Category: News-Opinion

Xiola Linden departing the Lab, but not Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
One of Xiola’s many looks. Credit: Strawberry Singh

Over the last 24 hours, the news has been spreading about the upcoming departure of one of Linden Lab’s most popular members of staff: Xiola Linden.

It was Xiola who actually announced she would be leaving Linden Lab at the start of 2020, as she and Strawberry Linden sat down to host the December 18th, 2019 Lab Gab live stream programme.

I managed to miss the show (I confess I wasn’t even aware there was a session scheduled for this week – so shame on me!); however, thanks to You Tube, I’ve embedded the portion of the show where she makes her announcement below, and you can watch the entire segment via the Lab’s You Tube channel.

In breaking the news, Xiola said in part:

Just a little over eight years ago, I think it was, I showed up for my first day at, quote, “the Lab”, and I basically walked into my dream job. It was a place that I had, for a very long time, been a resident of, so to speak, since 2006, I think …

It’s been a job that has really allowed me to grow … and it’s given me a ton of incredible stories of things that you can not only just image, but also realise. And I learned that from the community, to see the way that they continuously adopt the features of the platform and do it in ways that we never expected or would do…

And here we are eight years later, and it’s still my dream job, and I still cannot imagine who I would be and what I would be like without this community and without Second Life and the Lab. That said, the time has come for me to work on some new dreams.

Commenting on her forthcoming departure from the Lab to me personally, Xiola added:

It is one of the hardest decisions I have made, and honestly still does not feel real. It has been a pleasure to serve this community as best I know how, and supporting all the various communities that it is comprised of. I hope to perhaps one day be able to work with so many of the incredible talents and interesting folks that I have gotten to know over the years here.

Born and raised in California’s silicon valley, Xiola naturally immersed her career in technology, working for the likes of Yahoo!, with a particular interest in creative communities. It was a friend’s invitation that she try Second Life that got her started on the platform, and she remains active in-world on her personal account to this day.

Due to this engagement with SL, she became interested in working at Linden Lab and started keeping an eye on the company’s career page in the hopes of being able to apply for a suitable role. Fortunately, a community related post opened in late 2011, and her application was accepted.

Xiola, centre, at the May 2015 Linden Meet-Up

As a part of the Community Team, her first major event was the Second Life Birthday (SLB) celebrations – something she regards as her “SL event boot camp” – helping bring together information on the event as well as helping to organise the festivities.

Since then, over the intervening years, her role has been broad-ranging, encompassing elements of customer support, putting together events like the former Linden Meet-ups, activities like the annual Creepy Crawl and the Meet the Lindens sessions during the SLB celebrations, and moderating Town Hall meetings. She has also been instrumental in building Second Life’s social media presence across various platforms and in revitalising the official SL blogs.

With the arrival of Sansar, she moved over to that platform, taking on the role of Community Manager there, and shouldering the responsibility for building up a weekly social and meetings schedule, getting members of the Sansar team in-world to meet with users and discuss the platform. Once this was ticking along and the Lab could bring in a dedicated Sansar Community Manager, she transitioned back full time to Second Life, where she’s been for almost the past two years.

Throughout all of this, she has acted as strong liaison between the Lab and its user communities, linking them through social events, programmes and activities. Within Second Life, she’s been instrumental in a number of programmes, some of which I’ve been fortunate to have been involved in, the most recent of which has been the Second Life Blogger Network (SLBN).

While she is departing Linden Lab on January 3rd, 2020, Xiola has made it clear she’s not leaving Second Life – she fully intends to remain an active resident and user of the platform through her personal account.

Xiola in her role as Community Manager in Sansar (centre left), cooling herself in a portable pool at a time when California was experiencing a heatwave!

On a personal note, what has always struck me about Xiola through a number of years of interaction with her – albeit it at a distance, so to speak, given we’re on different continents –  is that her enthusiasm for both the platform and its users has never waned, and has always been infectious. Simply put, the Lab couldn’t have asked for or sought a better ambassador to help manage and grow their relationship with users over the last 8+ years. Working with her – be it with things like the SLBN or in e-mail exchanges or direct conversation – has always been an absolute pleasure.

So, thank you, Xiola for your work, your enthusiasm and your involvement. Wishing you the very best over the holidays and in the new career. Do stay in contact – even if only in-world!

 

Name Changes: $40 per change(?), some thoughts and a poll

Posted on by Inara Pey

Name Changes  – the ability for Premium members to change their first and last names, with the first name being free-form, and the last being selected from a list – is due to be launched around January / February 2020.

