Tag: Communications and LL

We have a newsletter?

Posted on by Inara Pey

So… I’m sitting here, hiding from family as January 1st drones on to a wealth of movie repeats on the one-eyed monster in the lounge, when this drops into my e-mail.

Now, firstly, in four years of continuous activity in SL, I have to say I didn’t even know we had a newsletter – I’ve never, ever received a copy in the past. Secondly, I have to ask why what is clearly intended to be largely a marketing tool being sent – a-la coal to Newcastle – to existing users who are certainly savvy enough to know the majority (if not all) of the contents? Thirdly, I also have to ask why no adult roleplay?

Obviously, the third question is easy to answer: the newsletter is going out to *all* of SL’s residents, including 16 and 17 year olds, so we can’t mention the “a” word in front of them. So while it may (for all its multitudinous faults) be a valid form of role-play, Gor cannot be mentioned. Nor can we even have a perfectly vanilla overview of the “adult” rp sims out there. By vanilla, I simply mean a broad, PG-outline, no pictures of nudity and just a series of Surls – given that minors technically cannot access said sims, this really shouldn’t cause upset anywhere – especially if such a section is headlined with a reminder that Second Life is used by adults who are – and will most likely remain – its largest user-base, many of whom do come here for adult-related activities.

However, this issue of “Sandbox” isn’t really intended for the adult users of SL. It is aimed squarely at the teen market, and has been timed to coincide with the transfer of teen accounts to the main grid. As such, it is the second of two causes for concern this issue of “Sandbox” presents – and I’ll explain why in just a moment.

The first item of concern is that it again demonstrates how LL fail to grasp their own platform. For nigh-on two years they’ve pushed and pushed and pushed the idea that SL is primarily a “social networking platform” – right up to shunting users towards Facebook on a number of occasions. During this time, the idea that SL was also an immersive, creative, playful environment seems totally foreign to The Powers That Be. Now everything is canted entirely the other way: SL is just a “game” (hence the appointment of a recognised “gamer” as CEO) – and “social” and “network” now seem to be banned from being linked in the Linden vocabulary. Rather than recognising – as their users largely do – that SL is in fact both a gaming environment and a social networking platform, LL seem only able to pendulum between the extremes of both viewpoints.

The second item of concern is that in focusing on teens to almost the exclusion of everyone else, LL are once again falling into a familiar pattern of “if we build it, they will come” – almost as if the lessons of the past two years haven’t been taken to heart at all. Let’s face it, we’ve seen it all before; witness the New User Experience and Viewer 2 – both of which were supposed to see adults arriving in SL by the truckload. Witness the SLE product and the promotion of SL as a “serious” business tool that was supposed to see corporations the world over flocking to SL to run their collaborative apps, hold virtual meetings and generally put their business to rights.

In each of these cases, LL have repeatedly turned their collective backs on their established user-base, resolutely convinced they’re on to something “big” for SL – and LL as a whole – only to see it all go somewhat pear-shaped within a few months. I seriously doubt that trying to woo-in the teens will go any differently; we’ll see a mild upward swing in the short-term, but overall very little will change numbers-wise. The initial interest will fade and those at the lab will start scrambling around looking for the Next Big Thing that will “turn SL around” – and we’ll be right back (to use a quote from television this time) feeling that “all this has happened before; all this will happen again”.

So, if there is one thing  – OK, TWO things, given I’ve already written to him on one of them – Rod Humble can do when he arrives full-time as the new CEO, it is to get the company to start regarding its existing user-base as an asset, rather than a hindrance.

We – as much as anyone else – have made SL what it is today (and given the staff turnover at LL, possibly moreso than anyone there); we have made the investments in terms of time, effort. It really would be nice to see the new CEO recognise this and take steps to make sure the company actually engages with its users once more, rather than repeatedly patronising us.

Hit the road, Jack…

Posted on by Inara Pey

Jack Linden finally bows out of Linden Lab, and many are sad to see him go. I confess to being somewhat lukewarm in my response to the news.

Jack started out in customer support where he was noted for having a “sexy” accent (or more usually, a “sexy British” accent), and enjoyed a somewhat meteoric rise through the ranks. Which has been both good and bad – and occasionally ugly.

