Tag: Philip Rosedale

And the mill continues to churn…

Posted on by Inara Pey

Hamlet is covering breaking news – um-  rumours that Mark Kingdon is departing Linden Lab and Philip Rosedale is about to swing back into the limelight as the “new” CEO.

According to Hamlet, the rumours have come from “multiple sources”, although he declines to indicate whether said sources are within or linked-to Linden Lab itself. Hamlet links the rumours to his earlier speculation about the reasons behind Tom Hale’s departure and, by extension, the “failure” of Viewer 2, and Rosedale’s own somewhat contrite SL7B address.

The mill has been further fuelled by news on the official blogrum that Mark Kingdon was a no-show at the SL7B celebrations yesterday, where he was due to give and address. The reasons for his no-show were stated to be related to an emergency.

It’s hard to tell which way to turn on this. While I doubt that the emergency that kept Kingdon had anything to do with any forthcoming departure on the grounds that Rosedale himself and several other leading LL luminaries were on-hand at the stage where Kingdon was due to speak: had the no show been connected to a sudden departure or a decision to remove Kingdon, I would have thought that the “emergency” would have been sufficient to call them away as well or that someone would have been prepared to step into the breach and thus prevent speculation and upset.

However, Hamlet does have the background that allows him to sometimes tap into the beat of things within the bastions of Battery Street (albeit an ability that is in the decline following the recent layoffs), so outright dismissal of the “rumours” cannot at this time be given.

One thing is clear. If this is no more than speculation, then Linden Lab need to nip it in the bud. While some may cling to the adage “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” this kind of rumour could be damaging if not dealt with properly.

Watch this space, as the saying goes.

SL7B: Underwhelmingly Conventional

Posted on by Inara Pey

I’ve just finished a tour of the Second Life 7th Birthday (SL7B) “celebration” sims. The “theme” for this year is “unexpected collaborations” (aka, “you never know whose exhibit you’re going to end up sharing sim space with”). The truth of the matter is, it might just as well have been “underwhelmingly conventional” inasmuch as once again, it demonstrates a complete lack of original thinking among those “guiding” the event within Linden Lab, and a reliance on the principle of the “same old, same old”.

To be sure, there are a lot of imaginative builds and exhibits, and hidden away among the avenues are some startling examples of what can be achieved within Second Life – kudos to those behind them! But it does remain a sad fact that “the” major talking point around the event is not about SL or the remarkable diversity of cultures, imaginations and ideals it represents….but is rather all about a nipple or two.

Of course, LL are caught between something of a rock and hard place; given the recent layoffs, any loud trumpeting of the event on their part could be taken in some quarters as crass and extreme poor taste. BUT…that doesn’t mean we should lose sight of the fact that seven years on, SL *is* still here; we’re all, despite our moans and groans, getting on with things. So in that regard, the relative lack of promotion from LL is surprising,

Aside from a minimal blog posting, there has been very little said. Unless I’ve failed to get the e-mails (a distinct possibility), I’ve seen nothing advertising,  or anything else on upcoming talks or presentations or even parties. Even the Wiki carries scant up-to-date information. Instead we’re left with the Resident’s SL7B blog as a source of information. While this is undoubtedly good, it doesn’t even get much of a mention anywhere but at the foot of the Wiki page, and is conspicuously missing from the official blog announcement.

Not even Philip Rosedale’s address gets a direct mention anywhere in the official blogs (outside of Torley’s attempt).

Away from this and Nipplegate and the lack of anything above General / PG rating (come on LL, so some maturity yourselves!), SL7B is, it has to be said, a saddening exhibit of much that remains wrong with SL and which upsets so many residents so much of the time.

  • The lag, even on relatively empty sims, is appalling
  • It is impossible to move freely between connected sims without (sometime violent) rubber banding
  • Rezzing takes an eternity
  • Get 20 people in an event and the sim may as well be hovering on the edge of a black hole.

It may sound bitchy raising these points – but the fact is, they represent four reasons why, for every person visiting SL7B, there are liable to be 2 people who won’t.  They are also why, when he talks about LL getting “back to basics”, Philip would do well to get his Executive Management team to focus on ensuring effort is put into resolving such basic issues.

