Linden Lab have posted a blog post, which is surprising enough in itself, but it’s also one that could be very productive. Linden Lab are asking for bloggers to submit posts to them for consideration to be published on their community blogging platform. The blog post is here. There are guidelines, which should be observed, the sticking point for some bloggers is going to be Linden Lab’s insistence that the content needs to be exclusive to them, I don’t really understand why they have that restriction.
However overall the idea is a good one because it allows a wider scope for Linden Lab to advertise their wares. I’ve spoken before about how Linden Lab could do with someone blogging about Second Life’s broad range of activities, having bloggers submit posts is one way of addressing that.
However there won’t be any adult content posts, as they would fall foul of the community participation guidelines, that’s understandable. Linden Lab have suggested some categories, such as fashion, home decor, Mesh, spirituality, education and music but they are just suggestions, hopefully those bloggers who do submit articles will go way beyond those areas, roleplaying, arts, scripting tips, building tips yadda yadda yadda.
There’s potential here for those who feel inclined to participate and I wish Linden Lab and any bloggers who submit posts all the best with this venture, it could turn out well, at least LL are making an effort here to try and reach out to their greatest source of content, their own community. I hope Linden Lab do go ahead with this idea, I still think they should have their own community blogger too but you can’t always get what you want.
This of course comes hot on the heels of Hamlet Au over at New World Notes reporting that the SL bloggers group is back in business. Since the demise of Tao Takashi’s excellent worldofsl blog feed, there hasn’t been a good feed of general Second Life related blogs so hopefully this can work out too, there are fashion feeds of course, but a wider feed isn’t around, well not one I know of anyway, if you know of one tell me!
On a side note, I found out about Linden Lab’s blog post because of blog bot over at SLUniverse, I seem to notice more of LL’s blogs over there than I do when I login to the Second Life website, this is an old complaint of mine and I still can’t quite put my finger on the reason for this happening but the official blog for some reason just doesn’t reach out and touch me.
Write for free a corporation that’s already vastly overcharging me for their services and providing a level of support to some users that would be considered a violation of the Geneva Conventions (Ina Centaur’s Shakespeare experiences)?
Um… no.
And I considered Tao Takashi’s blog feed to be training wheels for building your own blogroll. You get started on it, you pick out a few you like and trust, and then get the wheels taken off.
-ls/cm
Well I think there’s some merit to the idea, it can give people extra reach for their ventures, it’s not something I’d participate in being as I’m still awaiting a reply about their press corps, a reply from their roleplaying team and the exclusive content deal, which probably is a fair case for asking to be paid, but I wouldn’t dismiss this out of hand.
I’m with Crap on this one (and most things, actually 😉 ).
If LL want me to devote time and effort meeting their requirements for blogging, then they can pay me for the privilege, particularly if they wish to hold editorial sway over what amounts to my IP.
It’s not as if they’ve not done it before where writing is concerned. Same if they want users to supply tutorials or whatever.
The exclusive content deal is the most objectionable part from where I sit and I do think they should be paying someone to blog about the community, but we’ll see how this goes, it might open some new avenues.
As I understand that post from LL, they want us to submit blog posts to them (for free). Then they will edit them to say what they please and publish it under our names!!!!
NOT!!
Yes they need to take a look at their guidelines and work for mutual approval at the very least.