Category: News-Opinion

Linden Homes – whither next?

Posted on by Inara Pey

At the end last week, Linden Lab started putting out a survey aimed at Premium Members on the subject of Linden Homes. This is in all likelihood the follow-up to a comment made by Vogt Linden at SLCC 2011 that the Lab would be looking at Linden Homes, wherein he noted that – and without going into specifics – the scheme had been good for user retention, but had grown somewhat stale, and that as such LL would be looking at how to refresh the offering.

my Linden Home

The survey is a good first step, and in keeping with recent moves by Linden Lab to seek feedback from the community (such as with overhauling inventory). The survey itself is a multi-page affair, largely with multiple choice responses in the form of radio button (either / or) and check boxes (multiple responses). It takes a couple of minutes to complete, and it by-and-large asks pertinent questions on Linden Homes and the wider matter of Premium benefits (which you are asked to individually rank in terms of personal importance to you, the options for each benefit running from Very Important to Not Important, with Neutral as the middle ground).

There is also an opportunity to provide more specific feedback to the Lab at the end of the survey in the form of two free format text boxes in which Linden Home owners are encouraged to give detailed feedback and thoughts / suggestions.

In some respects, Linden Homes straddle a difficult divide. On the one hand they offer a quantifiable benefit for new users that encourages them to take out Premium membership and helps guarantee they remain engaged with SL as a result of the “investment”. On the other, there is a risk that they impact on the overall land rental / housing market, particularly for those who gear their business model specifically at smaller land holdings and what might be termed “starter homes” in SL. How big an impact this actually is itself hard to quantify – at least for those of us not engaged in that specific market segment.

Certainly, it is probably fair to say that Linden Homes, as currently implemented, haven’t worked entirely as originally intended – when launched, LL did see them as a means of getting people “onto” the property ladder, with the aim of people then moving on to “bigger” things land-wise as their needs grew. I’m not entirely convinced this has been the case – and the desire to revamp the offering would suggest that LL feel the same way.

The problem is, of course, how do they improve the offering, without running the risk of being seen as “further” eating-in to the rental market as a whole (if this is indeed an issue)? Making Linden Homes more attractive through larger prim allocations, larger land footfalls, etc., does run the risk of drawing people away from renting elsewhere – and I suspect that LL are fully aware of this risk, as the survey suggests some possible enhancements in other areas:

  • The ability to build more complex objects
  • Decorate a home more elaborately
  • Have more control over the Linden Home land parcel
  • Replacing the Linden Home with a personal build
  • More community events and social opportunities
  • Tutorials such as building & scripting
  • Land market expansion opportunities.

Of these, the last three strike me as the most flexible of options if harder to practically implement, although the first three are liable to be potentially the more popular among respondents. Land market expansion I would see as a useful element to add, simply to try to help stimulate the “upward” movement of those coming into Linden Homes that LL originally hoped would be the case – although I admit, I’m somewhat stumped as to how this could be practically achieved.

Community and social events might also work – the Linden Homes are billed as “communities”, but the truth of the matter is, “community” plays a very minor role. Most Linden Home regions have the same issue as everywhere else – large tracks of land, few people. Were LL to be more pro-active in stimulating regional events it  might encourage a greater feeling of “community” – although that is admittedly a big might, and one very hard to measure in terms of overall benefit / success compared with the amount of effort required to get things organised (or in even encouraging residents to take up the challenge).

As it stands, the Linden Homes regions do have “community centres” that largely seem to be devoid of traffic and simply going to waste – so attempting to put these to better use might be worthwhile. As might opening them to advertising by in-world businesses and estates, which itself has two potential benefits: money raised from the use of vendor boards could be put towards the cost of monthly (or whatever) entertainments, it demonstrates practically that LL are working more “with” rental estates rather than in “competition” with them.

A further idea might be for LL to simply reduce the volume of Linden Homes per region (or offer more in the way of regions devoted to parkland and / or water), and offer Linden Home residents greater opportunities of using such “rural” sims – such as allowing them to rez their own boats to go sailing or explore the waterways, or vehicles / horses to explore parkland and country tracks – perhaps even supply rez-on-demand facilities for home owners to use.

