then the money made by Linden Lab from fee’s, Islands, etc. Can you give us that number now? Or do you know what us Merchants know, that the SL Economy is in a recession?
You can hide all you want Sir, but I will always be around to call you out on these things. Robin, I’ll be seeing you tomorrow with these questions, please be prepared to give me detailed answers.
Thanks,
Bob Bunderfeld
September 29th, 2008 at 5:39 PM
IMO, SL has been a lot more stable for the last month, but the asset servers are still wonky from time to time, and there are things in the 1.20 and 1.21 viewers that used to work in the 1.19 viewers which no longer work - Save Back to My Inventory and Save Back to Objects are two that come to mind. There are others.
Making the viewers more stable and operational will go a long way in making builders a lot happier.
September 29th, 2008 at 6:36 PM
Bob Bunderfeld - Nice input - abeit laden with attitude - nice work on the Q&A.
Q&A sessions, Surveys and Market Research are useful tools in the modern world, I’m still asking LL to do a ‘customer hardware survey’ along the lines of Valve’s Steam network one, if they know what people are using to connect, they can make it more attractive for those people.
I agree with with all your comments, but believe the SL economy recession is more to do with the world recession atm than SL based.
here’s an idea LL, your in San Fran, have loads of computers in base and vehicles available right? why not go to a nearby college, and bung them a cash donation for use of a room for a term, and use the students as test subjects? Simply having free drinks and cookies etc would bring them in - then you will get open minded truely ‘first time’ users and can see how they react with your product?
Toy manufactures do this all the time with nursurys and sweets, chocolate and fizzy drinks firms use UK colleges to scope for Q&A peeps.
The product mid to end life usability is virtually sound (well except for the bugs and glitches), is the start that needs attention on usability.
Ill put this one other way, everyone I know that has tried it said ‘they didn’t get it’ or ‘it was too confusing’ at the start and haven’t gone back, that market is going fast, do it now and you might capture those people that watch the re-run of CSI.
September 29th, 2008 at 6:38 PM
(1) I have never ever had so many TP timeouts and “you have been logged out of SL”, or “you have been sent to an invalid region” crashes than I have endured in the past week.
(2) I have had to stop using my Mac Pro+8800GT in Second Life because of the constant cyclic freezes. These bugs in the 1.2x.x clients are way over the top compared to 1.19.x.x. —> Macs with 8800 graphics are supported and recommended? Pull the other one.
(3) Overloaded sims that sit on frame rates as low as 0.0 and 1.0 for long periods. Check out Burning Life some time.
(4) Constant group IM failures.
(5) Search results that fill the search window with trash.
(6) It’s irritating that my UI settings, and items positioned on the HUD, like the Stats Bar and Lag Meter, and my advanced sky setting, must be restored at every login simply because these are not remembered following my copious crashes and forced logoffs.
(7) I almost never had Macs quit “unexpectedly”. These now happen several times daily and I do not even see the “unexpectedly” excuse any more.
(8) I am no longer accorded the respect and opportunity to add my own comments to crash logs on relog.
The last six months of SL has been a deteriorating experience. Has increasing concurrency and bots been the root cause? Yes, and the constant updating with “improvements” without fixing core issues is deplorable.
September 29th, 2008 at 7:06 PM
I simply haven’t been “on” to second life for nearly two months now - I’m waiting for a double, triple, quadruple and pentuple confrimation of stability. As to the lack of comments going against the Linden Labs “line”? I made a comment on an earlier thread about supression of speech being similar to how it was in the former Eastern Bloc. This after a comment of mine in a yet an earlier thread was deleted. That comment has remained while the previous one is still deleted. It appears that the majority of Linden’s have not changed their attitude - they only want to hear, and subsequently want us to hear, the “official” line that everything is going just fine. Just the the American Economy, huh?
September 29th, 2008 at 7:11 PM
Another comment to make - this one about ‘bots. At one stage - and this is only going back a year ago, ‘bots were - officially - illegal and abuse of the system. However, approximately five months ago one Linden went on record as saying thay ‘bot’s were good for “Traffic data”. So therefore, even though ‘bots are “officially” still an abuse of the system and terms and conditions of second life, Linden Labs are implicitly condoning and supporting their use, just as they appear to be implicitly condoning and supporting the actions of griefers, thus going against the very rules they themselves have set up for us to comply with. Sort of makes you wonder, huh?