For me, though, the major disappointment with SL7B is that  – with due respect to all those who have worked hard to build exhibits and provide interesting features and displays  – there is simply nothing that compels me to tour SL7B. Oh sure, there are live events: singers, performers, etc., but these events are localised to just five stages. And truth be told, I can see them elsewhere in SL at times of my own choosing.

Of course, part of the responsibility for making the exhibits compelling lies with the exhibitors – but part of it also rests with Linden Lab. Hanging the entire event on some clever “theme” that actually doesn’t really inspire isn’t enough.

I’m sure that, come the end of the event, it’ll be hailed an “outstanding success”. After spending over two hours rambling . flying and tping around the sims looking at exhibits, my own thoughts are once again, and very sadly, “missed opportunity”.

Phil’s passages

Posted on by Inara Pey

Philip Rosedale helped kick-off the SL7B celebrations with an address to residents. In it, he touched just what an incredibly complex achievement Second Life is – and listed some of the well-known and not-so-well known accomplishments Linden Lab have made around the product – including the major efforts into improving the reliability of the supporting hardware and infrastructure, into making the SL experience more intuitive for non-English speakers etc.

Of course, some of the achievements he listed are going to be viewed differently by different people – things like the TPVP and Linden Homes are going to be a source of grumbles, upsets and annoyance for some time to come – and some of it may well be justified.

What interested me however, was his frank admission around the recently layoffs: essentially confirming, as I’ve previously mentioned, that Linden Lab has come to far to fast, and the restructuring was a vital precursor to the company putting itself back on a solid financial footing:

I wanted to speak for a couple of minutes and touch a little bit — obviously — on the layoffs we just did. We sadly reduced the size of the company by about a third — by about 100 people a week ago, and that’s a big deal and a huge change. But I wanted to say that standing here today in the midst of such a rich world and such continued creative — and for some people, financial — success that’s here makes me realize that, that choice is the right choice and one that though it is hard to make, is definitely correct and obvious. We’re never going to — as a company — risk the world and the businesses and the livelihoods of the thousands of people who make money working here by growing too quickly ahead of profits. By doing the difficult process of restructuring the company and making layoffs, we’ll return ourselves to solid, very solid levels of profitability.

The interesting word in this statement is return. While Linden Lab may not have been losing money hand-over-fist as some have implied in the forum discussion on Phil’s talk, “return” does tend to indicate – again, despite those graced with Hubble vision among us who seem to think Linden Lab is invulnerable to fault – that the company has been in some financial difficulty.

In many respects this is unsurprising: we’re in a global economic recession; it would be pretty amazing if a company the size of LL and with the same reliance on consumer spending hasn’t experienced financial hardships. In LL’s case the situation is somewhat worse because  – as many of us are only too aware through our own practical experience – the in-world economy has been stagnating for a goodly while now.

However, the use of “return” in Philip’s comment does, to a degree, shine a different light on the recent spin of quarterly performance reports from LL, in which we’ve tended to be given (and have openly questioned) the by-line that LL is doing “great” and is “avoiding” downturn. It also tends to confirm suspicions that LL have been “papering over” some of the cracks around the situation by re-introducing things like user-to-user transactions as a measure of economic “growth” (given the sheer diversity of such transactions, and the fact that there can be a chain of several such transactions that actually represent a single dollar amount, but which have each individual transaction counted as a “dollar amount”, user–to-user is a far from accurate measure).

Philip’s follow-on comments are equally revealing – and demonstrate that someone is evaluating recent trends and trying to determine a sensible way forward for Second Life:

We’re safe, the world is safe. As smart as we may think we are, we are not always going to be able to predict Second Life’s rate of growth and hiring is something that you tend to do something in a linear way, but the growth that company goes through — especially something as amazing and phenomenal as Second Life — tends to be punctuated, that is, you’re gonna have periods. And we’ve been in one of those periods now for the last year or so, where the world grows very little because we’re trying figure out together — you and us — what to do next, how to make it better. The growth, when it comes, is typically non-linear. Growth happens very fast. A company, of course — and we’ve been through these days as well — reels as it tries to provide a solid service offering for everybody as that growth occurs. And then in other times, you know, you have to hire with the anticipation that there are things you can do that are gonna drive growth. And sometimes that doesn’t happen. So I think this combat between linear company growth and sort of non-linear world growth is, again, one of the big problems that we face. And so, to be safe, we have stepped back — reduced the size of the company — and kept everything safe

The first part of this comment pretty much confirms what Tateru Nino speculated in her comments on this blog the other day – that LL themselves don’t actually understand what fuels SL’s growth. It is also a tacit admission that traditional means of projecting growth (which I fear are the mechanisms by which the LL’s Executive Team have tended to operate over the last couple of years) break down when applied to something as unique as Second Life.

