We are all aware of the unwarranted and unnecessary attacks on the peoples of Ukraine that have been unfolding over the past week, and which have been the subject of condemnation that has been almost world-wide in its reach – including from within Russia itself, as the people there, also at no small risk to themselves, have taken to the streets in protest over the actions taken by their nation’s leadership.
With the increasing humanitarian crisis of dispossessed families fleeing the country increasing daily, together with the worsening state of affairs on the whole within Ukraine, on Friday, March 4th, Linden Lab issued a statement to the users of Second Life outlining the steps the company is taking to provide practical support to those in Ukraine and to help those in Russia who are opposed to their government’s actions – and which also includes some measure of assistance to SL’s Ukrainian community.
Linden Lab strives to make positive change in the world by helping people connect, discover themselves, and grow both personally and financially. Ultimately, we build and support communities. Therefore, it is especially shocking to see the actions in Ukraine, to see the unwarranted attacks on people – on communities. We are heartbroken and horrified by the situation in Ukraine and the humanitarian crisis it has perpetuated. We are a proudly diverse team, and many of us have ties to these events – historically, emotionally, professionally, and socially. Our products reach worldwide, and many of our partners and customers are directly affected by this crisis.
As a leadership team, this crisis has challenged us to better define and embrace what we believe to be the core principles at Linden Lab – our TAO so to speak.
Our work brings people together, builds communities. Our work helps people understand who they are, helps them be better. Our work brings empathy, helps people see the world through others’ eyes. Settle for nothing less than changing the world for the better.
We intend to live up to this principle, and while there is much work to be done, we are starting with:
Providing financial support for humanitarian crisis aid through a donation to the Red Cross Ukraine and HIAS
Supporting free speech in Russia through a donation to Meduza and OVD-INFO
Effective Monday [March 7th, 2022], we will be further supporting our eligible Ukrainian-based community members by granting them a temporary 30-day moratorium on recurring account fees such as Premium Membership and Land Maintenance fees. We will review this again after 30 days and assess what we can do as next steps where necessary. We invite any of our Ukraine-based community members to contact support with any specific questions they may have.
Finally, we encourage our community to look at ways that they can help show their support. It is heartening to see the Second Life community come together to support each other with numerous in-world events and helpful initiatives that bring us together as a force for good in both the physical and virtual worlds.
On Tuesday, March 1st, Linden Lab announced a new initiative to help promote communities active in Second Life through a new web-based resource, “in-depth” Community Pages designed to be “living projects” and intended to “be extensive resources by and for each community”.
To mark the announcement, the Lab has launched the first such page – Black Culture in Second Life – which launches just as Black History Month in the United States draws to a close.
The importance of community simply can’t be understated, and in Second Life, it’s invaluable. Think of how many different groups of people you interact with each day — what if you had a go-to comprehensive page that illustrates various aspects of each community in Second Life?
We’re excited to announce our new initiative! We’ve begun building in-depth community pages that will live directly on the Second Life website. Each of these pages will celebrate Residents in all different communities, and showcase the meaningful experiences that strengthen the social fabric of Second Life. This will include stories, quotes, photos, videos, and more — all directly from Second Life Residents.
– from the official announcement about the new community pages
The post goes on to note that those participating in such community pages should “keep an eye out for announcements on specific community pages, as there will be a (Google form) open to the public for each of them”. However, the post also cautions that not all submissions may necessarily be included within any given page.
It’s not clear exactly how visible these pages will be. They are clearly designed to be accessible to the world at large, but while the parent URL for the Black Culture page is secondlife.com/community/, there is no actual link from that page to the Black Culture page, as the direct URL given above is currently required.
Hopefully, this will be addressed as these pages grow, and a meaningful means of perusing / filtering the pages will be provided; two of the reasons Place Pages (arguably the last initiative similar in nature to this) didn’t take on were that a), the places.secondlife.com parent domain was never really folded into the rest of the SL web properties such as to make navigating to it easy without lodging the URL firmly between your ears; b) there was no convenient way to peruse / filter available places other than Search – which was far from handy.
You can read the complete blog post announcing the pages right here.
Linden Lab has announced that, as from March 31st, 2022, they will be applying sales tax for users in the United States on recurring billings such as Premium subscription renewals, and land fees.
The announcement comes with a note that the company will, for the time being, continue to absorb sales tax on point-of-sales purchases such as for first-time Premium subscription payment, Name Change fees, and one-time Linden Dollar purchases – although the announcement notes that taxes on such purchases will have to be passed on to U.S. users at some point in the future.