September 29th, 2008 at 7:16 PM
What bothers me most, is Linden Lab releases a “Look how good we are” Blog Posting about once a week, yet the majority of the community is saying the opposite.
I guess if you want to stay out of touch with your community, that’s ok, until someone comes up with a viable alternative to Second Life and suddenly 75% of your community disappears over night.
That’s where it’s heading I fear, and there will be only one entity to blame, that being Linden Lab themselves.
September 29th, 2008 at 7:43 PM
When the ship sinks you must blame the captain of the ship!!!
September 29th, 2008 at 8:45 PM
First of all, thank you M Linden for your post. We really appreciate the effort you have been doing to keep us posted. We hope we get to hear more of your plans in the future as we are passionately interested in them. SL is part of our life after all.
My SL so far has been mixed, depending on where I am. Even if my work and home connection is from the same ISP, I get horrible connection at work, no matter if everyone else at the office is using the internet or not. While at home I am happily breezing on by, even if I’m on a wireless network. So probably SL isn’t properly attuned to remain stable or usable in a connection that fluctuates, and let’s admit it, it always fluctuates.
With the group limit, there are a lot of third party products that have managed to take advantage of that limit and do something about it. Products like Subscribe-O-Matic and Hippo (among the few) works like a group in a way it distributes announcements and objects. The real need to belong to groups now is if you are part of estate management team or the like. Most businesses adopt the 3rd party system instead of creating a group in SL nowadays if all they ever need is to distribute items and send out announcements.
The beauty of SL’s limitations is the ability of creative and enterprising residents to get past it and do something about it. Sometimes its those limitations that bring about ingenuity.
What I so hope is that LL listens to those creative and ingenious people and not shut them out–because it will make their work easier.
I believe that M Linden is doing his best, let’s try our best to support him and SL. All we need to do is to remind them frequently what needs to be done, AS THERE IS SO MUCH TO DO, but do it with less “i’m better than you” attitude. This VW is the first of its kind, so many problems spring up that are new and many of those problems’ solutions are not documented yet. We have a lot of growing up to do.
September 29th, 2008 at 9:01 PM
I’m sorry Isadora, but SL is not “the first of it’s kind”. The original virtual, online world was AOL which came out in 1996. Admittedly that had major problems that largely had to do with technology at the time. The first Virtual World that was anywhere like SL was EA/Maxis SimsOnline. I understand this, too, had it’s problems. So to say that SL is the first of it’s kind is naive and shows your lack of knowledge in regards to the history of virtual worlds. I had never played AOL or SimsOnline, but I have played both the original Sims and the Sims2 games and can tell you that the basic ideas Linden Labs have for building and avatar design come directly from the work of Wil Wright and the Maxis team. Essentially, SL is far from “original”. The only thing that I can see Linden Labs has done that AOL and Sims Online did not do was introduce realworld business and economy transactions. However, this hardly a call to claim that SL is a first.
September 29th, 2008 at 9:03 PM
In regards to the problems, Isodora - these problems have plagued SL since its inception and all that has been to solve them has been slap on paintjobs to cover the cracks in the foundations. But then again, this is what you get when you have amateurs with bright ideas and no idea how to impliment them in an efficient and effective manner.
September 29th, 2008 at 9:05 PM
I was at a hub the the other night and there was more identical noob looking bots sitting idle than actual live users. I really think the numbers are misleading. Also deleted accounts are not really deleted far as I can tell. I can find so called deleted users in the new search. Even an account I had back in 2006 still comes up. What’s with that?! Why are these account not purged from the system after 90 days? The website led me to believe that when I closed the account it would be REMOVED.
September 29th, 2008 at 9:11 PM
Maybe you should change your name to HMMMMM Linden…..While stability has improved a lot that does not mean its impressive because SL had been so broken it was unreal.
Mainland improvements are very welcomed and hope this continues as mainland is really ugly on the whole with some amzing diamonds in the rough.