These are entirely off-the-top-of-my-head ideas which may or may not be practical. I’ve tried to give full and detailed feedback to LL on Linden Homes via the survey, complete with a range of thoughts and ideas. I’d encourage any of you yet to receive the survey / yet to respond to it to do the same. That LL are seeking feedback is to be applauded, even if (like me) you don’t use your Linden Home that routinely or as your primary place of residence in SL and / or see little reason to change things.

Of blogs and blogging

Posted on by Inara Pey

Over the last couple of days, I’ve had the opportunity to re-visit LL’s recent call to bloggers through commenting on a couple of fellow blogger’s posts on the subject – namely Mariis’ Explorations and Nalates Urriah. Mariis and I are pretty much on the same page on things – as our exchange demonstrates; Nalates admits herself perplexed as to the derisive reaction of some bloggers (and I count myself among them), and I’ve attempted to provide explanation which actually formed the basis of what I’m about to say here.

These exchanges have been part of a wider cogitation on the matter, and as such, I’d like to put a further alternative idea to Linden Lab on the matter of working with the blogging community. I’ll leave it to TPTB at LL (assuming they’re still reading this blog!) to decide on the usefulness / applicability of the idea. In putting it forward, I’ll also state that I’ve little doubt the broad thrust of what I’m outlining here may well have been stated elsewhere and well ahead of me – so I apologise to those that have raised it first if I’m repeating things.

The idea is this: rather than seek to solicit blog posts on an exclusive basis, LL should perhaps consider looking to reprint suitable blog articles within their own web space. This may well be slightly more labour-intensive for them (although given by their own admission they do have staff routinely perusing and reading blogs, so the overhead shouldn’t be that big an issue) – but there would be significant benefits, in particular:

  • They show that they are willing to work on a more collaborative basis with the community
  • They are free to cherry-pick that articles they wish to reproduce in their pages without let or hindrance, and free from controversial “public” submission guidelines
  • The official blogs stand to get fresh content
  • They don’t directly impact on indvidual bloggers’ freedom to cover SL or their ability to enjoy the drect benefit of having their own words appearing on their own pages.

Such an approach stands to generate a lot of goodwill from the blogging community. For a start, who would not feel somewhat flattered upon the receipt of an e-mail from LL requesting permission to reprint an article that has taken time and effort to put together? The e-mail needn’t be too hard to put together either; I’d suggest something like: “Dear X, we recently read your blog article on Y and found it to be both informative and entertaining. We would like to reproduce it in under the Guest Blogger section of our website. You will of course receive full credit for the work, together with a link to your own website. If you are happy for us to include your article in our pages, please reply to this e-mail within Z days, together with a 3-sentence biography relating to yourself. We will, of course, inform you when we do reprint the article”. Or words to that effect. I think it fair to say that such an e-mail would give a person quite a feeling of recognition / involvement.

It would also give LL the freedom to reproduce articles they like and which fit their overall requirements. Any concerns relating to wording, etc., could be taken care of through the use of a disclaimer printed ahead of the article, vis: “The views and opinions in the following piece are those of the named author. They do not represent the views or opinion of Linden Research Inc., its employees or agents.”  (or again, something similar). Granted, it’s not 100% watertight, but given LL are retaining a free hand in selecting the items they might wish to reproduce, one suspects contentious or deliberately controversial articles are not going to be among their likely candidates for reprinting.

And on the matter of exclusivity itself: would LL really be losing out to any great degree in foregoing the requirement? I actually don’t think so. I rather suspect (and with respect to all) that, with the exception of a handful of high-profile blogs, LL has a much broader potential readership in the form of the entire SL community bouncing in and out of their website via individual Dashboards than the majority of bloggers enjoy on an individual basis. As such, LL aren’t likely to miss out that much because some have read the article ahead of it appearing in the official website.

All-in-all, and subject to my not having missed something in the equation, this would seem to be a win / win situation for all concerned. Linden Lab get to freshen-up their own blogs and are seen to be positively connecting with the community; bloggers get to keep on doing what they do best without diverting their attention away from directly nurturing their own blogs, whilst also having the freedom to turn out posts that might well be suited to being picked-up by the Lab.