As has been previously announced, Name Changes will be offered for a US dollars fee, and there has been some speculation over the last couple of months as to the the size of that fee (one prominent rumour surfaced at some User Group meetings has claimed the fee will be US $20.00, for example – see here).

However, with the announcement of the Name Changes contest (see Name Changes Contest is Upon Us! from Linden Lab and my own blog post Linden Lab launches SL Name Changes contest), we now have a prominent indicator as to what the fee will likely be, and it comes to us via the contest rules:

5. PRIZE.

A. Description of Prizes. One free Last Names change (estimated value at US$39.99 plus $11.99 to represent the value of a month of Premium Membership) on an account of Winner’s choice.

B. Estimated Total Prize package value: US$51.98. Exact value dependent on account status.

(Emphasis mine.)

Of course, the fee still has yet to be finally confirmed, but it’s fairly safe to assume that it is likely to be the  $39.99¹ mentioned in the contest rules. This raises some interesting thoughts about the capability and its potential uptake.

On the one hand, a fee is to be expected, if for no other reason that that re-introduction of names changes has required extensive changes to many of the back-end systems and services that support Second Life (hence the time taken for the capability to be introduced). Also, given the impact of making a name change will have an extensive impact on those systems, the Lab needs to limit how frequently such changes might be made to avoid unintended impact.

There’s also the the fact that in order to meet demands from users for the Lab to reduce land tier (which they’ve tried to address over the last few years through the likes of the 2016 buy-down offer and the reductions to mainland (March 2018) and private region (June 2018) tier), there need to be ways in which the revenue can be made up (see Thoughts on Second Life fees, tier and revenue ) and Name Changes is one more option by which this might – in time – be achieved.

BUT … the potential for revenue generation needs to be balanced against the level of the fee: if it is set too high (and leaving aside the inevitable shouts about “gouging”, etc., from some quarters), then it could be self-defeating. Simply put: if users feel the fee is too high, they’re not going to run with it, particularly given Display Names will remain available. As such, there is something of a risk that Name Changes may take a good deal of time to recoup the costs of implementation – if it can.

There’s also the overall level of interest in the capability: while a lot of noise was made following the removal of last names in favour of “Resident”, the fact is that those who have been around long enough to have a last name (like myself) may well be so attached to it, so changing it may hold little interest. Even those partnering or with the “Resident” last name might prefer to stay with using Display Names rather than forking out for a Name Change.

Time will tell on both of these latter points – and there will likely be much debate on the fee as well as the capability in general. As such, I thought I’d try a straw poll of feedback on the subject from readers – make sure you vote in each box; once for interest, the other for the fee.

Update, December 28th: this poll is now closed.

Related Articles

  1. Note that Linden Lab has indicated the fee will be lower for Premium Plus once it has been launched. However, Premium Plus pricing has yet to be confirmed, and the option will not be launched until some time after the release of Name Changes.

Second Life: Name Changes contest launched

Posted on by Inara Pey
via and © Linden Lab

After reading this article, please also check: Name Changes: $40 per change(?), some thoughts and a poll.

As promised in a November 21st, 2019 blog post from the Lab (see: The Return of Last Names and Changes to Marketplace, Events & Premium), Linden Lab has launched a competition for users to suggest the first batch of Last Names for when the new service is launched in 2020. 

Once available, Names Changes means Premium members can change their First Name, Last Name, or both.

  • There will be a one-time fee applied per Name Change.
  • First names are entirely free-form, while Last Names will be selectable from a list (“old” Last Names will not be eligible for re-use).

It is in this last regard that the contest is being run, as noted, with the Lab commenting:

We want your help coming up with the first batch of Last Names! 

Three submissions per entry … From all of the suggestions, we’ll pick five (5), and those five lucky Residents will be able to change their names completely free of charge (or designate another account for the name change).

Again, previously-available Last Names (e.g. Pay, Voyager, Sideways, Starr, Young, Silverweb, and so on), cannot be suggested and will not form a part of the new Name Changes service. A complete list of previously last names is available here.

Please refer to Name Changes Contest is Upon Us! for further information, and note that entries must be made via the official contest form, and must be submitted before 15:00 SLT on January 6th, 2020. Full rules for the contest can be found here. These appear to suggest the cost of a name change will be US $40.00 – see section 5 Prize, of the rules.

You can also catch up on my coverage of Last Names here:

Second Life: DMCA on-line complaint form refresh

Posted on by Inara Pey

On Monday December 9th, 2019 Linden Lab blogged about filing DMCA complaints with Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) Refresh!