Product focus? well as long as like the recent messeging offering and having an ex adobe employee onboard this doesn’t mean bloatware.Sl should be a slimline client,we do not need auto updaters,we do not need browser plug ins and we do now need any processes that start with the operating system.
What we need is more control over mainland parcels so we can remove overhanging prims ourselves.Also i think if newcomers couldn’t figure out getting on to the grid they are not going to last long a simplfied sign up will just benifit bots.If you cannot figure out how to sign up for SL then im pretty sure signing up for e-mail or even turning comp on was a bit to taxing for 1 day to carry on.
September 29th, 2008 at 9:34 PM
Jayme, i believe it’s the first of its kind to offer SO MUCH options as far as creativity and commerce goes, but yes, i’m new to VWs and I appreciate what everything has been done so far. I’m familiar to The Sims and i was such an avid player, but only thought of it as a game. SL isn’t a game for me, but an opportunity.
It’s not easy, whether SL is the first or not. There is a lot of organizing and growing up to do, and I’m sure they are doing it now. You say that LL needs more efficient and effective in handling ideas and maybe this stage we are in right now with M is a step in the direction we are wanting them to be. I’m sure they also see the potential to be better if they become more efficient and effective, and will get on it, knowing that everyone is watching their every move and learning from their mistakes. It is a different ballgame now, with so many people interested in making their own virtual world.
September 29th, 2008 at 11:09 PM
Jessicka Graves Says: “I really hope this doesn’t mean screwing with the viewer again. There are so many exclusive bugs (in that they didn’t exist in the 1.19 series) to the previous series of RC clients it was laughable, along with how many RC viewers there were. ”
Nope change is good, personally I can’t wait for the next big thing, without change we wouldn’t have flexies, mono, sculpties or many other features.You have to ride the wave or stay in a pond. Activeworlds may be a better pond for those who can’t handle change.
Sorry but I don’t want SL to be the same in 10 years time.
And if you don’t like lots of beta viewers, simply stay with the main viewer.
Seriously though M, this infinate anomous accounts deal has to be under control somehow, is our 6% rise more residents or just more bots?
September 29th, 2008 at 11:10 PM
Valuable comments Bob in #28. These are the kinds of residents…the ones taking the time to comment here, that you should really listen to in my opinion (including me of course)!
Here is my input…
1. Banning ad farms….Excellent
2. New residents…assign them a buddy resident for the first hour to show them around. Give those residents willing to be buddies some kind of incentive….like reduced land tier percentage based on the number of new residents they take on.
3. Remember when the Linden economy was really booming? It was tons of fun back then. You should focus on how to help merchants in-world build their businesses and extend them out to the RL. It would do two things….increase business inworld and bring in new residents who see the advertising say for either RL or SL products.
4. Gambling was so fun..and good for the economy…isn’t there a legal way to bring this back…maybe a second monetary system that say cannot be turned back into RL cash? For example…If the second monetary system was called…say…L2’s…then they could only be spent inworld. So say an SL pre-fab house price would be in two denominations….5000 L or 8000 L2’s. It would just be fun to try to gamble to buy stuff inworld…wasn’t that the only legal issue…being able to re-convert it to RL money?
5. Another way to boost the economy is to reduce land tier. You flooded the market with land, so much so that land prices have never recovered even close to what they were at, and yet…land tier prices remain the same. How do you expect folks to want to continue to invest when now it is just about making tier each month and not about making any profit…where is the incentive for those wanting to invest in land? You dropped land prices, but kept tier the same, and now have a depressed economy on your hands….kinda like what the U.S. government is about to do…bail out the big boys and still leave the little guy holding the bill. Your big guys are yourselves…keeping land tier high…and the little guys holding the bill…are those of us still paying the high land tier prices each month. Well..you tell me…is it working for you?
Please…talk to and take advice from your concerned, long time residents. We want SL to be great…really!!
September 29th, 2008 at 11:14 PM
Oh…and one more thing…
Definately bring Torley back and keep him close to you as you seek advice on how to make SL better. He knows the residents and has his finger on the pulse of what many of us want and need! I recommend he take a major role at all of your “How do we make SL better” meetings/conferences.
Hooray for Watermelons!!