The three C’s: Community, Communications and Chestnuts

Posted on by Inara Pey

Recently, LL put out a call for bloggers (I’m linking to my own post, as that contains the full text of the original LL forum post – and I get tired of forum stuff vanishing down a plug hole and invalidating links over time).

The call was met with widespread derision, not just in these pages, but across other blogs as well, and frequently very humourously.

Yet there is a serious side to this – and in part, it is something I should hold up my hand to and say mea culpa to some degree.

There is an ongoing malaise at Linden Lab. It started several years ago (some might say with the arrival of Catherine Smith and grew steadily through the tenure of her various successors (all women, to my shame), wherein constructive and an open communication with the SL community has increasingly become anathema to the company as a whole. In fairness to Kim Salzer, who departed in November last year, things haven’t improved at all since she left the company – so one assume any unwillingness to constructively engage with users at a corporate is an illness that lies deep in the roots of the company.

Certainly, as Tateru has noted, it is one of the things that has become decidedly worse since Rod Humble took over the reins.

When seen against this background, the recent call to bloggers becomes a little less funny and a little more indicative of a company that seemingly is at a complete loss as to how to communicate about its primary (currently only) product and / or its brand. Don’t get me wrong – many in LL do take time out to communicate publicly, through User Groups and the like (Oz, Charlar, Oskar, Runitai, et al), and Rodvik himself does still take plunges into Twitter as well as posting to his SL Feed – and all of their efforts are appreciated greatly, as is the fact that LL staff have personally taken time out to contact me directly and provide feedback, pointers and other assistance (again, thanks to Rodvik, Charlar, Pete and Viale).

But none of this forms a part of an overall communications strategy. There is no cohesiveness in the approach. The result is that the SL blog in particular languishes to the point of irrelevancy – as demonstrated by the fact that out of 5 blog categories, three carry “front page news” nigh-on a year old or more (Land & Business (which even carries a post relating to Jack Linden – and he’s been gone from that Lab more than a year!), Tips & Tricks, Tools & Technology), while the 4th (“Inworld”) is only “up-to-date” large due to the “Flickr Pic of the Day”.

Of course, as I’ve pointed out myself, when discussing the likes of marketing (and here’s where I hold up my hand in admission), the finest resource LL have at its disposal is the user community when it comes to formulating a potential message to send to the world at large. So am I not being a little two-faced when promoting the idea of using the community, and then rounding on LL when they try to do so?

Well, no, I’m not. I absolutely have no problem with the Lab turning to the community for assistance – providing it is willing to play fair. Machinima is an excellent marketing tool, and it is probably fair to say that the best machinimatographers for SL are involved in SL – so as long as LL recognises this and offers suitable remuneration (a cash prize competition, for example), then why not seek to leverage the expertise in order to promote the platform.

The same rule applies to blogging about SL – and frankly, LL should be employing someone to take the time to blog about the platform on an ongoing basis. They don’t need to be an expert in all things server, viewer and what have you (in fact, better that they’re not). But simply paying someone to do the rounds, talk to the various project teams, gain quotes, publish articles on what is going on in-house, what is coming down the road, what is being done to fix X, Y or Z, and so on, as well as getting out and about as time allows within SL to produce articles, would enormously benefit LL in terms of how the company is perceived by its users.

It’s not, after all, rocket science (or “rocket engineering”, as my father always insists on correcting that quote). It is simple. Common. Sense.

Obviously, keeping abreast of the wider community is somewhat harder – there is much that is going on around the grid and much that can be easily missed. So again, actually making use of the community, getting people to engage with the company is not that unreasonable – providing that effort is met with suitable reward – say, through commissioned pieces.

Communications are a hoary old chestnut with me – there are times when I feel that I’m banging on about it every other week. But the fact is that LL seem to have comprehensively lost the plot here when it come to speaking with a corporate (rather than individual) voice to the community as a whole, and to the wider marketplace. And that is hurting them, and it is hurting SL (might it not also speak to why, despite routinely high user sign-up rates, actual user retention isn’t growing as steadily as one might expect?).

If the problem is going to be solved, it’s not going to be through dangling blog enticements in front of people (or indeed, locking-off the forum post carrying the enticement and deleting replies simply because people are having fun at your expense). It’s about being outward and professional and having a plan.

It’s actually hard to believe there is not someone at LL who is capable of carrying out the kind of role I’ve described above.