The blog post carrying the announcement reads in full:
Ever since Second Life’s inception two decades ago we have seen many local, state and federal governments impose new ways to collect tax revenue from internet-based businesses. The Wayfair Sales Tax case decision by the Supreme Court was when prior rules about sales tax really changed. Since then, we have done our best to shield our residents from these taxes as long as possible, but we are no longer able to absorb them.
As of March 31, 2022 we will begin charging sales tax in the U.S. For the time being we will charge taxes only on recurring billings, such as premium subscriptions and land fees. The amount of tax charged will be communicated clearly in the receipt or invoice.
We will continue to absorb the taxes at point-of-sale purchases such as one-time L$ buys, first-time premium subscriptions, and name changes. At some point in the future we will need to begin passing those taxes on to you. We will make another announcement when those charges are phased in.
Your individual charges will be determined by your local jurisdictions. There are more than 13,000 sales and use tax jurisdictions in the United States, with great variation in their rules and tax rates. Tax amounts are also affected by other factors such as the type of goods or services being purchased. To determine the charges, we will be relying on an automated third-party system which closely tracks local tax laws, so the tax amounts are always up to date.
This is news we don’t enjoy sharing, but for the health of the business and of Second Life, we can no longer continue absorbing these tax burdens.
Thank you for your understanding and your continued support of Second Life.
Again, please note the paragraph stating that the sale tax you may face is dependent upon your local tax jurisdiction – there is no “one size fits all” approach.
The Wayfair Sales Tax case refers to the 2018 South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc. et al case heard by the Supreme Court, in which the Court determined that an out-of-state seller (e.g. Linden Lab) can have economic presence in U.S. states where it has no physical presence, and can thusly be held legally accountable for collecting appropriate sale taxes on goods and services.
Since that decision, U.S. states have increasingly sought to mandate that out-of-state companies selling products in within their boundaries via electronic, etc., means and no physical presence, should collect sales tax on those sales.
The move by the Lab also follows past moves vis-à-vis the passing of Valued Added Taxed (VAT) charges for EU citizens (2007 – although there was later some revision to this in 2015), and passing VAT changes charge on to users in Norway, and Goods and Services Tax (GST) for citizens in Australia, both of which were announced in 2020.
Linden Lab has announce the coming introduction of a new account security mechanism: receipt of an e-mail notification when your account is being accessed from a previously unknown (aka “new” to the SL services) device.
Receipt of such e-mail notifications is something of a common standard for many platforms and on-line services, helping to provide an additional layer of protection against unauthorised attempts to access and use an account.
No actual date as to when this service will be going live is provided, but the Lab note that as it is rolled out, it is more important than ever that users make sure they have verified the e-mail address they use in association with their Second Life account.
We are going to be introducing an additional way for you to keep your account safe! When we detect that your viewer is being accessed from a new device, we’ll send you an email that looks like this:
SUBJECT: Important: [FIRSTNAME LASTNAME] used from a new machine to access Second Life.
Your Second Life account has been accessed from a new machine. If you recently logged in to Second Life from a new device you may ignore this mail.
Account: [FIRSTNAME LASTNAME] Time: [TIME IN SLT, example 2022-02-11 09:09.00 SLT] Originating IP Address: [IP ADDRESS OF NEW COMPUTER] If this was you, you don’t need to do anything. If not, we will help you secure your account: What To Do If Your Account Has Been Compromised.
This is a further measure in providing Second Life users with better account security; as a separate measure and in September 2021 Linden Lab implemented the first phase of multi-factor authentication, offered to users on an opt-in basis. This will soon be extended to include the viewer (see: 2022 CCUG and TPVD meetings week #5 summary and 2022 CCUG and TPVD meetings week #7 summary) – with further enhancements to the capability also being planned.
February / March are important months in the world of fashion, being the period when the “Big Four” cities – New York, London, Milan and Paris – each hold their own flavour of Fashion Week, giving home-grown and international designers and fashion houses opportunities to show off their collections and lines for the end-of-year autumn / winter season (with each city also hosting a further Fashion Week in September / October where they look towards the following year’s spring / summer season).
Over the last couple of years, these mega events have had to re-invent how they operate and reach their audiences thanks to Covid, with Zoom, Instagram, TikTok, AR and more all being experimented with and leveraged in one way or another. And while 2022 has seen many of the barriers to audience-based events relaxed (such that 5-day London Fashion Week, for example, will feature some 250 designers and fashion houses present their work to audiences at events across the city), some designers are retaining a virtual edge to their work, thanks largely to the all of the buzz around “the metaverse” and things like NFTs.
As reported by the likes of Vogue and Glamour UK, both the New York Fashion Week has, and the London Fashion Week will, feature designers with digital “metaverse” offerings – one of whom in particular has seen Second Life as having powerful relevance when it comes to fashion.