September 29th, 2008 at 11:21 PM
Nobody in real life is going to take Second Life’s user numbers seriously until the hundreds of thousands of lapsed accounts are done away with, bots are permanently abolished and the search results include real traffic numbers (it would be great to have a number next to each site listing that shows how many folks are currently in a particular world at any given moment) rather than the farcical figures we see now.
I would especially like to remind SL that with people looking at the activities of companies with eyes more jaundiced more than ever, more traffic transparency would really do SL’s reputation a world of good.
Also, in the new RC, the camera now moves in an ellipse and not in a circle, making it impossible to use it for a real in your face close up when you are changing your avatar’s looks. Please fix it soonest!
September 29th, 2008 at 11:25 PM
@42 Flexi has been around since before I have, back when SL actually functioned fairly well. Mono has been a big bust, heavy traffick sims under Mono or Havok4 tend to be heavily, heavily laggy (such as Lost Angels), all because of server-side problems, so called “updates”. Sculpties hasn’t impacted my experience too much, because when used, they usually end up being too laggy to rez past the ball/oval shape. I like balls and all, but it’s just silly to see.
I do like change, don’t get me wrong here, but change that breaks the game? Change that makes the game virtually unusable? Change CAN be a good thing, but in SL’s case, it usually ends up the opposite, or at least for the recent “changes”.
September 29th, 2008 at 11:26 PM
Firstly, thank you Mark for an informative post.
There have certainly been some improvements in SL over the last few months. It is pretty clear that you aren’t a miracle worker, nor have a magic wand to wave over SL.
To the many people who have commented about specific issues still detracting from your (and my) user experience I would like to say this; Yes these things are still happening, but let’s be realistic, you can’t expect a new CEO to magically fix longstanding problems in just four months! Life’s just not like that.
I’m just as annoyed at the many failures as you are. In fact so annoyed that I took a bath on selling my mainland plot for half what I paid for it and I have downgraded my account to a free basic one. But that doesn’t mean SL is all bad. I still have fun out there and I still buy things from merchants.
If there is a downturn in the SL economy I would suggest that it is strongly linked to the downturn in the global economy. Blaming Linden Labs for that seems rather pointless.
Why would I say these things? I’m not a secret LL employee spouting the ‘party line’. But I am someone who is getting really tired of all of the negativity in the comments made by many contributors here. This is not the way to move us collectively forward. Emotional outbursts don’t help advance the cause but instead make sure that your (often very valid) comments are brushed off as just another hotheaded outburst. Far better to report factual information that LL can act on.
M Linden, I want to encourage you to keep flogging the crew until they get it right and all of us nay sayers out here are silenced.
Carry on!
September 29th, 2008 at 11:36 PM
I actually agree with Isadore, we should do our best to make Second Life what we dreamed it could be that first time we ever logged on.
We should also support all the Lindens that are “Open and Transparent” in their communication with us; as they promised they would be last year.
This of course leaves out just about every Linden who’s posted on the Blog, with the exeption of Torley. So, I support Torley Linden in all that Torley does.
As for supporting M Linden, Philip Linden (Rosedale) and Robin Linden (Harper), when they stop pissing down my back and tell me it’s raining, then I’ll give them all my support, as I’ve said all these years.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Second Life, and have since I first logged in back in April 2003. But I’ve seen Linden Lab change in their attitudes toward the community and their non-professional manner in which they now handle those tools of Second Life, such as the viewer, SIM versions, etc. The change I’ve witnessed is not good to say the least. While Second Life client became more and more bloated (There was a time you could download your client easily, as it was only 10MB), the Second Life Grid groans more loudly by the day. Remember the VOICE CHAT installation and being down 48 hours straight? This is the kind of thing that shows me that someone at Linden Lab either needs to be fired or given a chance to start doing their job correctly. Enough said about that, like I said, when M Linden stops blowing hot-air up my skirt, then I’ll trust him and support him.
September 29th, 2008 at 11:48 PM
@28// Bob: Great post, I could not possibly have summarized it any better…
… and @31 Georgie: There are loads of people I know myself (incl. myself) who could report the same.
So what are we doing now at the Labs at this moment? True seems to be, that there has been some investment and increase of hardware, since otherwise the number of avis online at peak times would kill the system completely (now it just only strangles the system).
