Category: News-Opinion

Linden Lab adds CMO + CISO roles “to support rapid growth”

Posted on by Inara Pey
Courtesy of Linden Lab

On Monday, May 2nd, 2022, Linden Lab announced it has added two new leadership roles: those of Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) – the first time that either role has been embodied within the company.

Interestingly, the news came not from the Lab (at the time of writing, the press release had yet to be officially posted) but via prnewswire.com. Both roles will embrace Second Life and Tilia, the Lab’s virtual economy payment processing platform.

Both roles will span across Linden’s full portfolio of businesses to support growth driven by the rapidly expanding consumer interest in metaverses and the technology platforms necessary to support them as well as other virtual worlds and marketplaces.

– Linden Research Inc.

Steven Feuling – Linden Lab’s new CMO

Taking on the role of CMO is Steven Feuling, a 30-year marketing veteran and former CEO. He has worked with and for some of the world’s best known brands including Microsoft, Bloomberg LLC, The Walt Disney Company, 20th Century Fox, E*Trade and General Motors, as well as several successful start-ups.

Having held senior roles with clients, agencies and media partners, most recently as President of MDC Partners’ Assembly, he offers a unique perspective to support both Second Life and Tilia. In his role as CMO, Feuling will oversee all marketing and communications efforts across the Lab’s portfolio.

Peter Capraro, joining the Lab as the new CISO, has spent nearly half of his career focused on financial services cybersecurity. Most recently, he was the deputy CISO at fintech start-up, Akoya, a spin-off from Fidelity Investments, and held security roles at Bank of America for 10 years.

Capraro’s wealth of experience within the cyber security space is seen as “instrumental” to the Lab’s information security and compliance initiatives, which span both Tilia and Second Life. In his role as CISO, he will serve as the strategic leader responsible for maintaining a corporate-wide information security programme to protect information assets, and ensure security for the company and it users.

Steven and Peter are filling critical roles for Linden Lab, as the virtual world landscape takes front stage again. Each of their respective expertise at both successful start-ups and world-renowned companies will have a tremendous impact on our leadership teams for both Second Life and Tilia.

– Brad Oberwager, Executive Chairman of Linden Research Inc

With thanks to Cube Republic for the link.

Second Life University: Land & Group Basics Class – Notice

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab

As has been recently announced, Linden Lab has formulated the Second Life University, a programme to assist those who may be new to Second Life, and / or are finding it hard to get to grips with a range of aspects of using the viewer and Second Life as a whole.

The idea is to bring together information, tutorials and videos that are of benefit to both new and existing users together, making sure it is both up-to-date and gathered within one place for ease of reference.

This is clearly a major piece of work – particularly making sure all the information can be referenced from a single place (which we have yet to be notified about), which is an important aspect of the work given the range of resources it is designed to bring together. However, in the interim the Lab is pushing ahead with a new series of video livestreams of their own.

The first of these was streamed on Thursday, April 7th, and covered Viewer Basics.

Izzy Linden with be presenting the second in the Lab’s Second Life University video series

The next in the series will be streamed at 12:00 noon SLT on Thursday, April 28th, and will feature Land Product Specialist Izzy Linden, who will be talking Land and Group basics.

The aim is to walk people through a “best practices” approach to the basics of basics of land and group related activities / options in the viewer, offering a mix of tutorial and Q&A session. As such, it is something that may well prove to be a hand resource for rental estate owners to have as something they have point to help their renters (particularly those new to the whole idea of land rental in SL) in addition to the information they might supply to renters.

The livestream can be watched directly on You Tube, or below, depending on your preference.

Linden Lab announces the “Second Life University”

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab

Encouraging and supporting new users in order to grow the active Second Life user base has been specified as a key goal for the Lab for the past 15-18 months.

Some of this work has already been seen with a further iteration of the Welcome Islands (see: Poking at the new Welcome Islands), with it being indicated that more is to come, together with an overhaul of the entire new user experience and the starter avatar system.

On Wednesday, April 6th, the Lab announced a further programme to assist those who may be new to Second Life, and / or are finding it hard to get to grips with a range of aspects of using the viewer and the platform, which they are calling the Second Life University.