The good is that, despite everything else, he at least made the effort (mostly) to engage with users through his office hours – something that put him in the minority within the Lab. The bad was that all too frequently, this engagement actually came in the form of obfuscation, denial or near-to misrepresentation.

Jack was also the front man for some of LL’s most unpopular actions over the last few years: he took charge of Mainland, and promptly oversaw a massive dumping of sims into the environment that ravaged the market; he was “lead” on the OpenSpace  / Homestead fiasco that bordered on a bait-and-switch policy; he was very much involved in the Adult Changes; more recently he has been “heading up” the commerce side of things and also had input into the ongoing Search debacle. His office hours were frequently mired by accusations of behind-closed-doors deals and outright favouritism towards certain LL “clients” (aka estate owners).

Now, it would be unfair to blame Jack solely for all of these woes: at the end of the day, all of these policies originated far higher up the management chain than good ol’ Jack. But what isn’t so forgivable is the manner in which Jack all-too-frequently went about his work – for which many of those now wishing him a fond farewell in the comments following his final blog post seem all too keen to forget; which is odd given many of them were often driven to distraction by his antics. The way in which he often seemed to delight in creating upset, confusion and outright disbelief always suggested to me that he was not that concerned with assuaging the worries of residents. In this, I’ve always felt that he took on these unpopular polices simply because he saw them as a means of furthering his career within LL, and that dealing with resident anger and genuine concerns was simply not, at any time, on his agenda – other than the rare occasions when it suited him to give the impression he was trying to help.

So… I find it hard to shed a tear and wave goodbye as he goes; although I’m not exactly gleefully waving a finger or two at his departing back. Jack played the residents as much as he engaged with them – but at least he *did* engage with us.

With his departure, I rather fear that all we’re going to face now is a resounding wall of silence.

The one-sided love affair…

Posted on by Inara Pey

I keep going back over the transcript of last Friday’s in-world presentation. In my first piece on it, I tried to give a reaction to the gist of the presentation rather than a review, so a part of me keeps thinking I’ve sold some of it short.

To be fair to Philip, he does make some valid points. It’s just unfortunate that these are outweighed by the feeling of having, “been there, heard that,” and the doubt that there is sufficient recognition within LL that they need to change their culture if anything is really going to change for the better.

There is one aspect of the presentation I did find interesting. When it comes down to it, Rosedale’s focus is very clearly locked on to the idea of SL becoming a place for business enterprise – as is evident from the latter half of the presentation. Not so much the business you and I might conduct – although he does give more than a tip of the hat towards this and the work of content creators in SL – no, he’s referring to “big” business.

Again, it’s a familiar meme. Throughout the Kingdon era, a good part of the focus at LL was the “business community”: we had the development of the (former) SL Works website into the microsites, the drive to expose how SL is “transforming” business and, of course the behind-the-firewall SL Enterprise product. No surprises there: as I’ve stated elsewhere, Kingdon may have had some ideas of his own for SL, but by-and-large it is safe to say that most of the direction LL took under his tenure was at the behest of the Board itself.

What is interesting is the frame-work of Philip’s comments on business (in the corporate sense). First off, he makes it clear that sorting out lag is a priority because it is seen to be hurting SL where bringing in business is concerned. He also implies that LL doesn’t actually know how well the SLE “behind the firewall” product is doing: An example that speaks to a broad point, SL Enterprise, we don’t know who is using SL.  We think it is used by educators, those casual users, by people at work. Really? you mean no-one in LL is tracking sales? Granted, this may not reveal who is actually taking the software out of the box and putting it to use on a server…but tracking sales would give an indication of the markets for SLE..if any. Is this comment in fact a coded, “SLE isn’t selling like we thought it would”?

However, what is most interesting in Philip’s comments on the involvement of big business in SL is his statement that, In SLE, we’re not trying to move away from use at work, but we aren’t going to work on deploy behind fire wall. We will work to support them on the main grid.

“We will work to support them in the main grid”. It’s as if Philip is hoping for a repeat of the “glory days” of 2006, when business from all markets  – technology, finance, footwear, automotive, television, and so forth – poured into SL.

But didn’t actually stay.