I also find the situation (in comparison of avis online at same time during peaks) is r e l a t i v e l y improving (which means although such increases, it has not become much worse than before).
But we are far from a stage where residents (especially ones who spend or at least try to spend several hours inworld daily) would cheer now, that SL has become a stable system. It has not.
So… what I read in the Lindens’ blogposts is, that you now declare SL to be a better experience by definition? That is nice. Really nice.
Following that path of thinking, you also could put the people in the USA at rest and tell them “Folks - the banking crisis does not exist - we have everything under control….nothing to worry about, honey!…”
If you, M, liked to know the truth about SL inworld experience, use a normal PC, not one year old, with some several hundreds of GB, newest graphic card, 16000 bandwith internet (so all far from being outdated)…and then…teleport and… crash (with a computer which is normally good enough to watch movies in realtime and TV- quality online).
You also could have a look to the post in that so- called Grid Status report. The things posted in there and their frequence as such were already bad enough, but I think many other residents will agree that according to what we experience inworld, the things posted there are maximum one third of what indeed happens (in regards of malfunctions).
Summarizing I’d like to say, that I appreciate the efforts apparently having been taken. But please do not talk your product better…please…make it better.
Thx + good luck - Lara
September 29th, 2008 at 11:50 PM
Hmmmm Over 45 Comments and not one response from LL. Speaks Volumes doesn’t it? People bring up a lot of interesting and valid points, its a pity they never seem to be addressed.
@12.. Interesting point about the decline in traffic, but i think that it only points to the lack of interesting and relative content of the web site, not the access to SL by clients since that’s probably not counted in those stats.
September 29th, 2008 at 11:50 PM
[@48, Bob...regarding transperancy pls don't forget to mention Prospero]
September 30th, 2008 at 12:34 AM
The last week’s i have seen more crashed that in ages. The viewer crashes, ann version i try 1.20.15/16, 1.21.RC2/3, CoolViewer builds of 1.20.15/16. The funny part is that nothing in the client side changed.
Yet the crashes all are clear client side bugs. This and the security problem this week make me liking point again to a fear I have not verified yet in the code. The code, especially the network code, is written in a lab environment, the client trusts what it gets from the server. Mind you but ANY crash that comes from an internet packet IS a security problem. Just waiting for an exploit. My advice to LL would be put much much efforts into this field, it not only increases the resident experience and stable viewer, but also makes the viewer more secure, and in that way keeps potential error hidden.
September 30th, 2008 at 12:36 AM
“hidden” is not a good translation to English of what I wanted to say. I mean there will not be any security scandals if one is proactive in this field. The OpenBSD have some good tactics here.
September 30th, 2008 at 12:39 AM
Thanks for the update M. Good to see you are settling in. I have one request. Could you see that the stickers at the front counter look a little more impressive than just “SL” I put one on my car in Australia and now folks think I’m from Slovenia
What happened to the hand logo?
September 30th, 2008 at 12:44 AM
Do the statistics really concern me? No SL looks as empty as it did 6 months ago. If you want to draw ppl in how about fix the current issues. Word of mouth can go either way. Asset server issues are a “Show stopper” I am sure you are also familiar with that catch phrase “M”. Just remember we don’t work for you. “m”‘kay.
September 30th, 2008 at 12:51 AM
ps; #28 Bob you so rock my socks
love ya darlin.
Cat
September 30th, 2008 at 1:34 AM
Wow. Welcome to Second Life. I’m on my official 3rd and final avi. My first was noob clueless so I had to ditch her, the 2nd one was contantly hounded and spammed from an old group = this one is rich with lesson learned mentality. Third time’s a charm.
I see there are many more complaints here and this time I have to agree with them…not the general whiners but the ones who have been here all along pointing to the specific issues that never seem to get fixed each time another RC comes out. I found SL back in the spring of 2006. I am happy to be here, I love SL, I’ve owned a sim, I’ve spent a ton o cash here but I enjoy it. I’ll end up getting another sim here shortly (well, provided the Amerikan Empire doesn’t completely go offline and wipe us all out but that’s a whole other economical rant). In all the time I’ve been here, the one single version that worked for me was the v1.19 - I went days and days without crashing, minimal lag, no lost inventory, no slow to death load times.