Welcome to Second Life University, a new project that aims to teach people all about the vast virtual world of Second Life! 
There are many videos and tutorials out there for Second Life already, including Second Life Tutorials on our YouTube channel as well as those created by our Residents, — and we’d like to consolidate information in one place as well as ensure that all content is up-to-date. We will begin with topics that are particularly relevant for newer users. This is a huge project that will take time, and we’re excited to work on and collaborate with the community to make it easily understandable and fun.

– From the official blog post

To start things off, the Lab will be hosting a livestream event, Viewer Basics, which will stream on You Tube on Thursday, April 7th, 2022 from 14:00 SLT, with the Lab further noting:

After the livestream, we’ll be  posting general notes on topics covered in the video here in text format, too. You can also get written information and assistance from our Knowledge Base and the Community Forums.

Given that trying to locate up-to-date information is often a cause for grumbling, even among established users, this sounds like a worthwhile goal, and I applaud the Lab from attempting to tackle it. However, I do so with one plea: as the idea is to gather all such information “in one place” – then please make sure it is a centralised, easy-to-find resource that is both decently indexed / categorised and properly searchable in its own right, rather than simply lumping /burying it with other options.

LL issues a statement on Ukraine & assistance to Ukrainian SL users

Posted on by Inara Pey

We are all aware of the unwarranted and unnecessary attacks on the peoples of Ukraine that have been unfolding over the past week, and which have been the subject of condemnation that has been almost world-wide in its reach – including from within Russia itself, as the people there, also at no small risk to themselves, have taken to the streets in protest over the actions taken by their nation’s leadership.

With the increasing humanitarian crisis of dispossessed families fleeing the country increasing daily, together with the worsening state of affairs on the whole within Ukraine, on Friday, March 4th, Linden Lab issued a statement to the users of Second Life outlining the steps the company is taking to provide practical support to those in Ukraine and to help those in Russia who are opposed to their government’s actions – and which also includes some measure of assistance to SL’s Ukrainian community.

The statement reads in full:

Linden Lab strives to make positive change in the world by helping people connect, discover themselves, and grow both personally and financially. Ultimately, we build and support communities. Therefore, it is especially shocking to see the actions in Ukraine, to see the unwarranted attacks on people – on communities. We are heartbroken and horrified by the situation in Ukraine and the humanitarian crisis it has perpetuated. We are a proudly diverse team, and many of us have ties to these events – historically, emotionally, professionally, and socially. Our products reach worldwide, and many of our partners and customers are directly affected by this crisis. 
As a leadership team, this crisis has challenged us to better define and embrace what we believe to be the core principles at Linden Lab – our TAO so to speak.
Specifically, our TAO says:
MAKE CHANGE ON A GLOBAL SCALE
Our work brings people together, builds communities. Our work helps people understand who they are, helps them be better. Our work brings empathy, helps people see the world through others’ eyes. Settle for nothing less than changing the world for the better.
We intend to live up to this principle, and while there is much work to be done, we are starting with: 
Effective Monday [March 7th, 2022], we will be further supporting our eligible Ukrainian-based community members by granting them a temporary 30-day moratorium on recurring account fees such as Premium Membership and Land Maintenance fees.  We will review this again after 30 days and assess what we can do as next steps where necessary. We invite any of our Ukraine-based community members to contact support with any specific questions they may have.
Finally, we encourage our community to look at ways that they can help show their support. It is heartening to see the Second Life community come together to support each other with numerous in-world events and helpful initiatives that bring us together as a force for good in both the physical and virtual worlds.

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Second Life “in-depth” Community Pages announced

Posted on by Inara Pey

On Tuesday, March 1st, Linden Lab announced a new initiative to help promote communities active in Second Life through a new web-based resource, “in-depth” Community Pages designed to be “living projects” and intended to “be extensive resources by and for each community”.

To mark the announcement, the Lab has launched the first such page – Black Culture in Second Life – which launches just as Black History Month in the United States draws to a close.

