Tag: SL News

Linden Lab departures: Mojo and Styfy Linden

Posted on by Inara Pey
Andrew Kertesz (l) and Steven Feuling (r) – formerly Mojo and Styfy Linden, both of whom departed Linden Lab earlier in 2024.

Update: March 10th, 2024: The management team list is back up on the corporate About page.

In 2021 and 2022, Linden Lab made two fairly high-profile – in terms of the company’s management team – hirings; both of whom recently departed the company within the same time frame.

To take them in order of joining the company, Andrew Kertesz, a 20-year veteran of the gaming industry, arrived at the Lab as the new VP of Engineering in July 2021 to replace Scott Lawrence (Oz Linden). In doing so, he took the name Mojo Linden.

It is not unreasonable to say his impact was immediate and positive. Openly engaging with user through the various user groups – notably the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) and Third Party Viewer Developer (TPVD) meetings, as well as popping up from time-to-time at Simulator User Groups.

Three of his major user-facing contributions to the platform comprised a push to overhaul and improve the viewer’s performance; encouraging the adoption of industry-recognised standards (the Khronos glTF 2.0 specification); and pausing the development of the Lab’s efforts to develop an initially limited (“chat centric”) mobile app, in order to determine if a more comprehensive mobile solution might be developed (what we now know as SL Mobile). He was also keen to eliminate much of the platform’s technical debt – such as moving the simulator code to 64-bit architecture and to try to leverage technical options that hadn’t actually been around when SL first opened its doors.

The other hiring was that of Steven Feuling, who joined the company in May 2022 as Linden Lab’s first ever Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), alongside of Peter Capraro, who became the company’s first  Chief Information Security Officer (CISO).

Taking the name Styfy Linden, a major part of Mr. Fueling’s focus was, according to Business Insider, to help Second Life to start to expand its user-base once more. In this he worked closely with Brett Linden, the Lab’s VP of Marketing. He also saw his role not only in marketing and promoting Second Life within market sectors relevant to the platform (e.g. the content creation sector) to b ring new users in, but also in trying to both enhance the events-driven appeal of SL through partnerships with external organisations and through direct engagement with existing users to encourage their ongoing retention.

Styfy certainly wasn’t as much a “public” figure as Mojo in terms of user visibility – he did appear in a Lab Gab session for 2022’s SL20B celebrations (which I summarised here); however, his influence – alongside of that from Brett – would seem to have been key in the formulation of projects such as the Motown Experience and Welcome Hub.

While the Lab may have something of a bumpy reputation as an employer in some quarters, it is true that a lot of the staff there – particularly among the management team and who are directly responsible for the platform’s operation and services – tend to be with the company for years at a stretch. As such, I was particularly surprised to find Mojo Linden was no longer listed as part of the company’s management team, and nor was Styfy.

Linden Lab Management Team, as listed on the company’s About page in December 2023 (via the Wayback Machine)

Admittedly, it took a big of digging to find this out; some time between January 15th, 2024 and now, information on the Lab’s board and management team has been removed from the company’s About page (or at least, that’s been the case while I’ve been poking at things over the last couple of days; maybe there’s just been a bit of a SNAFU and said information will reappear).

Anyway, using the Wayback Machine, I was able to confirm that both Mr. Kertesz and Mr. Feuling were listed as a part of the management team on December 25th, 2023, but by January 15th, 2024 their names had been removed. On discovering this, I ran a check on their in-world Linden accounts, and both have been deactivated (as is the company’s policy when personnel depart).

If I’m honest, I had wondered as to Mojo’s whereabouts a couple of times of late; his absence from the CCUG meetings had become sufficient enough for me to notice (he was by no means at every meeting, but had a habit of dropping in perhaps once and month – or close to that). However, I just assumed he was focused on other projects, and its not as if his departure has caused the wheels he helped set in motion seize up.

