Month: June 2010

SL7B: Underwhelmingly Conventional

Posted on by Inara Pey

I’ve just finished a tour of the Second Life 7th Birthday (SL7B) “celebration” sims. The “theme” for this year is “unexpected collaborations” (aka, “you never know whose exhibit you’re going to end up sharing sim space with”). The truth of the matter is, it might just as well have been “underwhelmingly conventional” inasmuch as once again, it demonstrates a complete lack of original thinking among those “guiding” the event within Linden Lab, and a reliance on the principle of the “same old, same old”.

To be sure, there are a lot of imaginative builds and exhibits, and hidden away among the avenues are some startling examples of what can be achieved within Second Life – kudos to those behind them! But it does remain a sad fact that “the” major talking point around the event is not about SL or the remarkable diversity of cultures, imaginations and ideals it represents….but is rather all about a nipple or two.

Of course, LL are caught between something of a rock and hard place; given the recent layoffs, any loud trumpeting of the event on their part could be taken in some quarters as crass and extreme poor taste. BUT…that doesn’t mean we should lose sight of the fact that seven years on, SL *is* still here; we’re all, despite our moans and groans, getting on with things. So in that regard, the relative lack of promotion from LL is surprising,

Aside from a minimal blog posting, there has been very little said. Unless I’ve failed to get the e-mails (a distinct possibility), I’ve seen nothing advertising,  or anything else on upcoming talks or presentations or even parties. Even the Wiki carries scant up-to-date information. Instead we’re left with the Resident’s SL7B blog as a source of information. While this is undoubtedly good, it doesn’t even get much of a mention anywhere but at the foot of the Wiki page, and is conspicuously missing from the official blog announcement.

Not even Philip Rosedale’s address gets a direct mention anywhere in the official blogs (outside of Torley’s attempt).

Away from this and Nipplegate and the lack of anything above General / PG rating (come on LL, so some maturity yourselves!), SL7B is, it has to be said, a saddening exhibit of much that remains wrong with SL and which upsets so many residents so much of the time.

  • The lag, even on relatively empty sims, is appalling
  • It is impossible to move freely between connected sims without (sometime violent) rubber banding
  • Rezzing takes an eternity
  • Get 20 people in an event and the sim may as well be hovering on the edge of a black hole.

It may sound bitchy raising these points – but the fact is, they represent four reasons why, for every person visiting SL7B, there are liable to be 2 people who won’t.  They are also why, when he talks about LL getting “back to basics”, Philip would do well to get his Executive Management team to focus on ensuring effort is put into resolving such basic issues.

For me, though, the major disappointment with SL7B is that  – with due respect to all those who have worked hard to build exhibits and provide interesting features and displays  – there is simply nothing that compels me to tour SL7B. Oh sure, there are live events: singers, performers, etc., but these events are localised to just five stages. And truth be told, I can see them elsewhere in SL at times of my own choosing.

Of course, part of the responsibility for making the exhibits compelling lies with the exhibitors – but part of it also rests with Linden Lab. Hanging the entire event on some clever “theme” that actually doesn’t really inspire isn’t enough.

I’m sure that, come the end of the event, it’ll be hailed an “outstanding success”. After spending over two hours rambling . flying and tping around the sims looking at exhibits, my own thoughts are once again, and very sadly, “missed opportunity”.

Phil’s passages

Posted on by Inara Pey

Philip Rosedale helped kick-off the SL7B celebrations with an address to residents. In it, he touched just what an incredibly complex achievement Second Life is – and listed some of the well-known and not-so-well known accomplishments Linden Lab have made around the product – including the major efforts into improving the reliability of the supporting hardware and infrastructure, into making the SL experience more intuitive for non-English speakers etc.

Of course, some of the achievements he listed are going to be viewed differently by different people – things like the TPVP and Linden Homes are going to be a source of grumbles, upsets and annoyance for some time to come – and some of it may well be justified.