As Philip states, SL is marked not by a linear, market-driven / predictable growth, but rather by peaks and troughs. When this happens, identifying what creates the peaks – the sudden bursts of expansion & increased revenue – and what causes the troughs – a sudden reduction in growth or a fall-back to previous levels of turnover – is as much about alchemy or pinning the tail on the donkey as it is about good business sense. Get it right, and you’re a business genius. Get it wrong and everybody hates you.

Given the plethora of things that go into Second Life – not the least of which are the most unpredictable elements of all – you and me and every woman and man on the street, all of us driven by a myriad of desires, needs and wants, some of which are congruent, others of which sit in direct opposition to one another – it is all to easy to get things wrong; to see some events in entirely the wrong light and as a result base your business strategy on suspect data. You’ve effectively pinned the tail not so much on end of the donkey’s spine, just above its rear end, but rather in the empty space a foot behind the donkey….

This is perhaps the most tacit admission from anyone in LL that they have gotten things wrong – and certainly for me, it demonstrates that Rosedale still cares enough about the platform to be open and honest in matters where others will continue to try and paper over the cracks.

So, what of the future? Here Rosedale is a little more reticent; a lot of positive-sounding words are used, but the detail is scant. Certainly, some among us will be upset at his use of metaphors relating to the tearing-down of walls and filling-in of moats as they will see it as a further move towards “opensource technocommunism”  (although I’m personally of the opinion that is not what Rosedale is alluding to). There is also a hint that the various messages about LL needing to play its part in keeping SL compelling in order to help drive user retention may well be falling on ears that are no longer deaf. It is important that, in getting back to basics, LL don’t lose sight of this once more.

It is equally important that in getting back to basics, LL start taking the time to listen to and actively engage with its resident users. Whether they like it or not, we are the people who are potentially best placed to help shape and develop the tactical needs that are faced within Second Life, with LL demonstrating it can weave such tactical needs into a cohesive, reality-based strategic plan that will potentially get us out of the rinse-dry-repeat cycle that has in so many ways marked the first 7 years of SL’s commercial existence.

Tateru published a considered argument on the subject of faith over on Massively last week. As she points out, LL came through a very rough period not so long after it’s formal launch, with wholesale lay-offs in 2003. They survived then largely because of the faith their resident users demonstrated towards them.

Faith in Linden lab is something that is in very short supply right now. The track record of blunders and ill-considered actions on LL’s part over the last three years have not only eroded our faith – they have in many ways built walls and moats that leave many of us somewhat unwilling to trust Linden Lab further than next week’s tier.

If things are going to improve, and leaving aside all of the glossy words, it is our faith in Linden Lab that really needs to be restored; it is the walls and moats that LL have themselves created and which now limit our ability to trust them with our faith and belief that really need to be torn down and filled in. I get the impression that Philip realises this, and that, as much as he openly talk about reaching out to people beyond Second Life, his words at the opening of SL7B are also about reaching in to those of us already here. That in itself is a sign of hope.

What remains to be seen is whether the rest of the executive management team and the board are as equally contrite, as equally positive and as equally willing to hold out a hand to their resident users.

Shhhh….not in front of the kids

Posted on by Inara Pey

One of the most lucid Second Life bloggers around is Ciaran Laval. His posts are intelligent, insightful, and entirely devoid of the drama and rambling vitriol that so often undermines whatever point an author wishes to make. I’ve taken to dropping into his blog regularly throughout the week as he does ferret out things many of us miss.

An example of this is his commentary on a possible merging of the main and teen grids. Ciaran raises the question as a result of noticing some interesting trends around the “new” forums, as his post indicated. Without wishing to steal any of his thunder, I had noticed the thread he gives as “exhibit 3” – but unlike Ciaran, I’d failed to see it in a wider context. Kudos to Ciaran for putting things in perspective and raising the flag on matters.