Worse, when reading these words, I couldn’t help but remember Justin Bovington’s (of Rivers Run Red a (former?) strategic partner with LL) outright hostility towards “ordinary” users, and his cries that swathes of the Mainland should be turned into “no go” areas for the likes of most of us, reserved purely for the “serious” or “business” user.

Now, to be sure, for SL to do more than subsist, it needs to thrive. Getting big business and the likes to invest is potentially one of the major ways that LL can hope to ensure it thrives. This much isn’t rocket science; the dots would appear to be there waiting to be joined up.  But again, please note the key words in that statement: “potentially” and “appear”.

Why are they key? Well, simply because there is a very big question mark as to whether the business community need Second Life as much as Linden Lab believes to be the case.

So far, we’ve seen two attempts as trying to lure business in: opening the doors in 2006 and riding on a wave of media popularity, and the launching of Second Life Enterprise. Both have been far from stellar. Between both we had the likes of Bovington and Amanda Linden pushing a “let’s get real for business” theme that came across as – frankly – openly hostile towards the rest of us.

But…aside from the early takers like Toyota, IBM, Nike, NBC, etc., no-one has really found am ongoing business-oriented use for SL; least of all Linden Lab. Oh sure, there was the flurry of activity around the US Navy’s project and there are various small-scale projects and case studies in the “SL Work” microsites; there has been talk of the US Army using (and note this, given Philip’s statement) SLE for “war game modelling” and the like; and even some US Federal Agencies have sniffed at SL. But the fact remains that these are niche markets with limited scope; and if SLE is going to be shelved, it is really hard to see them going anywhere on a scale that actually matters in terms of revenue development.

Certainly, the Grand Vision of SL being at the “centre” of all things corporate, “revolutionising” communication, collaboration, the way meetings are “held” and so on and so forth that have been dreamily blogged about on the official website (and note the central position of Viewer 2 – those still asking “why” Philip won’t “drop” it therein have their answer) remains little more than a gleam in LL’s own eye.

Of course, LL-ites will point out that SLE is only “beta”, and therefore it shouldn’t be used to judge SL’s “potential” as a “business platform”; similarly they’ll say that the reason business came and went in some six short months back in 2006 was because “we” (i.e. LL) didn’t “understand” the potential or what was happening.

Well, yes. SLE *is* only “beta”, and yes, to some degree, the influx of 06 may have been hard to foresee. BUT – and here’s the rub – none of these excuses matter.  The simple fact is that, outside of niche activities, as stated, Second Life simply isn’t ready for big business to pay anything more than a cursory interest in it; there is simply nothing here that is compelling for big business to invest time, effort and money in SL on an ongoing basis.

And this is where Philip’s assertion that lag is somehow a critical factor in preventing business leaping onto the SL bandwagon raises more than just one eyebrow. Compared to issues such as data security & integrity, confidentiality and a host of other business-critical issues that would need addressing before business dipped anything more than a big toe into the water of Second Life, “fixing” lag would seem to be something of a trivial item upon which to focus. Let’s be honest here, who didn’t read the aforementioned blog post (March 2010) lauding SL as the Next Big Corporate Thing  – or indeed Amanda Linden’s “Open Letter to Your Boss” (remember that?) without having something of a laugh and the rose-tinted manner in which the Grid and SL’s capabilities were presented in both?

Beyond this, there is also the question that if LL is serious about reaching beyond niche markets, whether driving corporations towards the main Grid is really the right way to go. OK – so SLE might not be selling well right now – but surely, if it is packaged, presented and promoted properly, it stands to be a much better product for LL than simply leasing server space. A single sale of SLE represents eleven years of income from a single sim, or the equivalent income from 9.5 sims over the course of 12 months. The financial math alone isn’t hard to work out. Plus, SLE checks the boxes companies are going to want to see checked: it operates behind their firewall, it is completely under the control of their own IT bods, it doesn’t have strangers flitting around, it doesn’t suffer from questions of data integrity or communications issues as much as the Grid does, and so on.

But again, all this pre-supposes big business actually needs SL or can, indeed, find a practical use for it. To date, it is fair to say the love affair has been entirely one-sided. We’ve yet to see a single runaway success for SL / LL where the corporate world is concerned. And frankly, it’s really hard to imagine that we will if everything is to be pushed back into the Grid itself.