What interested me however, was his frank admission around the recently layoffs: essentially confirming, as I’ve previously mentioned, that Linden Lab has come to far to fast, and the restructuring was a vital precursor to the company putting itself back on a solid financial footing:

I wanted to speak for a couple of minutes and touch a little bit — obviously — on the layoffs we just did. We sadly reduced the size of the company by about a third — by about 100 people a week ago, and that’s a big deal and a huge change. But I wanted to say that standing here today in the midst of such a rich world and such continued creative — and for some people, financial — success that’s here makes me realize that, that choice is the right choice and one that though it is hard to make, is definitely correct and obvious. We’re never going to — as a company — risk the world and the businesses and the livelihoods of the thousands of people who make money working here by growing too quickly ahead of profits. By doing the difficult process of restructuring the company and making layoffs, we’ll return ourselves to solid, very solid levels of profitability.

The interesting word in this statement is return. While Linden Lab may not have been losing money hand-over-fist as some have implied in the forum discussion on Phil’s talk, “return” does tend to indicate – again, despite those graced with Hubble vision among us who seem to think Linden Lab is invulnerable to fault – that the company has been in some financial difficulty.

In many respects this is unsurprising: we’re in a global economic recession; it would be pretty amazing if a company the size of LL and with the same reliance on consumer spending hasn’t experienced financial hardships. In LL’s case the situation is somewhat worse because  – as many of us are only too aware through our own practical experience – the in-world economy has been stagnating for a goodly while now.

However, the use of “return” in Philip’s comment does, to a degree, shine a different light on the recent spin of quarterly performance reports from LL, in which we’ve tended to be given (and have openly questioned) the by-line that LL is doing “great” and is “avoiding” downturn. It also tends to confirm suspicions that LL have been “papering over” some of the cracks around the situation by re-introducing things like user-to-user transactions as a measure of economic “growth” (given the sheer diversity of such transactions, and the fact that there can be a chain of several such transactions that actually represent a single dollar amount, but which have each individual transaction counted as a “dollar amount”, user–to-user is a far from accurate measure).

Philip’s follow-on comments are equally revealing – and demonstrate that someone is evaluating recent trends and trying to determine a sensible way forward for Second Life:

We’re safe, the world is safe. As smart as we may think we are, we are not always going to be able to predict Second Life’s rate of growth and hiring is something that you tend to do something in a linear way, but the growth that company goes through — especially something as amazing and phenomenal as Second Life — tends to be punctuated, that is, you’re gonna have periods. And we’ve been in one of those periods now for the last year or so, where the world grows very little because we’re trying figure out together — you and us — what to do next, how to make it better. The growth, when it comes, is typically non-linear. Growth happens very fast. A company, of course — and we’ve been through these days as well — reels as it tries to provide a solid service offering for everybody as that growth occurs. And then in other times, you know, you have to hire with the anticipation that there are things you can do that are gonna drive growth. And sometimes that doesn’t happen. So I think this combat between linear company growth and sort of non-linear world growth is, again, one of the big problems that we face. And so, to be safe, we have stepped back — reduced the size of the company — and kept everything safe

The first part of this comment pretty much confirms what Tateru Nino speculated in her comments on this blog the other day – that LL themselves don’t actually understand what fuels SL’s growth. It is also a tacit admission that traditional means of projecting growth (which I fear are the mechanisms by which the LL’s Executive Team have tended to operate over the last couple of years) break down when applied to something as unique as Second Life.

As Philip states, SL is marked not by a linear, market-driven / predictable growth, but rather by peaks and troughs. When this happens, identifying what creates the peaks – the sudden bursts of expansion & increased revenue – and what causes the troughs – a sudden reduction in growth or a fall-back to previous levels of turnover – is as much about alchemy or pinning the tail on the donkey as it is about good business sense. Get it right, and you’re a business genius. Get it wrong and everybody hates you.

Given the plethora of things that go into Second Life – not the least of which are the most unpredictable elements of all – you and me and every woman and man on the street, all of us driven by a myriad of desires, needs and wants, some of which are congruent, others of which sit in direct opposition to one another – it is all to easy to get things wrong; to see some events in entirely the wrong light and as a result base your business strategy on suspect data. You’ve effectively pinned the tail not so much on end of the donkey’s spine, just above its rear end, but rather in the empty space a foot behind the donkey….

This is perhaps the most tacit admission from anyone in LL that they have gotten things wrong – and certainly for me, it demonstrates that Rosedale still cares enough about the platform to be open and honest in matters where others will continue to try and paper over the cracks.