Designer Jonathan Simkhai
The individual in question is New York fashion designer and 2015 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund winner, Jonathan Simkhai. As a part of the New York Fashion Week event, he offered a special preview of some of his designs from his Autumn / Winter 2022 (AW22) collection at a special fashion show that took place in Second Life.
In all 11 pieces from the collection have been visualised for Second Life by none other than Mishi McDuff (aka Blueberryxx), founder and owner of SL’s popular Blueberry brand (and, I will admit, one of my go-to designers on the admittedly rare occasions I feel I need to spruce up my virtual wardrobe). In bringing the designs to SL, Blueberry has also given them a special “metaverse flair” – utilising the unique advantages of the digital world to offer twists to some of the items that cannot be replicated in the physical world – such as a sequined dress that gradually loses its embellishments and morphs into a bodysuit as the model walks the runway.
The items were presented to an invited audience of models, influencers, celebrities, and journalists from the fashion, technology and lifestyle industries. They had the opportunity to see the virtual items ahead of Simkhai presenting their physical world equivalents on the New York catwalk, so the guests could witness the virtual garments and their unique properties up close – and even try them on.
This may sound like something straight out of 2006-2008, when many physical world brands tried to hop into SL in the belief it would magically allow them to grow their market influence, but actually it isn’t. The Simkhai / Blueberry relationship is far more symbiotic and engaging, and for two reasons.
The first is that as well as being presented to invited guests, the Second Life Simkhai collection will be the subject of a series of catwalk shows open to Second Life residents on Thursday February 17th / Friday February 18th, with shows set hourly from 13:00 through 16:00 (inclusive – see the Destination Guide link at the end of this article). Not only will these serve to show the designs to the Second Life community, they will also – according to Vogue’s Maghan McDowell – allow SL users to purchase them at around L$1,000 per item.
The second reason is that Simhkai – who has already utilised the likes of Zoom and Instagram to engage with clients, customers and audiences and build “communities” – sees Second Life as a vibrant community into which he can tap in a bi-directional manner: he can bring his designs to a new, digital customer base, and he can offer existing customers a new and exciting way they can represent themselves, as he noted in talking to Maghan McDowell:
This is about introducing the brand to a new customer. And for my customer who might not feel like the metaverse means that much to her yet, this will be a nice introduction and discovery. My design philosophy is leaning into dichotomies or juxtapositions. We are all so obsessed about looking at fashion history, but this is really about looking forward and looking into the future, with Covid giving us a kick in the backside.
– Jonathan Simkhai, Vogue Magazine
In this, Blueberry is a particularly good partnership brand: not only has the brand achieved in excess of 20 million unit sales in the course of a decade, it has encouraged a loyal customer base, become a watchword for digital quality and also embraced platforms beyond SL. All of which adds up to the potential for a genuinely symbiotic relationship; given this, it will be interesting to see what comes of this initial experiment.
And how did Blueberry and Simkhai get their VIPs into SL? Rather ingeniously, as McDowell (again) explained in Vogue:
Before attending Simkhai’s virtual show, guests first submitted images that were turned into avatars, then selected which Simkhai piece they wanted their avatar to wear. Guests were dropped into the space via a link, viewing the collection — and other guests — from unique angles, just as they would in the physical world.
– Maghan McDowell
It’s a novel approach – one potentially not that easy to scale without a lot of work – but for small, specialised events, it is something that could help to get SL seen as a potential platform for a variety of events, presentations, etc., where previously it has been ignored. These may not do much to grow the platform’s retained and engaged user base, but that doesn’t mean they cannot help in terms of more focused engagement with the platform by a broad cross-section of possible audiences.
In covering the broader scope of fashion and technology – including the inevitable love affair with NFTs (albeit one with perhaps something more quantifiable for the purchaser that much of the dross / ponzi acts we’ve thus far seen) – the Vogue piece in particular makes for an engaging and informative read. It’s just a bloody shame that it sits behind a pay wall; hence why I include the Glamour piece; it is shorter and less detailed, but it does cover similar ground in talking about the Blueberry / Simkhai experiment and the “metaverse dabbling” (so to speak) of other designers such as Roksanda Ilinčić.
More is promised in terms of digital fashions in the coming year, and it really is good so see Second Life to be sitting pretty much at the centre of things at this point in time. Kudos to Mishi and Jonathan Simkhai in their collaboration; I genuinely hope it continues. And full marks to Jonathan Simkhai for not just going after the (yet to be proven) world of NFTs, but for leading from the front and dicing into the potential of Second Life.
I can’t operate in fear of being criticised, otherwise I would have quit this job six months into it. The bigger the risk, the bigger the reward. So many New York designers went to Paris to show — and we are going to the metaverse.