Exchanging views with Amanda Linden

Posted on by Inara Pey

For the last 48 hours, I’ve been engaged in a surprising forum-based exchange with Amanda Linden over in this unfortunately titled thread (don’t feel you have to go wade through it all, the crux of the issue is repeated below  – I’m including the link for context).

I’m not sure what drew me to this particular thread, given the title tends towards the OP is looking to simply start a flame war – but I was somewhat shocked to find none other than Amanda Linden responding to a post in the thread that raised the issue of the (premature) release of Viewer 2.0.

The reply reads thus:

Thanks Void [Singer]. You bring up a great point. As with any new software product, there are plenty of bugs. And, during the beta period over the last month or two, we’ve been hard at work smashing bugs. We’ve fixed thousands of bugs, in fact. Yes, we have more to do–for sure–and the team is heads-down addressing every bug filed in Jira. We take bugs filed by Residents seriously. They are evaluated, prioritized, and then fixed. So, keep bringing us bugs and we’ll resolve to fix them as soon as possible.

This post – in typical (I have to say) light, trippy, LL form – generated a number of responses, including this from me:

Amanda,

There is a truism that states “no software is ever finished” (or if there isn’t there ought to be)…and as such, it is true that Viewer 2.0 will inevitably have bugs that will need fixing.

But let’s be honest here: Viewer 2.0 was in development – by your own (LL’s) admission – for over a year; yet what was released into Beta was riddled with issues, many of which are so basic, not only should they have been identified and dealt with prior to the public Beta, [they] are still waiting to be fixed. So why the drive to push it into prime time?

When the (then) forthcoming public Beta was initially announced, it was also stated that you intended to “go live” with Viewer 2.0 “at the end of Q1” (i.e. 31st March, 2010) – and you’ve done precisely that. Ergo, one gets the impression that roadmap was not only drawn, but printed, laminated and framed on the wall over someone’s desk at Battery Street before the public Beta commenced, and that as such – the target date wasn’t going to be missed, regardless of the number of issues / bugs found within the code.

By your own admission, Viewer 2.0 needs more work….Search needs more work….shared media needs more work (particularly around issues of security)….yet everything is being pushed out with an urgency that could leave observers speculating as to what on Earth is going on at LL.

One can only assume that LL has become purely a target-driven entity, more concerned with short-term new users acquisition over longer-term user retention.

Is it simply because you have some overall “target” of new user subscriptions – one that has been calculated as needing X months to achieve at an acquisition rate of Y new users a month – which is thus fuelling what appears to be the overly premature release of this software? Is user acquisition in fact going to become your overall measure of “success”, regardless of the potential attrition rate of non-returning users? Are we going to see something like New users in the last 24 hours appearing on splash screens?

Now I’ll be honest. When I posted this, I genuinely didn’t expect an answer. As we’re all only too aware, Lindens have a reputation for peppering the flogs with replies now and again in what seems like a scatter gun approach: it is rare that one will stick around and address concerns / critiques that call into question the “official” line.

So I was surprised when Amanda followed up:

West, Inara, Gideon, Great comments and your challenges with the viewer, including bugs–I understand and I hear you.

Here’s my experience with V2. I’ve been using it since December. I admit, when I first started using it–the bugs made the viewer tough to use–and the new design took some getting used to. Those were early days–first alpha. But, I stuck with it and the software became more stable and usable each release. The V2 that you see today is SOOO much better. For basic SL functions, as any new Resident would perform, the software is ready and stable enough to deliver a much better experience than v1.23. We are not only confident of that fact, but we see it borne out in our analytics–that we’re watching very closely.

Remember, our primary goal this year is to grow Second Life from 700,000 to 1,000,000 actives (spend 1 hour in world each month). With more Residents in SL, the larger the economy, more customers to purchase your virtual goods, more interesting events, more vibrant communitites, and more that we can do to invest in improving the SL experience. In other words, better for everyone.

That said, we think that you’ll love Shared Media and Mesh (coming this year) enough to make the switch and then give us the feedback that we need to integrate into our product roadmap to make it a great Viewer for SL power users too.

Again, it’s important to understand that this product is FAR from final. We are committed to making V2 great–stable, easy to use, and as bug-free as possible.

