Tag: Communications and LL

Amanda Linden (with whom I’ve had some interesting exchanges in the past) finally gets the word out about the new means of communications, um, “within” Second Life.

Now, a part of this is something I’ve been looking forward to – the new User Groups, together with new Participation Guidelines. Providing balance  – on both the Lab’s and the users’ side – can be brought to the User Groups, then these might work out a lot better than the old Office Hours, and I’m in broad agreement with all Suella Ember has to say on this. My only worry is that, while Office Hours could be hideous slanging matches in which more is vented than listened to, User Groups could become sycophantic FICs, either deliberately or accidentally – or become perceived as such.

That LL are dropping voting from the JIRA system seems to have surprised some. Me, not so much; it’s been evident for a long, long time that LL take about as much notice of voting on JIRA issues as one regards gum on a shoe soul: to be ignored as far as possible and then scraped off when no longer convenient to ignore. Removal simply takes away a source of embarrassment to the Lab. Quite how monitoring the number of Watchers on an issue will help progress it is unclear, but ho-hum; in some respects it smacks of the same emptiness witnessed in LL encouraging people to vote on JIRA issues (up until now, at least) while knowing full well they (quote) do not use voting to triage or to make product decisions.

It’s interesting to read that next month we will be rolling out a new community platform–an integrated system that will include SL Blogs, SL Forums, SL Answers, and the Knowledge Base. Is this a tacit admission the current system does not work? I’m curious on this simply because the much-vaunted “blogrum” system currently in place is in so many respects an abysmal failure.

• The software is irritating and unpredictable. Posts and edits frequently get “eaten”; threads don’t always fully appear when in “page” mode (I’ve frequently come across replies to posts that make no sense. Originally, I thought the posts had simply been deleted…then I discovered that I could *sometimes* find them by switching over to the mind numbingly slow threaded view and then working my way through a thread)
• The system, whether admitted to or nor is either being unevenly moderated by LL-related staff or it is being openly abused by one or more cadres, shall we say, of forum users (regulars?), with threads seemingly pulled simply because one or more didn’t like what they were reading
• Whether they admit to it or not, there are a number of individuals who seem to view the General Discussion forum are their personal playground. While one always expects a degree of heated “debate” (aka insult-hurling and abusive disagreement) to enter into anything that people feel passionate about and willing to discuss, it has to be said that the levels of vitriol, dislike and sheer melodrama evidenced in the SL General Discussions forum far outstrips what is tolerated elsewhere – up to and including individuals carrying over personal vendettas against one another into threads that have absolutely no bearing on their original cause of angst with one another.

As such, the forums do need a major overhaul, both in terms of the technology and in the way they are moderated and managed – however thorny the latter issue.

However, it’s after the news on forums (potentially beneficial and good), Users Groups (potentially very beneficial and very good) and the JIRA changes (no surprises) that I find myself a little more gobsmacked in the negative sense.

In both “places to connect to one another” and “Get the latest Second Life and Linden Lab news” – and with the exception of mentioning the SL forums – never once does Amanda Linden suggest or encourage people to actually log in to Second Life.

Now, I may be accused of nit-picking here, but the fact is, we’re all involved in Second Life to participate in the marvellous world(s) of Second Life. As such, I don’t want to have to traipse over to Facebook to find out what the hell is going on in “my” world. Not because I’m worried about FB’s privacy rules (I am, but they have no bearing here) – but because I’m being told to “go away” and fart around with software I’ve no interest in using, rather than being encouraged to get involved “here”. The same goes for Twitter.

Telling me to go elsewhere is, frankly, bordering on telling me to take my business elsewhere as well – and that’s not a healthy perception any company should be promoting. Period.

Where’s the encouragement to log in, meet friends, joins in-world Groups – gosh, even create a Group or two? I’m not being facetious here. Groups – despite issues with the Group chat – are a phenomenal way of keeping in touch with the pulses of Second Life we enjoy. We know LL are working to improve some of these tools – so why no mention, why no encouragement to just log in? It doesn’t matter if the new tools are a little way down the road: the new integrated forum tools appear to be down the road as well, yet they get a mention.

Frankly, as far as informing people as to what is going on, Amanda should at least be pointing to the events calendar (web and in-world), and making it clear the tools to do so are there, waiting to be used, and are going to be subject to enhancement to further encourage direct interaction between users.

And why the heck are we being steered to FB to get the latest news from LL themselves? I mean – and this may well sound a bit radical – surely the best way for LL to promote themselves to their users is through their own bloody website!

One also has to wonder why Linden-lead meetings aren’t a part of this announcement? Were they considered and dismissed?  Not even on the agenda? One of the healthiest ways for Linden Lab to promote goodwill among users and get important messages across would be to come out of their sanctums and engage with us in-world. I appreciate that management tend to be busy – but would it really be that inconvenient to give up, say, 90 minutes once a quarter or so and come in-world to address a pre-planned, pre-advertised meeting that includes a Q&A session featuring questions from the audience and received in advance by those unable to attend due to factors such as timezones?

It could even be called the Linden Village Roadshow. Lord knows, there are plenty of venues that could be established for said meetings (after all, its done for the likes of SLCC).