The importance of community simply can’t be understated, and in Second Life, it’s invaluable. Think of how many different groups of people you interact with each day — what if you had a go-to comprehensive page that illustrates various aspects of each community in Second Life?
We’re excited to announce our new initiative! We’ve begun building in-depth community pages that will live directly on the Second Life website. Each of these pages will celebrate Residents in all different communities, and showcase the meaningful experiences that strengthen the social fabric of Second Life. This will include stories, quotes, photos, videos, and more — all directly from Second Life Residents.

– from the official announcement about the new community pages

The post goes on to note that those participating in such community pages should “keep an eye out for announcements on specific community pages, as there will be a (Google form) open to the public for each of them”. However, the post also cautions that not all submissions may necessarily be included within any given page.

 

The Black Culture in Second Life “In Depth” Community Page – click to view

It’s not clear exactly how visible these pages will be. They are clearly designed to be accessible to the world at large, but while the parent URL for the Black Culture page is secondlife.com/community/, there is no actual link from that page to the Black Culture page, as the direct URL given above is currently required.

Hopefully, this will be addressed as these pages grow, and a meaningful means of perusing / filtering the pages will be provided; two of the reasons Place Pages (arguably the last initiative similar in nature to this) didn’t take on were that a), the places.secondlife.com parent domain was never really folded into the rest of the SL web properties such as to make navigating to it easy without lodging the URL firmly between your ears; b) there was no convenient way to peruse / filter available places other than Search – which was far from handy.

You can read the complete blog post announcing the pages right here.

Linden Lab announce sales tax on recurring US billings

Posted on by Inara Pey

Linden Lab has announced that, as from March 31st, 2022, they will be applying sales tax for users in the United States on recurring billings such as Premium subscription renewals, and land fees.

The announcement comes with a note that the company will, for the time being, continue to absorb sales tax on point-of-sales purchases such as for first-time Premium subscription payment, Name Change fees, and one-time Linden Dollar purchases – although  the announcement notes that taxes on such purchases will have to be passed on to U.S. users at some point in the future.

The blog post carrying the announcement reads in full:

Ever since Second Life’s inception two decades ago we have seen many local, state and federal governments impose new ways to collect tax revenue from internet-based businesses. The Wayfair Sales Tax case decision by the Supreme Court was when prior rules about sales tax really changed.  Since then, we have done our best to shield our residents from these taxes as long as possible, but we are no longer able to absorb them.
As of March 31, 2022 we will begin charging sales tax in the U.S. For the time being we will charge taxes only on recurring billings, such as premium subscriptions and land fees. The amount of tax charged will be communicated clearly in the receipt or invoice.
We will continue to absorb the taxes at point-of-sale purchases such as one-time L$ buys, first-time premium subscriptions, and name changes. At some point in the future we will need to begin passing those taxes on to you. We will make another announcement when those charges are phased in.
Your individual charges will be determined by your local jurisdictions. There are more than 13,000 sales and use tax jurisdictions in the United States, with great variation in their rules and tax rates. Tax amounts are also affected by other factors such as the type of goods or services being purchased. To determine the charges, we will be relying on an automated third-party system which closely tracks local tax laws, so the tax amounts are always up to date.
This is news we don’t enjoy sharing, but for the health of the business and of Second Life, we can no longer continue absorbing these tax burdens.
Thank you for your understanding and your continued support of Second Life.

Again, please note the paragraph stating that the sale tax you may face is dependent upon your local tax jurisdiction – there is no “one size fits all” approach.

The Wayfair Sales Tax case refers to the 2018 South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc. et al case heard by the Supreme Court, in which the Court determined that an out-of-state seller (e.g. Linden Lab) can have economic presence in U.S. states where it has no physical presence, and can thusly be held legally accountable for collecting appropriate sale taxes on goods and services.

Since that decision, U.S. states have increasingly sought to mandate that out-of-state companies selling products in within their boundaries via electronic, etc., means and no physical presence, should collect sales tax on those sales.

The move by the Lab also follows past moves vis-à-vis the passing of Valued Added Taxed (VAT) charges for EU citizens (2007 – although there was later some revision to this in 2015), and passing VAT changes charge on to users in Norway, and Goods and Services Tax (GST) for citizens in Australia, both of which were announced in 2020.