There are two things to note here: a) continuing the spin relating to the value of Viewer 2; b) not actually responding to questions raised. However – a reply is a reply, and opens the door for further potential dialogue; something I was (and am) determined to follow-up on:

Amanda,

Firstly, thanks for replying.

Secondly, mentioning figures like 700,000-,1,000,00 “actives” on a monthly basis doesn’t actually answer my concerns about LL’s position with regards to user retention. Indeed, it doesn’t actually reassure me in any way at all. SL is already hitting concurrent logins in the 60-70K mark daily. Even if we discount 40% of these as bots and alts – that still means SL *is* potentially hitting around 1.2 million “actives” a month….so I’m having major problems seeing any growth here….

So I’ll ask again: Is user acquisition in fact going to become your overall measure of “success”, regardless of the potential attrition rate of non-returning users?

Numbers of “actives” does not equate to numbers of retained users: it is entirely possible to have both a high number of new sign-ups on a weekly / monthly basis and a continuing high attrition rate in terms of repeat log-in falloff. Thus, rather than growing the economy and providing, “more customers to purchase your virtual goods, more interesting events, more vibrant communities” – we could in fact end up with the current status quo being continued into the future.

Once again, I received a reply, this one actually moving towards addressing issues:

Inara–Thanks for such a thoughtful post. And, YES–retaining current Residents is a huge priority here at the Lab. We cherish the SL community and you’ll see more programs rolling out to help make your experience better, too. But, the announcements on Wednesday were centered around the new Viewer and welcome experience–so it feels like we’re only thinking about attracting and retaining new Residents. More to come in the coming months….

Cheers, Amanda

Now…this could of course all be flannel. As the old cliche goes, actions speak louder than words – and as we’ve all too often observed, Linden Lab has a habit of tripping over its own two feet when moved to action. But…action has been promised, and I’m certainly not going to let things go with this, as I hope my follow-up demonstrates:

Amanda,

I’ll take you at your word regarding user retention, and look forward to seeing both future posts and affirmative action on the part of LL that demonstrate this to be the case.

I appreciate the Wednesday’s announcements were close related to new users (welcome experience / Viewer) –  but by the same token, the “new user experience” has been pretty muchthe mantra for well over a year. The “First Hour” experience, the “First Five Hours”, the viewer…search….other changes. Almost all have been accompanied by the mantra of “new users”. When concerns have been raised where some changes are concerned, many of the replies received by Linden Lab could be paraphrased as, “Ah, yes, but for new users….” (you can fill in the “…”) – so much so that it is fair to say that there is a strong perception among established users that “new users” *is* the only measure that counts nowadays.

I also appreciate that it is hard sometimes to pick out concerns above the *noise* at times, given the sometimes heated debates that go on within these forums, and the levels of emotional response that heaped in some postings.So I do appreciate you are taking the time to post here and give support to your initial replies, especially given the emotive title of the thread.

But that said – and leaving aside the “new user” mantra – another major reason why seasoned users are feeling jaded towards Linden Lab is that quite often we’ve been faced with responses from LL that suggest that those who post in these forums are a “vocal minority” (my term), who are not representative of the “majority” of SL users – even when valid points are being made.

This is very much an incorrect perception. The people who ardently post here do so because they are involved in Second Life; the majority genuinely care for the platform and what happens to it – and as such, far from being a “vocal minority”, are actually pretty representative of the feelings of those who are equally as engaged in the platform but who don’t post here for one reason or another (i.e. they themselves are already feeling jaded by what is perceived to be the same rhetoric being repeated time and again – so they read, but simply don’t post).

So again, I very much hope that the time you are taking here is an indication that – as you stated at Metanomics recently – you (as in LL) will be much more active in communicating with residents (as opposed to communicating to residents) as we go forward, and that you’ll do more to demonstrate that you are actively taking on board user concerns and actively responding to them, rather than opting to post replies that read as being both arrogant in tone and suggestive that LL prefer to cherry-pick user views and attitudes that are (possibly) more closely aligned to your desired strategy / direction.

As it stands, the weekend is here, and I obviously do not expect or anticipate any reply before the middle of next week – but I think the points above are worth making, given dialogue has been joined, and I very much hope that Amanda will continue to keep the door open on what is a developing two-way exchange. Yes, her replies are light on specifics and full of the usual Linden spin – but I can live with that.