I have no idea if the User Groups will work – I really, sincerely hope they do, and that both sides will approach them openly and sensibly. I do look forward to seeing the new “integrated community platform”  and very much hope that this time, LL hit the nail on the head rather than mashing their own thumb. But as to the rest? Well, it’s disappointing.

On Tuesday, we were apparently supposed to get information from Linden Lab as to the future of user / Lab communications, following the gradual winding-down of Office Hours.

Seems it didn’t appear.

However, Suella Ember grabbed the scoop on the way things may be going – and in the process raises very valid points and ideas for future, more robust interactions between Lab and users. As she points out, since writing her piece, information on the new User Groups has gone up on the SL wiki.

Going off the wiki, these new forums for discussion are already active. One certainly hopes that someone within Linden Lab will get the official word out via the blog before too much longer!

Brett Linden posts about spring break, encouraging people to:

Share your favorites [in-world destinations] with us here OR ON our Facebook page [emphasis mine]

And then extolling people to:

Show off your freshest “Spring Break” look … by submitting your head-to-toe avatar shots to our Facebook page.

Now, I’ve recently posted on having no problem with some aspects of LL pointing at Facebook, particularly with regards to the web Profile pages. As I’ve said, there are SL users who use both FB and SL and who may well have no problem in establishing links should they wish. Granted, the system should be opt-in, but it shouldn’t simply be chucked out because Facebook=evil in many minds.

BUT…openly pushing people at FB, as Brett is doing here, is not in the same class of acceptability. It is openly pushing people to sign-up with Facebook in order to participate in what is ostensibly a Second Life activity. As such it stinks almost as badly as last year’s Valentine’s Day Hunt, when LL offered a cash prize – but only to those hooking up with their Facebook page.

The vast majority of responses to Brett’s post have challenged this latest push – and Brett has responded. But his reply is rather disingenuous, claiming people have a choice as to whether they post to the blog or to the SL Facebook page. But this is only true to a point: while people’s favourite SL destinations have the either / or choice over where they are posted – full avatar shots are being directed solely to the Facebook page.

As Gavin Hird points out, this exercise smacks of a cynical attempt on LL’s part to promote SL as a vibrant, exciting place to Facebook users in the (dare I say) forlorn hope of gaining new users.

In this, it yet an further continuance of the same failed philosophy that has marked most of LL’s attempts at “growing” the user base over the last 2 or 3 years. A philosophy that continues to annoy and upset the very hand that feeds Linden Lab.

And if LL claim that trying to generate such an image on FB was not their intent – why have they not given people a choice of venues in which to post, as they have with destinations? What is wrong with having people post pictures (in accordance with the ToS) directly in response to the blog post? Doing so would have avoided the largely negative feedback Brett has received and it would have potentially encouraged more people to join in the fun and ensured the pictures are more likely to be seen by an audience who actually care – other SL users.

It’s been said time and again: Second Life is not Facebook. It’s also not, in and of itself, a social networking tool per se. But that doesn’t meant that it cannot embrace such functions and activities – providing it embraces them in and of itself. Repeatedly shunting people out of SL sends entirely the wrong message, as it runs the risk of people slipping into a feeling that they are not actually wanted in SL, and so why should they even bother logging in?

And the feeling of not being wanted, when it comes down to it, is something that is already very prevalent among many users as it is, thanks to LL itself. The company is doing itself no favours by adding to it.

I’ve held off commenting on the recently release of the 2010 Q4 economic statistics released earlier this week because, well, I didn’t want sarcasm to get the better of me.

Over the last 12-18 months, we’ve seen LL repeatedly not only move the goal posts when it comes to reporting economic stats – but damned-near change the entire playing field at the same time – as Hitomi Tipomi points out with a link to 2010’s Q2 economic stats. With the current figures, things have reached a point of near ridicule.

Concurrency was, for a very long time a key measure – now it is gone, leaving us only with “repeat log ins” which are promoted as being “good” as they are “up”.

But how, precisely, is “repeat log ins” a “good” economic measure? People log in and out all the time for a variety of reasons – up to and including crashes. Ergo, far from being a “good” measure, all “repeat log-ins” tends to indicate is that:

• Second Life is not as stable as LL would like (and this is certainly supported by anecdotal evidence)
• People actually have lives outside of SL which require them to log in and out several times a day.

In this respect, concurrency is a far better measure (although not perfect, as, like repeat log ins, it doesn’t differentiate between Main accounts and Alt – both are considered “unique” even if operated by the same user) in that it shows an overall trend in SL usage. But – concurrency has been more-or-less flat (around the 70K mark at peak hours, dropping to around 20-30K at the more “unsociable hours”), therefore it is now a “bad” measure, it would seem.

Similarly, while a rise in online sales volumes is something of a useful indicator, it is still very limited in its overall value. While I won’t be as uncharitable as some and say the only people it benefits is LL (as they get the commissions), I would agree that it is questionable as a statistic if it is not published alongside a measure of total volume/value of in-world sales.