So, what of the future? Here Rosedale is a little more reticent; a lot of positive-sounding words are used, but the detail is scant. Certainly, some among us will be upset at his use of metaphors relating to the tearing-down of walls and filling-in of moats as they will see it as a further move towards “opensource technocommunism”  (although I’m personally of the opinion that is not what Rosedale is alluding to). There is also a hint that the various messages about LL needing to play its part in keeping SL compelling in order to help drive user retention may well be falling on ears that are no longer deaf. It is important that, in getting back to basics, LL don’t lose sight of this once more.

It is equally important that in getting back to basics, LL start taking the time to listen to and actively engage with its resident users. Whether they like it or not, we are the people who are potentially best placed to help shape and develop the tactical needs that are faced within Second Life, with LL demonstrating it can weave such tactical needs into a cohesive, reality-based strategic plan that will potentially get us out of the rinse-dry-repeat cycle that has in so many ways marked the first 7 years of SL’s commercial existence.

Tateru published a considered argument on the subject of faith over on Massively last week. As she points out, LL came through a very rough period not so long after it’s formal launch, with wholesale lay-offs in 2003. They survived then largely because of the faith their resident users demonstrated towards them.

Faith in Linden lab is something that is in very short supply right now. The track record of blunders and ill-considered actions on LL’s part over the last three years have not only eroded our faith – they have in many ways built walls and moats that leave many of us somewhat unwilling to trust Linden Lab further than next week’s tier.

If things are going to improve, and leaving aside all of the glossy words, it is our faith in Linden Lab that really needs to be restored; it is the walls and moats that LL have themselves created and which now limit our ability to trust them with our faith and belief that really need to be torn down and filled in. I get the impression that Philip realises this, and that, as much as he openly talk about reaching out to people beyond Second Life, his words at the opening of SL7B are also about reaching in to those of us already here. That in itself is a sign of hope.

What remains to be seen is whether the rest of the executive management team and the board are as equally contrite, as equally positive and as equally willing to hold out a hand to their resident users.

Flirting with disaster…?

Posted on by Inara Pey

Colossus Linden resurfaces as the dust of the lay-off settles, to announce that the Marketplace Beta is apparently on-track.

Given the amount of speculation that followed the news that Pink had gone, any news on the new Marketplace is worth flagging. However, the information is scarce and merely announces that the Marketplace will be entering “beta” at the end of the month.

Now, “beta”, when used in conjunction with a Linden blog post,  is a word that is liable to have people reaching for tin hats, crawling under desks or looking to their basements for comfort. Viewer 2 and the entire Search mess are still very fresh in people’s minds; so much so that the idea that the Lab will (to quote Grant Linden in the follow-up discussion) continue to interate and improve the Marketplace after launch is hardly a solid foundation for confidence in the new system (Marketplace 1.0.1, anyone? Marketplace 2.0?).

Nor is the fact that, once again, it would seem that Linden Lab have determined a course of action, and nothing, but nothing, will sway them from their chosen path, no matter how rational or considered the concerns raised may be – or the fact that said concerns are being raised by those who potentially have far greater understanding of how to gain the best from the current XStreet environment than possibly anyone within Linden lab as a whole – let alone the commerce team.

This is most clearly demonstrated by the refusal to reconsider what amount to punitive limitations being placed on new listings – specifically the banning of animated gifs, the removal of BB code and the limit of 2,000 characters per description.

While LL may well consider such restrictions will make the new Marketplace more “professional” in its looks, all three demonstrate that, once again, LL simply have no idea of just how damaging these restrictions could be.

Let’s take the 2,000 character limit for a start: this is fine when you are describing an item of apparel, or perhaps a simple chair or light or a basic road vehicle.  2,000 characters, spaces included, tops-out at several hundred words. BUT when it comes to describing a more complex product, it is barely enough. Many products within SL are feature-rich nowadays, and limiting the description of them to just 2,000 characters is crippling. It encourages the use of lists. But wait! BB code is to be eliminated, so any lists stand a good risk of appearing somewhat less than pleasing to the eye – and a good several paces away from “professional” in looks.