I very much hope that she’ll also revisit comments made in the same thread by the likes of Amethyst Rosencrans and Ciaran Laval. The concerns and observations they both raise very much point to the need for better, clearer and more balance exchanges between the Lab and users, especially if Amanda’s statement that retaining current Residents is a huge priority here at the Lab. We cherish the SL community is going to be anything other that hollow market speak.

User satisfaction isn’t simply about a “more predictable” in-world experience. It’s not purely about reducing lag or boosting hardware performance or providing new and better LSL functions or integrating in-world and XSL accounts.

User satisfaction is about taking the time to engage with the community; it’s about abandoning pretences and participating in the two-way exchange of dialogue. Linden Lab has persistently failed in this  – and have been absolutely chronic in the sphere of user relationships in the last few years in particular. While they may be “small” and “parochial” in the scheme of things, even the San Francisco Better Business Bureau have noticed LL’s weakness in customer relations – awarding them a “F” rating.

I’m not foolish enough to believe that a couple of forum exchanges with the likes of me are seriously going to change things – we’ve all see Linden staff drop comments here and there across the flogs. What I do find heartening, tho, is that when pushed on issues, Amanda hasn’t simply blanked me and skipped on to more favourable comments for her replies – she’s met me (almost) head-on.

I really do hope we see more of it.

I couldn’t help it; I cringed.

Posted on by Inara Pey

I’m sorry.

Maybe I’m suffering from a sense of humour failure – but who on Earth came up with the Welcome Video on DiscoveryIsland? I mean, trying to riff on a 30-year-old TV series remembered largely for being the bastion of trite, formulaic television, replete with more re-use of stock footage in a single episode than most TV shows managed in an entire series.

Riffing on Fantasy Island, for crying out loud to promote Second Life as a “hip” place?

While I was too young to watch it when first aired, I do remember it being on-air in re-runs on Saturday afternoons, wherein it was generally received with derisory humour  – before the channel was changed…..

I’m not sure exactly what demographic LL are trying to appeal to. Silver surfers with a taste for “fine corinthan leather” and bad 80’s television, perhaps?

All together now, “The pain, boss! The painnnnnnn!”

Mixed messages

Posted on by Inara Pey

The release of the Viewer 2.0 BETA (caps deliberate, as some in the official SL forums seem to be missing that part) has generated a lot of debate, discussion, teeth gnashing, cloth rending and….feedback from Linden Lab.

Most of the feedback from the Lab has been positive – they’ve recognised issues, admitted errors (e.g. the removal of a lot of the INSPECT tool functionality) and have promised to tweak and improve in several areas.

This is all excellent stuff – and what we need to see and hear. If Viewer 2.0 is the way of the future for both the Official Viewer and all future Third Party Viewers (given the codebase is now in Snowglobe), then the Lab needs to listen and take on constructive and genuine critiques and concerns.

That they are already deserves some recognition – although what comes out the other end in terms of a “polished” version 1.0.0.0 of the Viewer will be the proof of the pudding.

However, while the dev tem are busy responding and taking note, across the room we have Amanda Linden and her “Viewer 2.0 poll” – and once again we’re plunged back into “oh dear, oh dear, oh dear” land, and much shaking of heads.

This, um, “poll” asks one question: “Do you like Viewer 2.0” and gives only 4 options to reply:

  • “I love it!”
  • “I like most of it.”
  • “I’m indifferent.”
  • “I don’t like it.”

The marketing spin here is so intense, I got dizzy just looking at the screen.

Come ON, Amanda! If you really want to get solid user feedback, then at least produce a decent poll, one than offers granularity, that asks pertinent questions, that is, in a word, useful.

One like this, in fact.

Yes, the results you get may not stack up against the heavily biased item you put forward, or provide you with the flag-waving worthy of a PR release – but it would provide invaluable feedback to your developers, helping pinpoint clearly (and without all the angst and shouting in the forums) where there are issues with the Viewer.

I appreciate you’ve probably realised the poll is tilted – hence the rapid closure. However, just by putting it up in the first place sends out the message that you and the marketing team are more concerned with fluff rather than substance. Worse, you make yourselves the butt of considerable resident derision.