Linden Lab Management Team, as listed on the company’s About page, January 15th, 2024 (via the Wayback Machine)

Obviously, people and roles do not always work out; the CMO role at the Lab was brand new to the company, and it is possible that given LL’s size, it became recognised as a square peg / round hole situation. Similarly, leading figures within organisations can be poached away / become tempted by opportunities they spot elsewhere. As such, the departure of two senior staff from the Lab in what appears to be fairly close order might be coincidence more than a sign of Something Going On, even if finding out did cause an eyebrow to do a Spock.

Certainly, I’m not going to speculate on the ins and outs because I don’t want to feed into any conspiracy theories that might be doing the rounds (in relation to this or anything else). It will be interesting to see  – if possible, assuming the management team info doesn’t reappear on the corporate website – if either post (particularly that of VP of Engineering) gains a new face (again, assuming there has not been any internal promotion to the position in the interim).

Instead, I’ll simply wish both gentlemen well in their respective futures, and also thank Mojo (should he ever read this!) for taking the time to engage with users and in responding to nagging enquiries from the likes of myself.

Checking out the Second Life Community Exhibition

Posted on by Inara Pey
Second Life Community Exhibition (SLCE), January 2024

On Tuesday, January 30th, 2024, Linden Lab announced the opening of a major new addition to their Welcome Hub / Motown Experience gateway, which itself opened in June 2023, as I wrote about in Linden Lab and Motown: a new approach to user on-boarding in Second Life.

The new addition – called the Second Life Community Exhibition (SLCE) – is designed to occupy north-west corner region of the nine-region Lab-managed estate, replacing what had been the laser tag area. However, at the time of writing it was limited to a smaller area extending outward from the main Welcome Hub region, between the Motown and and shopping regions. In terms of it’s purpose, it is intended to do exactly what the name suggests: provide active communities within Second Life with the opportunity to promote themselves to both established users visiting the Welcome Hub and its associated regions as well as to incoming new users arriving at the Hub.

Following the design design aesthetic of the Welcome Hub, the Community Exhibition area currently has room for some 32 community displays, with eleven occupied for the opening. According to the official blog post on the Exhibition, the displays will be cycled between communities as time goes on, in accordance with the response of new users to the various displays when visiting the exhibition – a statement which tickles my curiosity as to how such “resonating” will be measured (purely on the basis of the number of teleports from any supplied portal? If so, what about those displays providing access by giving landmarks or HUDs?).

Second Life Community Exhibition, January 2024

The ten communities initially presented comprise: Boystown (LGBTQ+ friendly), Drivers of SL (hosts of the famous Grid Drive events, as well as helping to represent sailing and flying in SL), Virtual Ability Inc., Non-Profit Commons, Club Furzona (Furry community focused on music, writing, animation and 3D modelling amongst much more), BURN2 (the unofficial virtual celebrations marking the physical world Burning Man traditions), plus four well established communities offering people both a sense of community and a place to live: Bay City, the Caledon community and estate, the Confederation of Democratic Simulators (CDS) and (my “home town” of) Second Norway.

Linden Realms is also represented, although it’s hard to consider it a “community” in the traditional sense. However, of all the Linden games introduced into Second Life, it does seem to be the one with the most enduring popularity, and it certainly offers the potential for new users to make friends whilst racing around and collecting gems, so its inclusion shouldn’t be sneered at.

Second Life Community Exhibition, January 2024 – expansion area for further community displays

Nor are these merely static informational areas – the aim is to both promote communities to Second Life residents and bring residents into the communities. As such, and as indicated earlier in this piece, each participating community is expected to provide some form of access into their community / experience, be it via teleport portal or HUD landmark giver, etc. In addition, communities can provide links to other resources they might have – websites, Discord channels, etc., – and displays / exhibits can utilise multi-media, etc.

Communities wishing to join the Exhibition can do so via the SLCE application form, which includes general guidelines on requirements / expectations. As to the rest, I’ll leave it to Strawberry and Patch Linden to discuss, via the Lab Gab recording below.