And what of those creators who specialise in the creation of animated textures? The banning of animated gifs potentially eliminates their ability to use the new marketplace effectively.

Time and again, these three issues have be raised as points of concern among merchants  – and LL have simply chosen to ignore them. Even now, in the discussion thread, the same three concerns go completely unaddressed by Grant, for want of having to “go check”.

Now, granted (no pun intended), it is unreasonable to expect someone to have all the answers at their fingertips – but for heaven’s sake! Pulling together the basic information and preparing oneself to deal with the likely questions that could crop up in a discussion thread is hardly rocket science!

So why it is that the poor sod thrown into the firing line once again appears to have been ill-briefed and either hasn’t (or hasn’t been given the time to) consult with those working on the project ahead of time and checked the JIRA for anything related to the project in order to at least get a feel for the history to date in the matter?

It just doesn’t bode well for the Marketplace roll-out.

Nor does the level of confusion prevalent in the blog post and Grant’s comments in the discussion thread. On the one hand, we’re being told the beta will be the period in which merchants can get a look at their migrated listings and confirm everything is in good order before the Marketplace goes live, implying the beta will be “open” to all merchants; then in the same breath we’re told it will effectively be a “closed” beta, only available to those that apply via e-mail…

We’re also told that the beta will be for merchants “only” – but both the blog post and the associated e-mail go out to the community as a whole; on top of this, we’re told that the “beta” will co-exist with XStreet until such time as it goes “live” and XStreet will be switched off.  Both of these latter statements would suggest that more than just merchants will be accessing the “beta” Marketplace from the off…

Like so much else that goes on, it appears that, having extracted their left foot from the smelly morass surrounding the premature release of Viewer 2 and the epic brokenness of the new search,  there are those within LL fully content to immediately slam their right foot down in more-or-less the same pongy mess when it comes to the Marketplace.

Mind, you, that said, I do admire Grant Linden for actually inviting people to e-mail him personally to be a part of the Marketplace beta. With something like 10,000 merchants on XStreet as it stands, there is a chance he’ll not tunnel his way out from under the mountain of e-mails much before June 30th, poor sod.

Pigeon: Impossible

Posted on by Inara Pey

Something to take your mind off all the heavy stuff.

Forget Tom Cruise; enjoy what is perhaps the funniest, epic short in the history of animation that has it all: a bit of Bond, a little Get Smart! a touch of North by Northwest, even a nod to Rowan Atkinson – and the truth behind the Washington Monument!!

My thanks to Kellyanne for passing on the link :).

To far to fast?

Posted on by Inara Pey

More theories as to what has prompted the recent “restructuring” at LL are popping up.

While Hamlet offers a concise argument, I still don’t buy his “Viewer 2 has failed to increase adoption” line, for reasons already stated. Viewer 2 doesn’t exist in a vacuum, to “increase adoption” it needs support – advertising and promotion well beyond the walls of the Second Life garden, and this has yet to happen in any real way.

Similarly, it is hard to judge what impact the SL Enterprise issue has had on LL’s fortunes – if any. In terms of straightforward revenue generation, I’m inclined to agree with Gwyn Llewelyn (to a point) and say, not a lot. SLE was, from the start flawed, again, for reasons I’ve gone into at length … several times … previously. However, I can see the Hamlet is potentially hitting the mark here in that there has been a negative outcome in so far as possible projections of cashflow into the LL coffers as a result of the SLE launch not achieving any significant levels are concerned.

Again, products don’t exist in a vacuum: some projections as to the potential take-up of SLE and the possible partnering of its use with the renting of SL Workspace sims must have been carried out at some point in Linden Lab. And having a company internally translate a projected income into something that influences their entire bottom-line financial structuring is not a rarity. Even big companies can get it wrong, issuing profitability warnings when sales fail to meet expectations / forecasts…

In both Viewer 2, the New User Experience, and SLE, I think it is more a case that those running Linden Lab simply took a gamble – risking stability and steady-state growth in order to re-invent the Second Life wheel and spin it up into a rapid revenue earning machine that could draw in the trendy and the shiny in terms of casual and business users.