Again, as has been noted in the comments following the figures, vast increases in web-based sales are actually potentially bad for the SL economy and the Grid as a whole. Let’s face it, LL is largely dependent upon tier for its revenue. Push the web side of things, and merchants are going to start moving away from their land holdings and focusing solely on web sales, with Linden Lab losing the tier revenue as more and more Mainland is abandoned and the demand for new private sims tumbles to the point where that market stagnates – or even shrinks as estate owners cut losses and divest themselves of sims.

Certainly it is worrying that, despite LL’s best attempts to fudge the figures, we’re seeing around 48-49% of Mainland effectively “empty” and non-revenue generating (the land is either abandoned (7-8%) or Linden-owned (40-41%).

In many respects, the figures published are reveal more for what they don’t include than anything else. LL have been busy tooling around with the stats for a while now, largely under the guise of “trying to get more meaningful information” out to us. I don’t doubt there is some truth in this, but things are now pared back to such a degree, it fuels suspicion that overall, SL is in worse shape than LL would like to admit.

And whether that is true or not is beside the point; it’s simply a very damaging perception that in turn fuels people’s reluctance to invest in the platform – and that is bad for SL. Period.

 

Ciaran Laval – as I’ve previously mentioned – raised a post about LL needing to listen to its users, a point of view most of us would agree with. Certainly, it would appear that changes in LL’s communication’s policy are on the horizon.

Said Michael Linden, in one of his recent Office Hours:

OH is to an end because many of them are. Change in communications policy”

No link available. A blog to come out “soon” (by month’s end).

But some OHs are going away/changing, Twitter accounts by individual lindens are losing the “linden” name (so they are not “official comm)

And there will be changes to the blog*

Now…this could be seen as both good and bad.

On the one hand, far to much has, in the past, been “leaked” as “official” communique through the use of Twitter accounts by Linden staffers wishing to gain that extra “cool” factor in their name (and/or possibly build-up a fan base). Stripping the “Linden” last name from these will remove some of the “official” nature of the leaks – although I doubt very much if it will stop such games altogether unless the company’s internal communications policy is also re-written.

That Office Hours are being run down should come as no surprise to many. As it is, many have left LL and few of those who have departed and who held OH meetings have had their slots filled by other members of staff. BUT the OH have always been an invaluable means for residents to put forward constructive and well-founds views and suggestions to Linden staff, which have then been carried back to senior management for review.  Not all have been listened to – much less acted upon – but others have; and this is important.

Of course there is also a downside to Office Hours as well – the temptation for Lindens to play groups off against one another, to drop hints that others are getting a more favoured treatment (something Jack seemed to like doing), and so on. They could also be utterly undisciplined, with residents more concerned with shouting and screaming and being somewhat abusive, rather than taking the time themselves to listen and engage. They could also be draconian – viewed as a means to lay down the law (Pink Linden), by specifying what “could” and “could not” be discussed. BUT – overall, Office Hours have been generally useful and productive – and one cannot help but be concerned as their removal, and is concerned as to what might replace them and provide the same immediacy of input / feedback.

The blog changes are even more uncertain. Does this mean more channels for specific types of communication? This could be a good thing – to a point, but is still no substitute for the immediacy of the OH meetings. Does it mean more actual Linden interaction in the blog post commentaries? This undoubtedly would be beneficial – providing again, we’re not left with a cherry-picking approach: Linden responding to the “positive” posts and largely ignoring the “negative” posts.

Some have theorised that “blog changes” could mean an end to the General Discussion forum. I’m not certain it will – although LL were, when the new blogrum software was introduced, less than favourable towards the idea of including a GD area of the forums. In some respects, one can understand their reluctance to support a GD. The current area has, in so many ways, become something of an ugly mire with far too much in-fighting among egos and people with far too great a sense of entitlement and righteousness when it comes to determining what should and should not be “accepted” by the forum community as a whole.

BUT – despite the drawbacks, the GD forum is a good tool for resident communications at least, and to lose it would, for all its faults, further break a means by which people can communicate with one another where in-world meetings and offline IMs are less than practical.

The worry here is that, overall, these changes are going to further stifle resident-to-company communications. While on the one hand, it will be good to see LL take a more professional attitude towards PR releases, announcements and the like, and properly channel them to the right outlets at the right time (without all the back door Tweeting and the like) – nevertheless there needs very much to be an expansion of two-way communications between company and residents that is both pro-active and immediate. Having a “communications manager” and a “conversations manager” would have been excellent innovations, if only Katt and Wallace had been employed to engage with and listen to users, rather than simply hand down corporate directives, muddy the waters (Katt’s famous attitude of tossing an untoward comment into the forums, followed by a “/me sits back to enjoy the popcorn”)  and confuse issues (a-la Wallace’s foot-in-mouth post on conversational identities)…). But they weren’t, and an opportunity (or two) was lost.

LL don’t have the most stellar record for interaction with their user base, and while one hopes that the indicated forthcoming announcement / changes will be for the better – especially given there is also a new bum about to take up residence in the hot seat – but it has to be said that a major change of heart towards residents on the part of the company seems somewhat unlikely. As such, it’s very probable that any good coming of the changes is going to be adversely balanced by the bad…