Overall, this would appear to be a good initiative – outreach to new users (and even existing users) is something communities and groups within Second Life can find difficult, so providing what is very much a “doorstep” opportunity to reach people through a  physical resource like this is something a broad cross-section of communities and groups could find beneficial, allowing for acceptance and length of time(s) featured within the Exhibition space.

SLurl Details

Looking at the New Linden Homes Store

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab

On Monday, October  9th, Linden Lab sort-of formally launched the new Linden Homes Store for Second Life, showcasing all the Linden Home types and themes available to those users holding a qualifying subscription account (at the time of writing, Premium  / Premium Plus), and which had been previously semi-previewed in a September 27th official blog post.

The new Linden Home Store is part of a project to completely overhaul what Linden Lab calls the “Land Journey” in order to provide a resource hub for all matters pertaining to land holdings in Second Life: how to lease one or more regions from Linden Lab, types of regions available, how to obtain Mainland, even how to go about locating and renting land from private estates / land providers.

The first part of this work actually launched in February 2023 in the form of the Land Portal, the core of the new hub. At that time, the Portal was little more than a “front page” showing what was to come, so rather than devote a full post to it, I covered it in one of my Web User Group meetings, as it was at one of those meetings where the launch of the portal was announced. While it does gather together information related to buying / renting land from existing sources, the Linden Homes Store is really the first major piece of meat on the bones in terms of a new suite of pages for the Portal – so what’s been done and how does it look?

The upper part of the new Linden Homes Store main page, as seen by someone in possession of a Linden Home.

General Overview

Store Home Page

In terms of looks, the first thing that hits the eye is that the store has – unsurprisingly – been produced using the new general page style and colours which have started to roll out across the Second Life web properties, as was the case with things like the Destination Guide. The Linden Home Store also borrows from DG in some elements of its look and feel, thus helping to further instil a sense of platform identity in to the pages whilst encouraging a degree of familiarity to help promote confidence of use.

But to get down to specifics. The Store’s home page offers two slightly different layouts, depending on whether a user is either logged in our out of their secondlife.com account and / or has a qualifying subscription account with a Linden Home already associated with it or not, per the images above and below.

upper part of the new Linden Homes Store main page, as seen by someone who does not have a qualifying account type / is not logged into the the Second Life web properties.

The What Next? section of pages displayed for qualifying accounts has some curiosities within it which raised my eyebrows:

  • The “Your home’s content pack” links to third -party purchasable add-ons for “2019+” Linden Homes. Whilst these are a handy resource, they actually have bugger all to do with the Content Packs actually supplied with the various themes – so why name the link thus? It’s unnecessarily confusing for those interested in seeing the different selections of items supplied with the various Linden Home themes.
  • Why on Earth utilise a video from 2010 which has nothing to say about the far more recent Linden Homes themes, which are liable to be of the most interest to recently upgraded account holders? Could not a more up-to-date video have been produced prior to the launch? If nothing else, a video that properly encompasses  all of the Linden Homes products also lends itself to acting as a promotional tool aimed at anyone accessing the Store, regardless of their account type.
  • Why on Earth is “Choose a different home” so called? It’s a link to the SL wiki page serving to introduce and describe “2019+” Linden Homes – so why not call it “Introducing Linden Homes” or something? As it is, the title suggests that by clicking it, the user will be magically whisked to where they can swap their existing home without the need to scroll further.
A closer look at the What Next? section of the Linden homes Store, as displayed to qualifying account holders with the niggling links (your home’s contents pack, Video tutorial and Choose a different home).

Beneath the What Next? / Amenities section of the page, is the main store listing. This comprises information panels for all Linden Homes, 2019+ and 2010., with panels listing slightly different information:

  • 2010 Linden Homes only provide a photograph of the house type, the name of its theme (e.g. “Tahoe” or “Meadowbrook”), and the parcel size.
  • “2019+” Linden Homes are listed by theme name (e.g. Ranch, Log House, Silt House, etc.), provide a photograph of one of the styles from the theme, number of layouts (styles) within the theme, location and parcel size.