In short, in the drive to make Second Life “profitable” in a very real sense and break free from the constraints of being considered a “gamble” for new investors, or still sporting the buffed-up shine of a “start-up”, Mark Kingdon and his fellow executives simply tried to drive LL to far to fast. The gamble required large-scale expenditure, it required personnel expansions that were perhaps not the wisest. Linden Lab simply over-extended itself.

This doesn’t mean that the management team themselves have massively failed; companies can and do get it wrong.  When they do, the wise ones take similar steps to LL: they retrench, they lay-off staff, they reduce overheads. And while some may see the laying-off of some 30% of staff as “massive” – the reality is, LL are in fact bringing staffing levels back to the “pre-expansion” levels of last October when, as Hamlet points out, Kingdon was talking about recruiting some 70 staff.

If anything at all, the fact that someone within LL has reacted so swiftly to the situation could be seen as completely positive: the errors have been realised, the need to retrench to firmer ground agreed to and the necessary action taken. While it has hurt a lot of people within LL in the process – surely it is better the hard steps are taken now, than the company wallow on in the face of potential waning income streams and increasingly upset investors edging ever closer to pulling the plug once and for all?

The flipside to this is, of course, that if the above is true – that those at the top misjudged their market and their platform – then the blame for this rests in one place and one place only. And it is not among the departed souls, so to speak.

As others have said, and I’ve analysed, and Grace McDunnough oh so eloquently phrased it, in careering in the direction of the shiny and new, Mark Kingdon and the executive management team again demonstrated that they simply don’t grok what they have. Rather than embracing the community already on their doorstep  – the community that has shown a dedication to their platform that has translated into hard dollars for the company, Linden Lab has time and again demonstrated everything from lip service through indifference to outright hostility towards its customer base since the end of 2006.

Under Mark Kingdon’s leadership these mixed attitudes towards the existing user base reached new heights; first came the OpenSpace / Homestead debacle; while not the blatant bait-and-switch many claim, it did hurt and upset a very large number of SL “residents”; then came the increasingly vocal and anti-resident demands of people LL chose as strategic partners  – people like Justin Bovington of Rivers Run Red, who gained somewhat tacit support from the likes of Amanda Linden; then came the entire Adult Change fiasco, in which Linden Lab blatantly demonstrated its lack of concern for the well-being of a sizeable portion of its community that represented a major influx of funds to LL in terms of land and overall in-world revenue transactions through the sale of goods.

This in turn gives rise to another, and very fundamental reason as to what “went wrong” at Linden Lab – and in fairness, it pre-dates Mark Kingdon’s tenure at Battery Street as well as cutting through a lot of Hamlet’s more corporate-perspective speculations. It is simply this:

Linden Lab lost sight of what their platform really is.

When all is said and done, all the debates held, the navel-gazing done with and with all the cows home, milked and safely in their stalls, Second Life is at its heart a recreational activity. True, it is a highly unusual one in that a) it doesn’t have any quantifiable goals in the same way that other “games” do – but then, I didn’t call it a “game”; and b) it enables those participating in it to not only spend “real money”, but also earn it as well.

Instead of focusing on the ability for Second Life to engage, inspire and ensuring it remained an “open” and balanced environment in which the words your world, you imagination had genuine meaning to whoever came into SL; Linden Lab chose to start tinkering with the fundamentals of the platform – not so much the technology – but the manner in which SL could be used. They started slanting it this way and that, trying to capture real and imagined markets, chasing illusive (and sometimes imaginary) goals. In doing so, they fell victim to their own  – dare I use the term – propaganda as to the potential of the platform, with the result that when things didn’t turn out “right” the first time (the ’06-’07 “boom”), they started tinkering and tipping things more aggressively, further losing sight of the potential before them, and thus created a downward spiral that has done much to alienate those who have most supported the platform and within whom, LL had perhaps the strongest allies who might have otherwise helped spur on the growth of the platform.

It may well be that the end of the road is now in sight and that, as Hamlet speculates, the company is quietly being prepared for outright acquisition; it may also be that the management team are attempting one last-ditch effort to make LL work by switching tracks and going the SAAS route, as I and others have speculated.

In looking at the ToS, it is easy to see that in its restructured form, it supports either of these eventualities. So does the restructuring. Were either to occur, one would have to say that, in purely business terms, the management team have “succeeded” in “keeping Second Life alive”.

