One of the most lucid Second Life bloggers around is Ciaran Laval. His posts are intelligent, insightful, and entirely devoid of the drama and rambling vitriol that so often undermines whatever point an author wishes to make. I’ve taken to dropping into his blog regularly throughout the week as he does ferret out things many of us miss.
An example of this is his commentary on a possible merging of the main and teen grids. Ciaran raises the question as a result of noticing some interesting trends around the “new” forums, as his post indicated. Without wishing to steal any of his thunder, I had noticed the thread he gives as “exhibit 3” – but unlike Ciaran, I’d failed to see it in a wider context. Kudos to Ciaran for putting things in perspective and raising the flag on matters.
While this apparent trend towards merger within the forums is indeed worrying, I have to admit the most surprising thing about Ciaran’s post are the replies given – people expressing surprise or smug “well, I’ve been predicting this”.
The fact of the matter is that the merger – despite commentary otherwise from LL – has been openly on the roadmap (to use a favourite LL buzzword) since the end of 08/ start of 09, when Philip Rosedale went on record in an interview vis:
Generally, I think that the future of Second Life needs to be one where people of all ages can use Second Life together, and that’s the direction that we’re taking in our planning and our work……if you look at the problems with having a teenaged area, which is itself so isolated from the rest of the World, they’re substantial. There’s an inability for educators to easily interact with people in there because we’ve made it an exclusively teen only area. Parents can’t join their kids in Second Life so problems like that are ones that we think are pretty fundamental and need to be fixed. We need to stop creating isolated areas that are age specific and, instead, look at how we can make the overall experience appropriately safe and controlled for everybody. So that’s the general direction that we’re taking there.
[My emphasis at the end]
This view was openly stated in an interview with Robert Bloomfield at Metamonics 09. At the time, it passed with barely a raised eyebrow within the community as a whole – those that did question Rosedale seemed to accept the brush-off that he was talking about something “off in the future”.
It matters not who has been predicting it or since when. No, if there is any surprise at all, it as that we’ve all – myself included – been far too complacent when it has come to the issue of mergers. Hopefully, Ciaran’s analysis and flags will help change this. Assuming LL will even listen.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 
Truthfully, I think a merge with Teen SL is the least of our worries. Especially in light of temporary inventories, Linden Homes and an emphasis on Facebook.
LikeLike
Well, it all connects together in a general sanitizing and Disneyfication of the grid, doesn’t it? And one has to agree that once the majority of the grid is all squeaky clean it doesn’t really make any sense to keep a separate teen grid, as SL will basically have become one. Which means it’ll be safe for families and companies alike, with all the dirty stuff hidden away where nobody can see it; and if you just make the adult parts difficult enough to access, they’ll eventually go away by themselves, and with them hopefully all the people whose vision of what SL should and can be doesn’t mesh with Lindens Lab’s ideas. And as with so many things today, you’ll end up with everything mainstreamed to the smallest common denominator for the largest possible mass appeal.
LikeLike
And in you final comment, you’ve hit the LL thinking nail on the head where mass appeal is concerned.
The irony is, when Rosedale made his comments about the merger, there was much ado about how the Teen Grid was essentially withering on the vine – due in part, one gathers – because it was to sanitised. There was simply nothing particularly compelling there for the casual teen user that would retain their interest. While a merger of the two could benefit the eductional sector – in as much as it would allow potentially greater interaction between a range of educational establishments and their staff and those to whom their efforts are aimed – the flipside is that the same malaise that has been apparent on the Teen Grid could become endemic on the main grid.
Kingdon, in fairness tried to pour oil on the troubled waters that followed Rosedale’s comments – stating that “integrating the grids is not on our current roadmap”. However, as Ciaran points out, that there appears to be something of a merger going on in the new forums / blogrum would tend to suggest LL have reached a point where they are willing to start experimenting with the idea of mergers.
LikeLike
That’s one way of looking at it, certainly. However, I’d suggest there are certain caveats around Facebook “outing” and temporary inventories (by which I’m admittedly assuming you mean Gurley’s idea of digital goods becoming “rental” in nature, and thus system-disposable).
In the case of Facebook, and while we had the rather nasty Valentine’s scvenger hunt situation, LL do seem to be following through with their promise that wholesale forced “outing” will not be applied. While they may offer all sorts of enticements (such as the scvenger hunt L$15K first prize) to “encourage” people to out themslves. As long as “outing” yourself – while LL’s moves are insidious – remains an opt-in activity, I would suggest it is far less a threat to the structure and operation of the grid as a whole.
Similarly, and while I tend towards believing Gurley’s post does *not* stand independently of his involvement in SL (it’s hard to imagine him *not* having floated the concept at a Board meeting), again, the one big thing it has going against it is that it would cause a major discontinuity in the SL economy that far outstrips anything like land tier hikes, CPU costs or anything else. While there is a place for this model – and one can see it apealling to LL where their own content products are concerned – it is hard to see SL being rapidly changed to such a model.
A merger, however, is something – even with the outcry it would generate – LL could achieve relatively rapidly. They believe they have adult content largely contained on Zindra and private islands.
That said, all are worrying trends and need to be monitored as best we can.
LikeLike