And if there isn’t, well, Rod – I’m willing to relocate to San Francisco for the right price and incentives, and you know where to find me: details are on file with you :).

LL calls on bloggers, bloggers call out LL

Posted on by Inara Pey

Updated 8th Feb: I’ve added the full text of the job advert forum post, lest the mists of time swallow it whole.

I almost missed this one – thank you, Chestnut Rau!

Yesterday, LL put out a call to bloggers, inviting them to submit articles for publication on the SL website. It reads in part full:

Are you a passionate Second Life resident who loves to write about your Second Life experience?  If so, you might want to submit your blog posts to us and they could end up being featured in the Second Life Community blogs.

As the movers, shakers, and experts on everything Second Life, we’d like to invite you to submit your original blog articles to us at blog-call@lindenlab.com with the Subject Line: Guest Blog Submission.  Selected submissions will be posted to the Blog section of the Community as a featured guest post!

Here are some popular Second Life topics to consider: Fashion, Home Decor, Mesh, Relationships, Spirituality, Education and Music.

GUIDELINESIf you would like to submit a guest post for the Second Life Blog, please consider these guidelines. Only submissions that meet these criteria will be considered for publishing.

  • All selected posts must adhere to our Community Participation Guidelines.
  • All selected posts should support the inclusiveness of the Second Life community.
  • Selected posts must not include marketing-related links and must not be entirely self-promotional.
  • The post may include links to your website and blog in a brief author’s bio (approximately 3 sentences), which will be published at the end of the guest post.
  • Please limit the number of images included in your submission to 4 or less.
  • We reserve the right to review and edit. We regularly edit posts by our contributors and guest bloggers.
  • Guest posts must be original and may not have been published elsewhere online already.  

The blog call is on!  Read the guidelines, then submit your posts to blog-call@lindenlab.com

Well, yes I am passionate and I do write a lot about SL – some might say at times, obsessively so. I do take pride in the fact that this blog is read by those within Battery Street as well as those outside. I’m far from alone in being a blogger that has this privilege, but it is worth mentioning because the very fact that LL does take time out to read external blogs is a sign that they are attempting to keep a finger on the pulse of things across the broader community, and that’s a good thing.

However….

As Chestnut points out, what is being asked for here is pretty much involvement in LL’s marketing and promotional efforts both within the community, and to the wider world as a whole.

OK, then; that’s fair enough. So what are the pay rates? Will they be per article, with a word ceiling, or per word? How about offering commission rates based on required monthly subject matter?

No, I’m not being facetious here. It’s not unreasonable for bloggers to be paid for their time and effort; rather the reverse – it’s actually common practice. Indeed, you’ve paid for at least one writer in the past yourselves, LL (take a bow, Hamlet! 🙂 ). I’m also not alone in feeling this – as a glance through the comments on Chestnut’s post and following the LL forum post demonstrate. Fair is fair, after all.

So, LL, I’ll gladly write for you – and within your guidelines (after all, your blog, your rules). I’ll even Op-Ed (if you’d dare go in that direction 😉 ). But let’s be reasonable here – what’s in it for me? I’m taking time-out to give you copy – how much are you willing to pay for said time, effort and IP?

With thanks to Chestnut Rau

Raise the (flight) limit!

Posted on by Inara Pey

Update April 2012: The flight limit has been raised to 5,000m. 

Nalates Urriah keeps her finger on the pulse where all things server and scripting are concerned, as well as keeping an eye on other technical aspects of SL. Today she reports on server scripting, and carries an interesting little nugget on flight limits.

Apparently the Lab is considering whether or not to raise the current flight “ceiling” for unassisted avatars. As we’re all aware, if you fly without any kind of scripted  / client-side assistance, you’ll start slowing down from around 165m onwards, and come to a complete halt at about 180-190m. To go any further, scripted / Viewer assistance is required.

I’ve no idea why this limit was set – there has to be some solid reasoning for it in the depths of time. However, for as long as I’ve been involved in SL, build height has (I think, my memory is getting fuzzy in some areas) always been at least 768m (prior to being raised to the current 4096m), so the brake-point at 180-190 to “natural” flight does seem rather arbitrary.