This listing is periodically updated to reflect the current status of all Linden Homes: available themes / types are listed firt in the order Premium Plus Homes then Premium 2019+ Homes then Premium 2010 / 51w sq m parcel homes. And themes or types currently unavailable are then listed in the same order and labelled NOT AVAILABLE.

For those on non-eligible (for Linden Homes) accounts / who are not logged-in to the SL web properties, the Store will go on to display additional useful information on Linden Homes below the index list.

House Panels / Information

Clicking on a specific house / theme in the Store’s index list will refresh the page and display expanded information on the selected house / theme that the top, with the more recent Linden Home themes having more information available than the 2010 Homes, per the images below. The listing of homes will then continue below this expanded panel.

An information panel within the Linden Home Store for one of “2010” styles of Linden Home. Note the information on the left.

That the “2019+” homes have more information associated with them is not surprising, simply because they have more to offer. however, it did again give rise to some niggles:

  • The text “Includes X layout versions to choose from” (where X is a number) is followed by a link called Learn More. This gives the impression that clicking the link will display further information directly related to the theme (such as what the layouts are). Instead, it takes the user out of the Land Store and to the 2019 Linden Homes wiki page.
    • While this does contain some information related to the various themes, it’s hardly more informative that the information displayed within the Store and totally disrupts what has thus far been a relatively contained, seamless experience.
    • Given the effort put into the Store, it’s a shame time wasn’t taken towards building more detailed pages (with images) for the themes ahead of any launch.
  • Similarly, the text “Customise the colours of this home’s surfaces” is perhaps mis-labelled, and would be better called “About the Linden Homes Controller”, given it links to the section of the SL wiki page devoted to all of the Controller’s options, not just decorating.
An information panel within the Linden Home Store for one of “2019+” themes of Linden Home. Note the expanded information on the left, and the critquies of it noted in the above bullet points.

Some have also commented that listing the “2019+” Linden Homes within the Store in terms of their collective theme (e.g. Houseboat) rather than style (e.g. Windlass, Barnacle, Jolly Roger, etc.), and doing the reverse for the “2010” Homes, listing them by style (e.g. Aspen, Birch Cedar) rather than collective theme (e.g. Tahoe) is further confusing.

However, while I can understand thinking this way, I’d actually point out that it does in fact make sense: all “2019+” Lindon Home styles within a given are available through a rezzing system on the parcel, allowing the user to swap between them whenever they wish. However, this is not the case with the “2010” homes; regardless of the over-arching theme (Tahoe, Meadowbrook, etc.)., the only way to swap from one theme to another is to physically swap homes through the Store  – ergo, listing them by style rather than trying to group them by theme does in fact make sense.

General Observations

I will confess, other than kicking the tyres of the new Linden Home Store as described above, I’ve not taken it for a drive in terms of using it to obtain a Linden Home; frankly, I’m perfectly happy with the location of my current Linden Houseboat, and I have no desire to pack-up and be randomly moved for the sake of a test. Sorry.

That said, it should be noted that whilst you can see the various types and themes of Linden Home currently available when browsing the Store, while the actual house type / theme you pick might be in-world is still down to a random selection from the available stock; you cannot puck a specific parcel in a specific region. Nor should this be expected: building a system to list all the locations of a given house type / theme when these could run into the hundreds just isn’t reasonable; thus Support ticket remains the means but which to request a specific location.

I do find several other points in the design niggling / confusing. Why, for example, are “2019+” Linden homes on 512 and 1024 sq m parcels listed as “Free with Premium Membership” when they are in fact available to both Premium and Premium Plus? Why do Basic and Plus members who might not realise have to get half-way through the Choose This Home before being told they are not eligible? Would it not be better to divert them to the account updates page on clicking the Choose button, rather than displaying angry red text when they try to Confirm Their Choice? Why wasn’t the store hooked into the Linden Homes widget in the top right of the secondlife.com dashboard for Premium / Premium Plus members from the outset (and which currently still links to the “old” Linden Homes store)?

The updates page for choosing a Linden home. It is only at this point that Basic and Plus users are informed they are ineligible for a Linden Home and need to upgrade – diverting them to the account upgrade page on chick the earlier Choose This Home button might be friendlier.