While this apparent trend towards merger within the forums is indeed worrying, I have to admit the most surprising thing about Ciaran’s post are the replies given – people expressing surprise or smug “well, I’ve been predicting this”.

The fact of the matter is that the merger – despite commentary otherwise from LL – has been openly on the roadmap (to use a favourite LL buzzword) since the end of 08/ start of 09, when Philip Rosedale went on record in an interview vis:

Generally, I think that the future of Second Life needs to be one where people of all ages can use Second Life together, and that’s the direction that we’re taking in our planning and our work……if you look at the problems with having a teenaged area, which is itself so isolated from the rest of the World, they’re substantial. There’s an inability for educators to easily interact with people in there because we’ve made it an exclusively teen only area. Parents can’t join their kids in Second Life so problems like that are ones that we think are pretty fundamental and need to be fixed. We need to stop creating isolated areas that are age specific and, instead, look at how we can make the overall experience appropriately safe and controlled for everybody. So that’s the general direction that we’re taking there.

[My emphasis at the end]

This view was openly stated in an interview with Robert Bloomfield at Metamonics 09. At the time, it passed with barely a raised eyebrow within the community as a whole – those that did question Rosedale seemed to accept the brush-off that he was talking about something “off in the future”.

It matters not who has been predicting it or since when. No, if there is any surprise at all, it as that we’ve all – myself included – been far too complacent when it has come to the issue of mergers. Hopefully, Ciaran’s analysis and flags will help change this. Assuming LL will even listen.

Signs and Portents….

Posted on by Inara Pey

Two recent events involving Linden Lab reps have caused yet more head-scratching.

The first is a posting from Amanda Linden on the subject of “work avatars“, espousing the view that if people are to do “professional” business in SL then they should consider having a “professional avatar” as distinct from their runabout everyday avatar.

I’ve found two things interesting with this – one of which is somewhat amusing, the other is more alarming. The amusing element is in the number of replies from people who have somewhat missed the context of the post. This isn’t about all of us engaged in SL commerce having to ditch our current look and come over all business-like. Nor is it about any form of “outing” real identities behind avatars on the part of LL.

No, the article is aimed squarely at the question of “professional” (read “corporate”) employees being in-world as representatives of their organisation, and the need for these individuals to keep their “professional” identity both divorced from any “social” identity they may have and use outside of working hours, and in line with the professional / corporate image they are trying to promote.

While many have mistaken the posting, as mentioned above, giving rise to a range of misguided (…?) responses, those that have realised the intent of the post have, in fairness given interesting feedback on the matter relating to the “validity” of “business” (or “professional”) avatars, the question of naming rights / abilities, etc. However, with one or two exceptions, no-one has really addressed the question of why is Amanda even raising this issue in the public forum?

Second Life was never designed to be an engine of business. Period. It was designed – if such a term can be used – as a fun-based social networking platform (and I never thought I’d hear myself say that!). Yet, in the drive to make it sustainable, Linden Lab have been increasingly forced to look at the corporate environment as a means of generating sustainable revenues and growth (again, this drive is to me one of the clearest indications that all is not well with the SL economy as an “engine of commerce”, despite the rosy pictures painted every quarter by those juggling with the finance figures). To this end we’ve had much focus from LL on their “behind the firewall” product which (I gather) is designed to be the nirvana for all corporate communications needs.

And, in its own way, this is fair enough. Second Life does offer some unique opportunities for internal management to corporations. Whether they can compete with established tools and technology (video streaming, desktop-enabling video conferencing, secure collaborative work tools and information sharing, etc.), is obviously debatable – but one cannot simply discount SL on the basis of existing technology, or for LL for trying to leverage what they believe is a potential market.

Where this becomes an issue, however, is in the way it impacts how Linden Lab view the grid as a whole. Until recently, the grid was a place of open interaction, creativity and development, where many different lifestyles and communities could converge and mix and share (largely) without rancour or fuss. Sure, groups were/are prone to their own bouts of drama; yes, Linden Lab did and does sometimes show an insidious favouritism here and there – BUT on the whole, for those in SL it really was a case of “our world, our imagination”.