I was forced into an upgrade and it’s gone straight to hell each time. I can’t even visit the mainland sims because the whole machine locks up. It’s a gray zone for several minutes, I can’t move, half my stuff doesn’t show up…teleport failure, crashing worse than it was doing back in April 2006 when I first loaded whatever version that was. I mean it’s been absolutely horrendous even bothering to do anything at all in SL. If I land on the mainland anywhere it’s a guaranteed crash. Private sims are way easier unless they have lots of crap there.
So PLEASE focus on whatever causes this and don’t say it’s my graphics card. I went right out and grabbed one of the recommended ones and it worked great while I was still using .19, but no longer. What is going on?
Is someone smoking crack while working on these viewers? This is ridiculous. I thought we wouldn’t be forced into an upgrade but it happened. I can’t even go back to .19 because soon as it’s installed it forces me to upgrade again.
Please FIX this stuff. I’m definitely seeing a tremendous lapse in people in SL, it’s turning into a ghost town! The PR will improve when the QUALITY OF END USER EXPERIENCE improves. If your residents are telling you this for years now, isn’t it about time to listen??
Thanks for choking down my 2c.
September 30th, 2008 at 2:35 AM
The increase in traffic is no doubt, as many here points out, due to the ever increasing number of bots and alts camping everywhere. The camping issue and the way traffic is calculated must be dealt with if SL is to be taken seriously.
And the constant “improvements” and “updates” only leaves ppl behind. Linden lab aims for volume of accounts but updates are done so frequently that the only ones who can have a full SL experience are the comparatively few with the latest pc gaming comps. Mac users are increasingly left behind…problems on macs are more frequent now than before.
September 30th, 2008 at 2:55 AM
Well I find myself feeling compelled to add my 2 cents here. First I will say that being involved in something as interesting and complex as Second Life has been amazing for me - This has had a huge positive impact on my first life. I really am trying to hold on and ride the waves just as most of you - I read as much as I can about it, I try to keep up with new changes, the Jira, the blogs, the articles, the server and viewer updates, bla bla bla, etc, etc…….I can’t begin to know what “M” really has on his plate but I do know this: SL is barely useable now. I used to be able to build, buy & sell land, tp to other sims, stay in world for hours and hours a day, explore the grid, write about SL things in the press, take pictures, and so forth. Now, I am able to log in “sometimes”, stay on for MAYBE a few minutes, click on something or turn and it’s a sudden death crash. I have tried every possible fix - After doing this about 6 times each morning, I now just give up and return to my first life. I feel so detached and yes, I am going thru the pains of separation anxiety. I miss being around for the residents on my sims…I miss seeing someones new build…I miss SL. What has happened here ?
September 30th, 2008 at 3:03 AM
Burgess, I think you are right when you said, “Mac users are increasingly left behind…problems on macs are more frequent now than before”.
Sad but so true! Though I definately have no interest in switching back to the other platform.
September 30th, 2008 at 4:03 AM
First of all, thank you, M Linden, for continuing to give us some your thoughts for us to brood on. What we mostly need at this stage is a roadmap of where LL thinks Second Life currently is, and where it is going. You’ve been helpful in helping us out to understand that, in broad and vague terms — what would be the strategy. We might appreciate the tactics too: specifically naming each step on the road ahead and how you plan to implement it.
Traditionally LL was never good with timelines and “promises”. It’s a corporate-cultural-thing: the Tao of Linden enables developers to pretty much do what they want to do, regardless of what they need to do. Four months is still little time to see any changes on the management direction that we hope to see soon.
On the other hand, of course, SL in 2003 is not SL in 2008. Any kid with a PC at home can successfully manage a mini-grid with a few hundred OpenSim-based regions, and handle a few hundreds of simultaneous logins. Grow that to 30,000 regions and 71k simultaneous users, and no amateur will manage that. The repeated claims that “SL was so good in the past” and “support was so extraordinary” or “Lindens did really work miracles in the Olden Days” are, well, just throwing sand in our eyes. SL was so much smaller, easier, and uncomplicated back then. The asset server didn’t even require a database! It was so simple, crude, but elegant and efficient. But it only needed to handle a few million items for a few dozens of thousands of users.