These are all small points, and to be fair, LL does have a long history of releasing not-quite-baked features and updates into the wild and then tweaking them after the fact. As such, there is the potential for all of these personal annoyances to be be address as a natural part and parcel of that work. However, the fact that there are all these little niggles and potential points of confusion does negatively impact first impressions. Which is a shame, because overall, it has to be said this new Linden Home Store is a significant and welcome improvement to to previous version.

Linden Lab launches SecondLifeTime Premium and SecondLifeTime Premium Plus

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab

 

Update: following the publication of this article, Linden Lab published their own official announcement blog post.

On Monday, June 26th, Linden Lab announced a pair of “limited availability lifetime memberships”, wherein Second Life users have the opportunity to make a one-time payment to Linden Lab in return for a “lifetime” membership to Second Life based on either the Premium Account type or the Premium Plus account type.

Offered as a part of the Second Life 20th Birthday celebrations, these memberships are described by Linden Lab as follows:

For Second Life’s 20th birthday, we will be offering a limited number of lifetime memberships for both Premium and Premium Plus! This will give Residents who upgrade to this membership type the benefits of a Premium or Premium Plus membership for the lifetime of their account! You can see a comprehensive list of what Premium and Premium Plus Memberships are being granted on a first come first serve basis. 

– Part of the LifeTime Memberships announcement

In short, these accounts:

  • Feature a one-off payment.
  • Provide all of the benefits applicable to either the Premium Account subscription package or the Premium Plus Account subscription package, depending on which LifeTime membership is applied for.
    • The currently list of benefits for each account type can be found here.
  • Cost:
    • US $749.00 at the time of upgrade for SecondLifeTime Premium.
    • US $1,749.00 at the time of upgrade for SecondLifeTime Premium Plus.
  • Are limited to:
    • 200 applications for SecondLifeTime Premium.
    • 20 applications for SecondLifeTime Premium Plus.
  • Will remain in effect:
    • Even if the account holder cancels their membership – if they re-join later, they will be able to continue with their Second LifeTime membership.
    • As long as Second Life remains operational.
  • Due to there nature, LifeTime memberships:
    • May not be available to upgrade to other account types (e.g. from SecondLifeTime Premium to Premium Plus). However, requests for upgrade can be submitted via support ticket for case-by-case review.
    • Will not be available for downgrade, but will become the base-level membership account type for the holder.
  • Are being granted on a first-come, first-serve basis.

For further details, visit the official support announcement page.

How To Apply

Applications can be made by Support Ticket only.

  • Go to the Second Life Support portal.
  • Click the orange Submit A Ticket button on the top right of any page of the support portal, and sign in if you have not already.
  • In the support ticket form, select the ticket type Account Issue, and choose Request SecondLifetime Premium Account from the second drop down that appears.
  • Select which membership type you would like – SecondLifeTime Premium or SecondLifeTime Premium Plus.
  • Check the box that states, I accept the fee. This will be required for support ticket submission, and will allow your membership to be processed as quickly as possible.
  • Fill out any additional necessary details in the description section (e.g. if you have recently renewed either your Premium or Premium Plus subscription, add the date of renewal) and click Submit.
  • Allow up to 10 business days for Second LifeTime membership support ticket requests to be processed.

 

Linden Lab and Motown: a new approach to user on-boarding in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Motown Experience: contained within a Welcome Hub estate

On Tuesday, June 20th, 2023, Linden Lab officially announced the launch of a new partnership experience, this one with Capitol Music Group through their Motown Records label (see: Motown Records Enters the Metaverse with Exclusive Events and Immersive Second Life Experience – corporate press release – and Motown Records Debuts New Music Experience in Second Life – official Second Life blog post).