That is no longer the case. The “big business is everything” mantra is one that is spreading across the whole of Linden Lab, resulting in a grid that is slowly but surely being sanitised, and individuality squirreled away on private sims and small holdings. “Adult” content has been largely removed to its own continent or private sims; any that remain on Mainland are (theoretically) unable to advertise or gain much visibility unless people stumble upon them – and where they do advertise, users are encouraged to AR them so they can be taken down.

We’re now seeing discussions emerging between Linden Lab and a favoured few relating to “zoning” areas of Mainland for “community building” – words that again subliminally suggest “homogenising” the Mainland into a nice, clean, “safe” environment where Corporate Daddy will feel safe letting his children (employees) “play”.

In this, Amanda’s enthusiastic posting is but the latest demonstration that there are those within LL who view Second Life as being “all about business” – and very little else, despite the lip service they may pay to the rest of us. The only reason the idea of having a “professional” avatar is being promoted is because Amanda and others in LL want to see the grid as a confluence – not of communities and lifestyles and interests – but of corporate marketing and exposure. A place where all those behind-the-firewall grids can safely connect and where their minions and roam outside the hallowed portals of their corporation and “do business” with others “safely” (and by “safely” I don’t necessarily mean “securely”, I mean simply without the “risk” of running into any one of two dozen exotic avatar styles we all take for granted in SL).

And this is the worrying aspect of Amanda’s post; not that we’ll all have to somehow be “outed” (as some on the blog comments are decrying), but that here again we see Second Life – a place never designed to support Big Business – being slowly but surely forced into a business suit, shirt and tie….

Nor, in passing, do I find this kind of commentary being followed by Philip Rosedale’s recent bombshell unconnected. Other the last several months we’ve seen several departures from Linden Lab that have raised questions concerning the company’s intended future direction. Until now, the hardest of these was perhaps Robin Linden’s departure.

While Robin caused a mixed range of reactions from those around her, she did, in many ways, having the “community” of Second Life at heart. Not all of us agreed with some of her actions all of the time, but she was committed to the idea of Second Life being an open community. As, I think it fair to say, was Philip. And now he, too – despite all the comforting words – is off. Why, exactly, is unclear. Lots of promises and pleasing words – but one cannot help but feel that in sharing the same workspace as Mark Kingdon, Rosedale finally realised the yawning gulf between his dreams and ideas and Kingdon’s (Kapor’s?) vision for the future of SL, and the fact that the two can no longer comfortably co-exist.

So what of SL and the rest of us? I have no idea. But, like many others, I’m concerned about further developments coming out of Jack Linden’s office, as reported by Ciaran Laval and variously-reported elsewhere.

First off, the issue here – and Ciaran states – is not that LL have discounted a bulk sim sale to the likes of Dreamland (who are a huge customer well aware of their potential buying-power – thus discounts are hardly surprising). What is worrying about the deal is – again – the degree of obfuscation apparent in Jack’s responses to valid questions pitched during his Office Hours, and as reported by Ciaran. So much so, that Jack himself had to admit he was coming over as evasive – before hiding under the excuse that this is some kind of “beta program” – a laughable response at best.

Discounts are discounts. End of story. They are a legitimate part of business practices and require little in the way of hiding from others – so they fact that Jack (again) feels the need to obfuscate (just as he did over OpenSpace / Homesteads, and with the Adult Changes, and with the Blake Sea situation….), suggests that either favouritism is involved here, and a programme to edge-out the smaller land owner and private sim owners is in the process of being developed, or – frankly – Jack is (again) demonstrating a degree of incompetence in his ability to deal openly with his clients.

Personally, given the push for a bigger Big Business presence in SL, the erosion of the voices and dreams of those who made SL possible, and moves such as this latest “beta programs” from Jack, I’m beginning to get pessimistic about the future of SL.

These moves simply do not bode well for the smaller, independent player or player groups within Second Life. Again, leave us not forget that, after the special “beta testing” Jack developed with USS over Blake’s Sea, we’ve now got the much-touted Community Partnership Programme, which is utterly biased against small independents – right from the opening words: “a new initiative focused on expanding Linden Lab’s relationship with large, inworld communities“.

Indeed, taken together, one cannot help but view the CPP and this latest behind-closed-doors deal between LL and Dreamland as part and parcel of moves to sanitise Second Life ready for the Second Coming of Big Business, as heralded by Amanda….