Moving towards a huge infrastructure that supports millions of users (and never forget that almost nobody in the industry talks about active users vs. registered users; Skype claims 240 million registered users — I just use it for an hour per year, on average. Am I an “active user” or not?) is a completely different step. Here I really appreciate the vision and forethought given to hiring people like Frank Ambrose who has ages of experience in managing similarly complex infrastructures very successfully. With due respect to the past network engineers and system administrators at LL, we have gone way beyond the kid-with-a-PC-at-home stage, and I, for one, am thoroughly happy to know that the bridge at the Linden Ship is well staffed: a captain who understands where to lead the ship, and a Chief Engineer who understands how to keep the engines happy. And, of course, Phillip will always be the Columbus on the deck pointing to the future. But he won’t need to be captain and chief engineer at the same time he shows what lies in the future.
And then it’s time we understand the views of the silent majority. The number of people that are vocal about SL are infinitesimal. My best estimate is that a mere hundred thousand are “actively vocal” about SL: they read and write blogs, they join meetings in SL, they discuss on forums, they make their opinion felt — and, invariably, they’re thinly spread across a lot of online resources. A very tiny group comes here to complain. Always the same group, complaining as loudly as possible for a few months, then, after one day getting a new computer, a new Internet connection, or clicking on the correct checkbox or installing the appropriate driver — they suddenly find that SL, after all, works flawlessly for them, and they disappear into the “silent majority” — the millions that log in regularly without trouble at all, but also don’t feel the urge to boast about it. They just use it. My GSM mobile phone from Nokia works (most of the time…) with few crashes, but I don’t feel the urge to blog about it. I just assume it works.
So it’s an even tinier minority that bothers to talk positively about SL. That’s just part of human nature. We’re irate and passionate when things don’t work for us (or for our close friends and family), and that passion drives many to be very vocal — for a while. Sooner or later, two things happen: things start working again for them or they leave (blessfully so!) SL forever. Most return after a few years again — usually after having upgraded to a different computer/connection — but this time have no problems at all. It happens to all of us.
Seriously, no one stays in SL for 4 or 5 years to complain every day unless one has a serious mental disorder (those cases are exceptions).
On the other hand, the very tiny minority that actually brags about how cool SL is remains around for years (and hopefully decades) and will always be happy about SL, no matter how much it crashes. Yesterday I was at the launch of Orange’s Innovation Week. On one location (there are sometimes interconnected events) there were 52 people attending. 20 were visible on my viewscreen (since I was watching a presentation I wasn’t seeing the whole of the audience). I had 12-13 FPS on my underpowered iMac. For me it was simply an awesome experience. For someone sitting next to me it was a “lag nightmare”. We all have incredibly different expectations! Teleports failing? Just log off and log back in, directly on your destination — it takes almost the same time as waiting for a slow teleport to complete. Does it “lower the expectations”? Not if you have an optimistic mindset! Webpages also sometimes fail to load, and we don’t blog or comment about how “the Web is so slow today”.
Thinking positively about SL is actually what the silent majority does — those 500,000 that log in to SL in a week, and those 71,000 that are in-world simultaneously. Among those, 20 or so take the trouble to come to blogs and forums and complain every day. 4 or 5 write positively about their experience. But it’s the same SL for all of us. None of those (neither the pessimists nor the optimists) do really reflect what the remaining 99.99999999% feel about SL.
The silent majority just enjoys SL. In peace.
September 30th, 2008 at 4:10 AM
well, since I joined two years ago, it is true that tremendous progress were made, mainly banning casinos and add farms, or adding open lands.
I also noted a consistent reduction of griefing incidents or rough visitors. It is difficult to say what is the cause for this, but one of the reasons is likely that Second Life has now a much better repute, of a place where persons are respected. Other causes may be a bettering of private security groups and methods, which makes griefing much more difficult and less “interesting”. However griefing cannot be eradicated without an active Linden Labs effort to check new accounts and alt abuses, a thing that residents cannot do. (often griefers use new accounts).