The blog post comes with a warning the what it contains should not be construed as legal advice, and reminds SL content creators have the right to file a complaint against those violating their intellectual property. Specifically, it points to their Intellectual Property On-line Web Form, as well as reminding content creators of the Lab’s Intellectual Property Infringement Notification Policy, which provides core and important information about filing DMCA complaints with the Lab, and provides a link to the on-line form.

To be honest, I am a little surprised by the Lab is only now blogging about the on-line DMCA form – which has actually been available since June, 2019  – indeed I blogged about it on June 25th, see: Lab release on-line DMCA complaint form for SL, and I don’t remember seeing a prior post from the Lab on the subject. However, that they are blogging now should be taken as a worthwhile reminder of both their DMCA policy and the new form.

A page of the Lab’s IP Infringement Complaint web form, which went live on June 18th., 2019

As always, it is recommended that the official blog post is read in full, particularly the notes at the end of the post in reference of filing complaints.

Thoughts on Second Life fees, tier and revenue

Posted on by Inara Pey
via: thebluediamondgallery.com

Monday, December 2nd saw the introduction of the new Marketplace (MP) commission fee of 10%, as announced in the Lab’s November 21st blog post The Return of Last Names and Changes to Marketplace, Events & Premium.

The announcement of the fee change unsurprisingly caused some upset, with a couple of forum threads popping-up on the subject (see: MP fees raising to 10% per sale. Thoughts? and Second Life® is still a world of opportunities). Various points are raised in both threads, some fair, some perhaps not-so-fair. While I’m the first to note that I’m not in any way, shape or size a “merchant” or “commercial creator” in SL I thought I’d try to step back and try to take a broader look at fees and tier, etc., in general.

The first point to note is that in making the claim that the increase to the MP transaction fees still leaves them “significantly lower than most digital content commissions across the industry” while citing Apple and Google as examples, the Lab did so with a certain amount of spin.

The 30% charged by Apple, for example, incorporates payment clearing, fraud, indemnity, insurance, and dunning; local tax law enforcement & reporting; service provisioning and distribution, etc. Due to the nature of Second Life these fees are incurred separately to the MP – but they are still incurred by many merchants using the MP, and when taken into consideration, they amount to somewhat more than 10%, a point Cat Hunter makes in this comment.

Also in their blog post, the Lab note that that fee change is to help offset costs incurred at the Lab due to investing in new Marketplace features and improvements. This is fair enough; however, given that the first of these changes is apparently within weeks of being deployed (improved MP search filtering), it might have been an idea to perhaps to wait until these changes had been introduced  before announcing the fee increase – and then to champion them alongside the improvements that have been made over the last 12-18 months, such as the much-requested Store Manager capability and the notifications and redelivery capabilities and wishlists and favourites¹.

However, there is a more intrinsic reason for fee increases – be they with transaction fees or anything else (such as the recent increases in Premium subscriptions), and it is one the Lab perhaps doesn’t communicate clearly: and that’s trying to reduce virtual land tier.

While tier has contributed to the loss of regions in SL, including places such as Venexia (above) and its sister region, Goatswood, lowering it without increasing fees elsewhere would always hurt Linden Lab more than help users

This is something that users have (rightly or wrongly – there are actually arguments on both sides of the coin) been demanding for at least the last decade. And since the start 2018, Linden Lab’s CEO, Ebbe Altberg, has repeatedly stated the company would like to reduce land tier – but would only be able to do so if the resultant loss of revenue the company would suffer as a result could be compensated for through other means².

In fact, the Lab have taken steps to reduce tier: in 2016 there was the private region buy-down offer³ (the interim boost to LL’s revenue as a result of the fees payable likely long since having passed), and in July 2018 reduced private region tier from US $295 to US $249 for Full regions (that now stand at US $229), and Homesteads from US $125 to US $1094.

While it is hard to accurately quantify, given the various factors involved (e.g number of grandfathered, skill and educational regions, the more recent slight increases in region count, etc.), it is – with the help of Tyche Shepherd’s Grid Survey and the Internet Wayback machine – possible to reasonably (conservatively?) estimate the impact of the July 2018 tier reductions at around a LS $300,000 a month fall in the Lab’s land revenue. This may not sound a lot – but it is something LL would likely want to recoup – and it can only be done through increases in other fees, as Altberg noted in his comments on the matter.

This should not be taken to mean the transaction fee is wholly associated with compensating for the tier reduction, but it’s not unreasonable to assume it might nevertheless help, either now or in the future. More to the point, and regardless of where the revenue from the MP fee increase is used, it wouldn’t hurt for the Lab to remind people of the strategy to pivot revenue away from land tier and to other options when making similar fee adjustments elsewhere (or indeed, the introduction of new fees, even it they may also help offset the cost of implementing new options and capabilities).

