2010 Reviewed

As the new year approaches and we all get ready to look forward, it’s time to look back on a contentious, frustrating and disappointing year for Second Life. However there were highs as well as lows. This really was a topsy turvy year. This will be a fairly long post, I will warn you of that now, it will also miss some important subjects as my time is restricted, feel free to add your own highs and lows in the comments.

January

We were greeted with a very chirpy blog post from CEO Mark Kingdon. The post looked backwards and forwards and talked of the need to get users to that moment where they really embrace Second Life faster, by the end of the year we were still waiting for that moment, proving just how difficult a step it us but Linden Lab have made some progress there. Continue reading “2010 Reviewed”

Joe Miller Silently Departs

Whereas Jack Linden’s departure was announced on the blog to a largely disappointed public, another senior Linden has quietly departed. Joe Miller (Joe Linden), the VP of technology and platform development no longer appears on the Linden Lab Management page. This was reported by the very astute Tateru Nino, who tracks these changes with the assistance of Linden Lab’s Second Life grid databases.

I’m not sure when exactly Joe departed from the management structure, recently enough to find him still listed in a cached version of the management page, so it can’t have been that long ago.

Joe was a Linden whom I can’t recall ever having any contact with, he was however one of the five members of the executive management team, that team is now down to four. Continue reading “Joe Miller Silently Departs”

Humble New Beginnings

Ok first of all the name is comedy gold, come on, Rod Humble, as Laetizia Coronet pointed out on Twitter:

“There is an odd contradiction in the name Rod Humble. Like Biggie Smalls.”

However it’s not fair to judge a book by the cover….and when I stop giggling like a schoolboy I’ll compose myself to write a proper entry ….nearly there….ok ok.

Rod Humble has been appointed the new CEO of Linden Lab, as announced here as a press release and here on the blogrum. Mr Humble arrives from Electronic Arts, as did Kim The New Marketing Linden, which makes one wonder if there’s a special website for EA employees to seek out new positions at Linden Lab….moving on. Continue reading “Humble New Beginnings”

Enter The Dragon ….. Fish

A year or so ago Linden Lab entered into a business relationship with Dragonfish, the payment processing arm of 888.com, as reported here. Err when did Massively become linked to Joystiq.com? Anyway, I digress, the deal was designed to expand payment options, allow people to pay in local currencies if they’re outside the USA yadda yadda yadda.

This news was then swiftly forgotten as nothing seemed to happen, nothing that is until recently, as observed in a comment on my last blog post where someone points out payment via Paypal is going to be problematic in the future as the payment wiki states that payment via American Express and Paypal is not currently an option.

Concerns about this are raised on this thread on the blogrums and this thread at SLUniverse. The first thing to note here is that the payment wiki I linked to earlier gives an email support address of @888.com, this is why I believe Dragonfish are processing these payments, rather than Linden Lab. Why Dragonfish, or whomever is the payment processing arm of 888.com these days, have a problem with Paypal and American Express I don’t know, I do know that many people have stated that American Express impose high merchant fees for their payments, but give discounts for bulk deals, so maybe that’s the case or maybe it’s the link to online gambling that’s the problem for American Express and Paypal. I don’t know, I do know that the Paypal issue is a problem that is likely to fester though. The really odd thing is that PayPal is a payment option for 888’s online casino sites, so why is not acceptable for Second Life? Continue reading “Enter The Dragon ….. Fish”

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