Of course, such partnership between the Lab and external entities are not new; nor, it is not unfair to say, have they perhaps been the most successful of ventures, as might be said to be the case with Film Threat and Zenescope Entertainment Inc (see: The Zenescope Metaverse in Second Life), and it is more than likely that this announcement will cause some rolling of eyes / raising of eyebrows in an “oh no, not again” style of reaction. However, this time, it is actually different, for a reason I’d like to focus on here and which I’ll get to in a moment.

At first glance, the Motown Experience might appear to be along the same lines of the likes of Zenescope – it is offered as a themed region, in this case intended to evoke Detroit and the home of Motown music, and is designed with music events in mind, hosted by a pair of venues, one indoor and the other out on the streets. Within this setting and through the involvement of STYNGR, Second Life residents and visitors to the platform can explore Motown’s rich music and roster of alumni, the music being provided through STYNGER’s unique expertise in licensing and right management and their ability to generate and provide curated playlists of music for stream into platforms and games.

STYNGR is the gaming arm of the recorded music industry, collaborating across all major labels and publishers to give you access to music and artists. With the largest catalogue of music in the gaming ecosystem, STYNGR partners with you to increase engagement, LTV, and visibility for your platform.

– from the STYNGR website

The Motown Experience HUD includes (l) small and hard-to-read instructions on enabling media for both the official viewer and firestorm; (c) the current track on the current playlist; (r) a list of available tracks, accesses by a small button sitting alongside the play/pause and skip buttons at the bottom of the HUD. Speaking personally, I found the HUD slow to respond (before the region even got busy), with the buttons frequently require 2-3 clicks

This is done via a dedicated Motown Records radio station, curated by Motown and STYNGR, and which can be accessed through an auto-attaching HUD (above), which provides access to the various streams the station provides (at the time of my visit, 5 were on offer, per the above images). These tracks can be accessed via a dialogue box triggered by clicking on a HUD button, with buttons also being provided to start / stop / skip tracks during media playback. In addition, visitors can obtain “Styngs”, which might be described as a “digital badge” that can be attached to an avatar and plays  snippets of their favourite Motown songs, and the region will be host to various events and activities.

All of which, admittedly, sounds like standard “partnership” fare; so what’s so special here? The clue is in taking a look at the map and / or camming around when in the region.

The Motown Experience sits within a nine-region estate built out as a comprehensive Welcome Hub that will in the new future be opened as a Community Gateway to receive incoming new users signing-up to Second Life. As such, it is designed to address what many people have felt has been missing from SL: a fairly engaging environment where incoming users can not only learn about the platform, the viewer and find out how to do the basics – they can actually get involved in activities and (allowing for the popularity of the Motown Experience as a music venue) actually get to meet other users and have some pleasant fun with them.

The Second Life Welcome Centre sitting adjacent to the Motown Experience

The heart of this hub – which is staffed by people signing-up to the recently announced new Second Life Mentors programme – is the Welcome Centre, where incoming new users will arrive, once the gateway aspect of the Hub is officially opened. This follows lines similar to the Welcome Island I first looked at in 2021 (see: Poking at the new Welcome Islands) and more recently, the BelliHub (see: A look at the new Belli Rub – I mean BelliHub – in Second Life), albeit with its own unique look and feel, which might be defined as semi-sci-fi. Here, as well as as taking lessons either directly or through Second Life Academy videos (isn’t that Second Life University elsewhere?), it s possible to try a game of bumper boats, or try taking to the air in little “robot-driven” flying cars.

Bridges from the Welcome Centre connect variously with the Motown Experience, a sandbox region (allowing visitors to discover the magic of prim-rezzing and banging them together), a sampling of Linden Homes (with open rezzers so the different styles of the available themes can be seen) a shopping district presenting something of a cross-section of content for sale from various creators (no idea how they were selected), and three games areas.

The Welcome Hub includes a Linden Homes region where many of the Linden Home themes currently available can be viewed, with the rezzers open to allowing visitors view the styles of home within a theme

The first of these is innocent enough, presenting an opportunity for people to dip a toe into combat-style gaming via a game of laser tag. This can be reached on foot directly from the Motown Experience region, or via the Shopping region. The remaining two games settings take the form of a Skill Gaming region tucked into one corner of the hub, and a copy of the (still) controversial Lab-developed “social casino” (which I still have yet to actually blog about, as my original piece lapsed into the realm of “meh-dom”). The latter met with (not entirely unjustified) negativity in the forums when the first one opened, and I admit I still cannot get my head around why it ever came to be seen as a good idea.