Simon Linden apparently puts forward an argument that raising the limit will shoot people using flight assistance systems into orbit. I’m not entirely sure I follow his logic. There is a plethora of flight assistance alternatives available across SL, from the ubiquitous Flight Feather or Flight Ring of old, through to fancy backpack attachments to options built-in to a range of tools such as Em Dash and Mystitool. Many of these include accelerators which allow the rate of vertical ascent to be adjusted by the user – some of them quite ridiculously so. Yet none, so far as I’m aware, have resulted in people ending up in orbit on the click of a button / key, even when employed at altitude. So would the removal of the current limit suddenly cause these tools to behave any differently?

It’s not even as if flight assistance tools are required, either. Firestorm bypasses the current limit by adding flight assistance to the LSL bridge. Milkshake (prior to being withdrawn from public use) demonstrated that it is possible to override the flight limit directly from within the Viewer without even resorting to any form of bridge attachment. Both of these capabilities tend to make the current limit somewhat pointless.

As it stands, and with maximum build height sitting at 4096m, it would make sense for LL to lift the limit to that altitude (as I’m sure they are only too aware). This would not only make mobility at altitude easier for all (especially around the more expansive higher-altitude builds where flying is allowed), it might even lessen people’s dependency on attachments, be they wearable or HUDs (not that this is a critical issue, given the threatened script limits project is now apparently shelved).

It’s not what I’d call a priority in any way shape or form, but it would potentially make people lives a little bit easier in-world; so if LL are considering the move – I for one say, “go for it – and push it to 4096!”

With thanks to Nalates Urriah

Last Names: don’t over-cook the baking

Posted on by Inara Pey

Daniel Voyager pointed me towards a Profile feed post from Rodvik on the situation relating to the return of last names. On his feed, Rodvik writes:

Quick update on last names. Just fyi the team here has been working on solutions for this and it is taking longer than we thought. identity is important so we want the ability to have that wonderful shared experience the old last name system had but also not lose sight of the fact that many people really do not want a name given to them, they want freedom to define their identity, finally we want to consider adding meaningful things like titles etc that can be awarded by the community or some other methods. Anyway bit more complicated than initially thought but progress is being made. Will have a baked plan sometime in February we think.

First off, kudos on looking to make the system as free as possible to allow people to define their own name & help create their on-line identity – or indeed, for those established elsewhere with the freedom to bring their established on-line persona into SL if they so wish. Excellent move, and what a lot of us had been hoping for.

However, I have to admit to going “tilt” in reading the middle part of the update, specifically: “We want to consider adding meaningful things like titles, etc., that can be awarded by the community or some other methods.” From both the responses to his post  and the discussion thread started as a result of it, it seems I’m not alone in this reaction.

To be fair, it is far too soon to comment in-depth on the idea of “community awarded” titles as we have no idea as to what LL are considering – and it should be noted that there is also the get-out clause of “or some other methods” within the statement. However, one cannot help but feel something of a cold shiver of dread on reading anything to do with titles, etc., being conferred within Second Life. Many are already disheartened by what they see as the “gamification” (hideous word) of Second Life over the last 12 months – and something like this, if not handled very carefully could well end up pushing people towards even greater disillusionment.

As it is, Groups, etc., are fully able to confer titles, etc., upon members, and people themselves can opt to take a title for their own through the mediums of either their own group or through the use of Display Names. As such, one has to wonder at the value of broadening this to a “community-based” experience – and precisely what “community” we’re talking about here.

I’d still like to hear more on the subject – if only to feel some of the iciness I feel towards it thaw a little. As it is, and granted I have nothing more to go on given the lightness of detail in Rodvik’s comment, I cannot help but nod when I read Innula Zenovka’s reply, vis:

To my mind, the people considering this would do better concentrate on how to sort out what happens when several people want the same name.

This is not to say I think the folks at LL aren’t considering such a situation; rather that I’d just rather they consider it in preference to hanging a lot of gaming-like bells and whistles on what should otherwise be a “relatively” straightforward task (please note the quotes, I’m not underestimating the technical elements, titles or no titles!) that otherwise stands to gain LL a lot of user goodwill once reinstated.

In other words, Rodvik – it’s good to hear you’re all busy baking plans, but please, don’t go and over-cook things for the sake of it, OK?