Ciaran Laval

January 16, 2013January 16, 2013

Linden Lab’s Management Are Quiet, But Seem To Have Fun With Their Biographies

I can’t remember Sandy Linden, apparently Sandy was formerly VP of HR for Linden Lab. Now I’m not going to be familiar with, or even remember, every Linden, but this man seems to be extremely well regarded by people who do know him, exemplifying that Linden Lab have indeed hired some serious talent over the years. This struck me as I found a story that Sandy Gould, who has been working for Disney/ABC has been recruited as senior vice president of global talent acquisition and development for Yahoo! The story is on TechCrunch: http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/08/yahoo-hires-former-disneyabc-televisions-sandy-gould-to-lead-talent-acquisition-and-development/

Rather interestingly the Facebook comments on the TechCrunch article are started by a former Linden whom I do remember, Ginsu, who has an old complaint about stories that mention Linden Lab:

Dammit it’s Lab not Labs! Linden Lab. <sigh> Congrats Sandy!

However it’s not TechCrunch’s fault … this time! They are quoting the Yahoo blog post about Sandy’s appointment: http://ycorpblog.com/2013/01/08/sandy-gould/ The interesting thing about this is the way they tie Linden Lab/Second Life together. This is something Rod Humble has been helping to fix by releasing new products, of which Versu goes quieter and quieter by the way, there’s less info on the homepage for Versu now than at any time since I’ve seen the page!

However back to Sandy Gould, there’s an interesting article from 2008 in The New York Times which mentions Sandy: The Job Interview, Starring Your Avatar. This features a description of Second Life being used for … umm… job interviews, as well as Sandy being in a Superman outfit to conduct said interview.

The article also calls Second Life a Multi-User Virtual Evironment, or MUVE, which isn’t exactly an acronym that has caught on but is a good retort to people who tell you Second Life is a game!

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January 15, 2013January 15, 2013

Ideas On Offsetting Tier Costs

“Although we currently do not accept L$ in lieu of land sale and maintenance fee payments, we could. Acceptance by Linden Lab of just one month of land sale and maintenance fees in L$ denominated payments could cut the in-world money supply by more than 50%.” – Zee Linden, 14th August 2007 – Second Life Economy Blog Post.

I’ve quoted Zee there, who was the chief financial officer of Linden Lab a while back, because The Marketplace arguments are tied tightly to the tier being too damn high arguments. I’ve argued in the past and continue to argue, that Linden Lab can’t cut tier until they find alternative revenue sources.

Inara Pey has an excellent blog post explaining why slashing tier would be problematic: Tier Cuts : Looking From The Lab’s Perspective. There are some eye watering figures on how much income Linden Lab would potentially lose from slashing tier by a third: “However, were the Lab to cut tier by one-third, they immediately slash monthly private region revenue by $1,400,520. That’s equivalent to 4,747 full private regions vanishing from the grid – 1.6 times more that the total number of private regions (full, Homestead and OpenSpace) lost in 2012.”

This is the stark issue facing Linden Lab and one which explains why tier is unlikely to be slashed anytime soon. However this doesn’t mean nothing can be done, Linden Lab need to get their thinking caps on but a couple of areas which could be investigated are with regards to timed usage and greater use of Linden Dollar sinks.

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January 15, 2013

Bring Inworld Vendors Into The Marketplace

There’s a raging debate over at New World Notes about land ownership and The Marketplace. The case being put forth is that of requiring land ownership to list items on The Marketplace. This isn’t something I agree with, not because I don’t think the idea has merit, but because I feel that the horse has bolted on such suggestions, the time for ideas like this was when Linden Lab unleashed The Marketplace, to make changes like this now would cause too much mayhem and ill feeling.

The Marketplace has undoubtedly eaten into the need for land ownership in Second Life, some would say this is simply evolution and that this is Second Life’s very own bricks and mortar challenge. The problems are many, sims used to rent shop space to help subsidise other ventures, such as art, entertainment and roleplaying. These ventures are struggling in the face of The Marketplace Juggernaut, ultimately the reason is that the tier is too damn high.

However The Marketplace has made some odd decisions, Direct Delivery which means you don’t even need a plot for a magic box and having a shop link in the viewer that takes you to The Marketplace being two very odd decisions by Linden Lab, both of which help to negate the need for land ownership and help to accelerate the struggle for sims who want to provide a location for someone to do something. The shop link is the most annoying to me because to be found in inworld search, not only do you need to have some land of some sort, rented or owned, but you also need to pay a Linden Dollar 30 listing fee each week. Ok Linden Dollar 30 is peanuts, but there’s a principle here, why should marketplace merchants be found inworld for free? Ok they lose some of their sales fee to a commission if they make a sale, but that still stacks the scales in favour of The Marketplace merchant.

The Marketplace is great for merchants and it’s great for those who want to try their hand in more niche areas, where inworld land ownership is prohibitive because of upfront costs. However inworld merchants deserve a bit of Linden loving too. Rather than undermine The Marketplace, how about listing inworld items on The Marketplace automatically, by use of a Marketplace vendor?

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January 14, 2013

John Pathfinder Lester To Give Talk Today At Open University’s Deep Think In Second Life

I’ve received a mail to a mailing list I’m on detailing a talk today, at 1pm SLT, by John Lester (formerly known as Pathfinder Linden) at The Open University’s Deep Think West. I’m not in any way affiliated with the Open University, so I can’t answer questions about the meeting, Tori Landau is the SL avatar who sent the email, details below:

Details of today’s Meet are below, however, before the Meet there will be the first drop-in at the Welcome area at Deep Think for 30mins from 12.15pm slt / 8.15pm GMT. The drop-in is a chance for people to come along and talk about anything as well as offering support on using SL and any problems people may be having. If anyone else wishes to run a drop-in please feel free to contact me.

SLURL Location: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Deep%20Think%20East/224/38/32

Mon 14th – Monday Meet at 1pm slt / 9pm GMT

John Lester (SL: Pathfinder Lester (formerly Linden)) giving the talk, “To invent the future we must build dreams“.

John is the chief learning officer at ReactionGrid and is currently focused on virtual world research and development using Unity3d, Opensimulator and Jibe. From 2005 to 2010 John worked at Linden Lab, the creators of Second Life where he led the development of the education and healthcare markets. Previously John worked at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. John has a background in neuroscience research.

You can find out more about John here: http://about.me/pathfinder

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January 12, 2013

Processing Credit Delays Lead To Frustrations

One of the big draws of Second Life is the ability to sell Linden Dollars and withdraw them to Paypal or other means. Some people don’t like the monetary side of Second Life but it is very much a draw. To withdraw your US dollars you go through a process which is called process credit, which is explained here.

Linden Lab aim to process credit within 0 – 5 working days, it has generally been 3 -4 working days in my experience. They note that during holidays and times when volumes are high it could be longer, which is currently where we are on January 12th, a while after the holidays.

A couple of threads have arisen about this, one in the merchants forum: Delay on Cash Out where the OP says:

I wonder how many of us are seeing big delays on cashing out the USD out to Paypal.

From what I hear LL are blaming Paypal for the delay and Paypal say its got nothing to do with them.

At the end of the day (as ALWAYS) we just have to wait on LL. I was just wondering how many are seeing delays and how long we can expect to wait. I have been waiting since 2nd Jan, 2013. Anyone waiting longer?

It would also be nice if Linden Labs actually informed customers of this problem, but that would fall under customer service which LL lack greatly on.

I have no idea what is causing the delay, but there is a delay, although people are managing to process credit, so speculation regarding Linden Lab’s cash flow is certainly wide of the mark and definitely unhelpful.

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