In terms of the current user base and the potential that it once – and still – represents the truth is very much otherwise.

Wishful thinking and Viewer 2

Posted on by Inara Pey

On Monday, NWN confirmed that Tom (T Linden) Hale  had gone from Linden Lab. There was some confusion over this, as (at least for some of us) his in-world Profile (alongside that of Cyn (Linden) Skyberg, also laid-off last week) remained accessible when the likes of Pink Linden’s Profile poofed almost as the news of the lay-offs hit the wires.

Hale’s departure has prompted speculation that Viewer 2.0 is about to go the same way.

All I can say is, guess again, kids.

The basis for the speculation is that Hamlet, in his piece, cites “sources” who suggested a link between Hale’s departure and the “poor performance” of Viewer 2.

Now, whole I’m no great fan of Viewer 2 – I think it was released far to early in its development cycle and with far too many flaws that could have easily been addressed if the developers had been allowed to engage with residents properly and constructively as the Viewer went into the initial “closed Beta”. But, that said, I don’t go along with the idea that the Viewer is going to be scrapped – or even that it is a failure.

The fact of the matter is, it is still far too early to judge the Viewer dispassionately. This is for a number of reasons – some of which I’ve touched on before, but are worth repeating:

  • The viewer was released too early and with to many basic flaws / bugs (the god-awful sidebar behaviour; the myriad of search issues, etc.); as such, it was never going to find favour or popularity among a user base that has time and again proven itself somewhat “anti” change in SL whatever the colour of said change
  • The development / release cycle of Viewer 2 is improving; more to the point the likes of Kirstenlee Cinquetti are demonstrating to LL just what needs to be done to the Viewer 2 user interface to enable it to gain a broader foothold. And Linden Lab is actually listening. The 2.1 release addresses many of the UI shortfalls contained within the initial 2.0 releases and are, in themselves, making Viewer 2 far more user-friendly. What’s more they come on top of changes quickly rolled out in response to the initial “backlash” against other elements of UI functionality, demonstrating the LL are trying to get the balance right. So long as this continues, Viewer 2 will gain wider use
  • The Viewer, together with the New User Experience was intended to be the vanguard of a drive to generate a marked increase in new sign-ups. However, neither can exist in a vacuum – for either to have a major impact on the rate of flow of new users joining SL, they need to be coupled to more aggressive promotion of SL by Linden Lab. This hasn’t really happened. Ergo, both the Viewer and the NUE exist (again, as I’ve said before) in some kind of Costner-esque la-la land of “if you build it, they will come”.

As such, it is hard to see Viewer 2, even the degree of time, effort and money invested in it to date is simply going to vanish as a result of Hale’s departure. Rather the reverse would seem to be the case – as recent blog posts have indicated – the release cycle for Viewer 2 is going to increase, again indicating it is here to stay. I’d also lay odds on it being the foundation for the new “browser-based access” to SL that was announced alongside of the restructuring.

If Hale’s departure was connected in any way with the “poor performance” in Viewer 2’s uptake, I can only assume that it was because he was the one selected to fall on his sword (or tripped in the direction of his sword). Again, we’ve seen very little aggressive marketing from Linden Lab when it comes to getting users through the doors – either utilising Viewer 2 or the New User Experience. Some suggest the total growth in sign-ups since the release of both has been around the 50K, which is not a huge amount given SL’s user retention figures – and much of that influx seems to have been off the back of James Cameron’s Avatar rather than any sustained marketing strategy on the part of Linden Lab.

That there has been no sustained strategy (or any real marketing uptake – when was the last time Catherine (Smith) Linden was in the limelight?) tends to suggest that if Viewer 2’s take-up is already being looked at so critically that a sacrifice was warranted…then one cannot help but roll the word “scapegoat” around in an idle fashion.

Indeed, I’ve often found it interesting that LL have never considered the position of Director of Marketing as being a executive management post.

But to come back to the point: no – whatever the reason for Hale’s departure (including the merging of departments that effectively made his role somewhat redundant), it is not indicative that Viewer 2 is going anywhere other than forward in the immediate future.