– Jonathan Simkhai, Vogue Magazine
With thank to Vikki Vortex for access to the Vogue article.
Philip Rosedale in Remember Second Life? It’s Now Taking On Big Tech’s Metaverse. Credit: The Wall Street Journal
If there is one thing that can certainly be said concerning the news that Philip Rosedale has “returned to Second Life” is that over the last few weeks it has certainly generated a lot of interest from the media.
I’ve already covered articles on Rosedale, Second Life and his views on “the metaverse” from the likes of Protocol (see here)¹, and VentureBeat / GamesBeat, c|net, and The Wall Street Journal (see here)² – admittedly with some speculation on my part on the case of the latter. More recently Wired and others have also covered SL, Rosedale and “the Metaverse”, and he has been interviewed by CNN, CNBC (the latter of which I’ve yet to summarise), and most recently, by The Wall Street Journal once more.
The latter takes the form of a video segment – embedded below – that features Rosedale taking about Second Life, its users and “the metaverse”, whilst comparing and contrasting SL with plans voiced by the likes of Facebook / Meta and Microsoft and touching on the Lab’s hopes for SL – including further hints at the direction in which the company is leaning in terms of upping the platform’s appal to a broader audience.
Running to 20 seconds short of 6 minutes, the video is actually a concise and honest look at SL, and comes complete with a careful underlining of the age of some of the in-world footage used – a refreshing touch given that so often we are confronted with “archival” images / footage of the platform that get presented without any cage context, and so can leave people thinking they are looking at SL as it appears today.
Starting with Zuckerberg enthusiastically stating how people will all “work, learn, play, shop” in “the metaverse”, the piece quickly reminds viewers that for Second Life, all of that promise is very much a case of “already there and doing all of that, thank you!”. It then offers a fairly accurate recap of SL’s history in terms of early attractiveness, user engagement, and gradual (if somewhat low-key overall) resurfacing of interest (which predates all the current “metaverse” hype by around 24 months). As such, it neatly packages:
The the history of SL and its longevity.
The broad attractiveness people have found with the platform – notably the appeal of content creation and the power of the economy SL has forged.
A frank, thumbnail look at some of the issues those coming into the platform face in trying to understand it (the IU, understanding avatar operation & customisation, finding others (particularly those of a like mind) with whom to interact, etc.
Slightly conversely with the above, it also underscores the fact that while complex to understand, SL’s avatar system is still incredibly powerful and well beyond anything the likes of Meta are considering.
The reiteration of the idea that virtual worlds down actually need VR or other headsets for engagement, and any focus on such hardware will, for a foreseeable future at least, remain a hurdle to potential engagement rather than a benefit
The openness in allowing some doubt about all the current hype around “the metaverse” to be expressed.
The underlining of LL’s approach to basic aspects of their platform in order to (hopefully) generate better user take-up and retention (e.g. improving performance, developing mobile support, improving (/simplifying) avatar user and the viewer’s UI).
The video also neatly encapsulates some of the problems “the metaverse” faces that appear to be outside of the thinking of Meta, etc. One of these is clearly stated by Rosedale: getting the vast majority of people simply comfortable with using avatars for tmany of their interactions. Like it or not, this is a stumbling block, and one Rosedale is correct in point out. Were it not, then after nigh-on 20 years, it would not be unfair to assume SL’s user base would likely be somewhat larger than its current 1 million active monthly users.
That said, this is also where the video is apparently a little too glib. In making the comparison between SL’s and Meta’s monthly active users (3.5 billion for the latter across its platforms), there is a suggestion that Meta has a big head start – but that’s hardly the case. If anything, I’d suggest the Meta has made its life that much harder compared to LL. Not only do they have to convince that 3.5 billion active user base of the need to swap away from doing much of what they do “in (first) person” – so to speak – to doing it with an avatar, they’ve also got to convince them to do so with a headset strapped to their faces. Given that currently, they probably have around 10 million headset users out of that 3.5 billion, they clearly have a huge mountain of their own to climb to get the rest to invest in headsets, even with a cash pot of up to US $10 billion to spend in doing so (which I assume includes money directly related to further headset development, etc.).
There are some wider holes in the piece that could be picked at – such as what the likes of Microsoft and Meta really mean by “interoperability” and the “movement of assets”, and whether, beyond some perfunctory basics they’ll really go down that path (after all, walled gardens are the best way to hold on to an audience – and their money); but at the end of the day this isn’t a piece on the metaverse per se. It’s about Second Life and its continuing relevance in the world today.
Linden Lab has announce the coming introduction of a new account security mechanism: receipt of an e-mail notification when your account is being accessed from a previously unknown (aka “new” to the SL services) device.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 