Crashes and other unpleasant incidents have bettered, but since 2-3 weeks we have a rash of chat lag and errors. Seems that the chat server is overburdened, and when a chat starts anywhere, it is soon stopped with errors and lag. We still have problems like Windows scraping endlessly the hard drive while loading/unloading data in its dreadful swap file, occasionating freezes of 30 sec and more. This especially happens when we open profiles or objects. Is it possible to set correct priorities to Windows????
I understand that these technical issues are difficult, but having a stable experience in world is the key of our satisfaction. So, with a financially healthy Linden Labs, it would be possible (and urgent) to hire good programmers, quality specialists and methods engineers, and review the viever and servers to make them much more consistent and maintainable.
September 30th, 2008 at 4:15 AM
Hi Mark!
Surely, the availability for Second Life is getting better; I now rarely have problems going inworld. It’s nice to see that your activities for better reliability are paying off!
Also, it seems to me that your engagement in the mainland is giving results: There are less extortion-based content, and the ad farmers are beginning to clean up.
And I have the impression that land prices are stabilized at a sensible level, although the tier/price ratio is perhaps now a bit high.
I do have a few items on my wish-list for the future:
Please remember that user-created content is the key differentiator for Second Life. Other virtual worlds with greater control over what content is available and restrictions on who is allowed to create what kind of content will never be the same. In your work to grow the user base and make it simpler and safer for new users, don’t guide SL away from that core.
You need to ensure that key decisions on development directions are made in forums with people actually living in SL, loving SL, using SL. Don’t leave it to web interface designers and game developers.
When doing the viewer simpler for first-time users don’t take away features or change the metaphors unnecessarily. Look at what’s being done in the OnRez viewer: Items are hidden until the user is ready and needing them (build tools etc), but they are all there. I read this note(http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Landmarks_and_Navigation_Project) from a meeting where one suggestion was to remove landmarks and user picks in favor of a bookmark model, just to make things “simpler”. Please don’t. Concentrate on the interface, in this example the Inventory interface, to make a simpler version for first-time users, but leave the underlying features there.
Technically I wish the viewer could be made more stable on slow and unstable connections. A lot of us works mobile; we want to be able to access our inworld business and customers on the road even if it does not give us the full user experience. Also, I have a strong suspicion that network problems are a source of many general problems people have with SL: If you designed the client interface so that it could work on a mobile line, I would guess it would be more stable on a broadband connection also.
And last but not least: Could you please make OpenSpace SIMs available also for those of us not having a normal SIM? A full SIM is just too costly and unnecessary complex if you don’t want to use it for business purposes, but even so a lot of us would want one for personal use if we did not have to be at the mercy of some middle man.
Thanks for the first 4 months, look forward to see what the future brings for Second Life!
Cris.
September 30th, 2008 at 4:33 AM
The best thing you could possibly do M , is to keep things STABLE. No more new policies or half-cocked rules. Every time you change things, you bankrupt hundreds or even thousands of your own customers. Enough is enough! NO MORE CHANGES!
September 30th, 2008 at 4:42 AM
You DID however FAIL to mention that the grid economy has gone from recession to depression from your gambling ban folly. I STILL say it would have been a far better and saner idea just to MOVE the LL offices to a state FREE of such extreme conservative rulings.
September 30th, 2008 at 5:25 AM
The number one target of every department in LL must be Stability and Security.
Whether LL like it or not, SL’s residents are developing some very delicate business strategies of their own, many of which are being marred by the lack of stability in the Grid.
There are always going to be days that vary, after 4+ years, that is something we have come to expect. What is proving unacceptable, are these long periods of instability, I am talking the past 6 months.
Security is also a high priority issue. Out of the 60+ staff you are recruiting, I can only hope, a portion of those are going to be addressing, the blatant theft, by some of the less scruplous users. It can take months to even get a responce from LL. For the most part, even with unmitigating evidence, the stance seems to be one of careless. If you don’t want to police this, give the people that power.
To conclude your report, it would have perhaps been prudent to offer a breakdown of the future strategies/goals, so that your people can plan ahead.
Thank you for the post M.
September 30th, 2008 at 5:36 AM
Welcome Mr T