There are two final points that come to mind when looking at the MP transaction fee change. The first is that of all the fee changes thus far introduced, it is the one that merchants can most directly compensate for, as some in the forum threads have noted. Merchants can raise their MP prices, for example, whilst keeping their in-world prices lower (which is allowed5); or those with in-world stores might focus more on sales through that channel, with associated group advertising.

The second point comes back to the timing of the announcement. It would seem that the increase has been made so that the Lab can benefit from the likely increase in MP sales during the run-up, and indeed over, the holiday season. There’s nothing wrong with this per se; but given the increase has likely been on the cards for a while, it would have perhaps have been preferable had LL given more of a lead time on its implementation so allow merchants more time to prepare for it, and so help them in compensating in what might come across as a reduction in their own ability to generate revenue through the same holiday period.

Related Links

  1. See:
  2. See (all with audio comments by Ebbe Altberg):
  3. Lab: get grandfathered tier in 6-month buy-down offer (April 2016).
  4. Linden Lab announces major SL private region pricing restructure (June 2018) and Looking at the new private region and L$ fees (July 2018).
  5. Web Team Springs some Deploys on you, April 2018.

Bellisseria extension: new homes theme takes shape(?)

Posted on by Inara Pey
What form might the upcoming Linden Homes theme take? We don’t yet know – but it would appear new regions in support of them are being developed / tested by the Lab

As those who follow the development of the “new” Linden Homes are already aware, a further theme is due to be previewed at the RFL SL Christmas Expo, and it appears that when released, this will take the form of a large-scale increase to Bellisseria’s southern extent.

This year Linden Lab, the Society’s partner in the fight against cancer, is joining the 9th Annual SL Christmas Expo. Not only will Linden Lab be decorating Linden homes as part of the Lights of Hope contest but the Expo will be the venue of the BIG REVEAL!  The long-anticipated ALL NEW Version 4 LINDEN HOMES will be UNVEILED at the Lights Of Hope!  Expo visitors will be treated with the newest premier member homes as well as some very VERY Special Linden surprises and incentives!

– from the announcement of the 9th SL Christmas Expo

The additional regions can be seen in the Bellisseria development / test SSP continent. If I’m honest, in their current form, that look like an artificial, rectangle-like bolt-on to the more organic form of the original continent – but this may well change as the new expansion grows over time. It this, it has something of the “bolt-on” feel of the original Houseboat expansion.

The new Linden Homes SSP extension regions

What’s interesting about the new extension, however, are the individual parcels. These are somewhat different to those seen with the Traditional Homes and Houseboats. Also, whereas the Traditional Homes sit alongside what are clearly roads, the profiles of the houses in the extension regions not only have a different outline, that also appear to be built around a different style of road / footpath.

Nor is that all. The south extent of the existing regions of Bellisseria show the continent’s railway line passing through a cutting in the mountains and onward into the new regions.

The Traditional Homes parcels in Bellisseria (l) compared with a parcel from the extension – note the different house profiles and road / footpath elements

The extension of the railway lines tends to demonstrate that – as promised – they will be a prominent feature of the continent and the new Linden Home theme. On the flip side, the new regions do not appear to include Houseboats – which might disappoint some – but they do appear to offer beach houses and island homes.

In his SL16B Meet the Lindens session, Patch Linden indicated that there are likely to be commercial opportunities arising in Bellisseria – at the time suggesting one of these opportunities might come with the Trailers and Campers. Such opportunities have yet to appear, and whether or not they will as a part of the eventual deployment of the new Bellisseria extension (whenever that happens) remains to be seen.

Within the development / test regions, the Bellisseria railway lines appear to be a core part of the new extension’s infrastructure

Another point of interest with the SSP development regions is the demarcation of a series of SSPXT regions (located to the east of the main continent and shown in teal or green). It’s not clear what these are to be, but one guess is perhaps the green regions will be shaped into outlying islands, and the teal regions might form some kind of archipelago. Then again, they might be something else entirely – time will tell as to whether they stay and are developed (and become clearer) or not.

In the meantime, and beyond the promise of previewing them at the 2019 SL Christmas Expo, it’s not clear when the new Linden Homes theme will become available – but doubtless, many are watching the SSP development regions with interest. However, those wishing to obtain one of the new homes – whether Premium or not – might want to enter the Christmas Expo’s One Of A Kind (OOAK) auction – on offer is a 6-month Premium subscription and one of these new Linden Homes provided on a specially designed parcel, and with extras. See EPIC OOAK Linden Home Auction @ 2019 SL Christmas Expo for more on this.