The Skill Gaming region – reached via either the Linden Homes region or the shopping region – I can understand; it may not everyone’s cup of tea (including me), but Skill Gaming is popular in Second Life. True, I’d rather see the space used as a broader show of what can take place in SL, but that’s a personal opinion. And that said, one thing that is showcased within the hub and via the cinema occupying its ninth region, is the potential for Second Life for producing quality machinima. For the opening, the cinema appears to be showing Waarheid, but I assume other films by residents will also be shown; although that said, I’d certainly not be averse to sitting down and watching “the truly fictious story of the battle of Dirty Hill” – We Were Moles!

The Welcome Hub cinema

Taken as a whole, this approach to providing a comprehensive hub environment with an active experience does represent a new take on a gateway experience for Second Life, and something that is going to be iterated upon and broadened through a rather of partnerships, as Brett Linden, the Lab’s VP of Marketing noted to me.

What you see now is our first test version [of] a new welcome hub we are testing.  It hasn’t fully been turned on yet to newcomers (and [it] will be tested along with other community gateways), and  but we expect to iterate and partner more with the community (and occasionally outside partners) for future iterations. We’ll be tracking things here closely and play-testing with newcomers to see what works and/or needs improvement for version 2.

Brett Linden, June 20th, in conversation

Given this launch, it is likely the new Hub and experience will be subject on comments and feedback during the upcoming SL20B Lab Gab sessions (of which more in an upcoming post), particularly given new user acquisition is a focus for the Marketing Team under Brett, and he and StyFy Linden from the team are featured in one of the upcoming shows sessions.

More broadly, this expanded tyle of Gateway / welcome facility for incoming new users does seek to address many of the critiques directed towards the on-boarding process: it is staffed by mentors who can provide a personal level of assistance; it covers the “first five (or fifteen) minutes” of in-world experience whilst offering a good opportunity to get to grips with the viewer and discover more about what Second Life is about; there is the opportunity to explore more broadly via the teleport portals (or should than be canons?!); there are local shopping and gaming opportunities; and – most importantly, and assuming the Motown Experience succeeds as a music venue / attraction for existing users as a well as new users – it presents the opportunity to meet people. In this, it might be suggested that how well it succeeds in helping incoming users to “stick”, once the gateway is open to incoming new users, is going to be down to how open, friendly and welcoming the established users visiting the Experience and its surrounding Hub are towards those newbies.

Certainly, I enjoyed my afternoon exploring the Hub regions – and my thanks, as ever, to Brett for his time in talking through aspects of the hub with me , and I will endeavour to keep tabs on what is happening with it over the next month or two; if not directly in relation to the Motown Experience, then certainly with the Welcome Hub as a whole.

SLurl Details

May 31st 2023: Reminder: Second Life Marketplace Upgrade

Posted on by Inara Pey

A quick reminder that the Second Life Marketplace will be undergoing infrastructure upgrades for an estimated period of one hour, commencing at 10:00 SLT on Wednesday, May 31st, 2023.

This work will involve, among other things, a reset of the shopping cart functionality, and any items users may have placed in their shopping carts for future  purchase will not be saved.

To to avoid any upset in having shopping carts emptied, Linden Lab recommends shoppers take one or both of the following steps:

  • Finalise all purchases ahead of the maintenance period, and complete pending transactions to clear your shopping cart.
  • For those items you are not in a position to purchase ahead of the maintenance period, or do not wish to purchase at this time but would like to keep recorded for future reference, list them either in your favourites or your wishlist.

During the maintenance period, the Marketplace will be unavailable for either shoppers or merchants to access. For complete details, please refer to this official blog post, and to the SL Grid Status pages for updates.