Linden Lab have unleashed another new product, this time dio, where you may be able to ride the tiger, you can see his stripes but you know he’s clean. dio has been on the horizon for a while, but now it seems to be cooking on gas and you can see some good commentary on Inara Pey’s blog post and Hamlet Au’s blog post, alternatively you can stick with me for cheesy 80’s rock references, look, someone was going to do it, I’m just taking one for the team and sparing other bloggers the pain of the cheesy references!
There’s also a very hand press release from Linden Lab, which can be read here. I’m still awaiting a reply from Peter Gray from an email from years ago now that I think about it, but one day, you never know. Anyway, what is dio I hear you ask, and no don’t go all 80’s rock again, well not just yet! Where was I? Oh yes, what is dio, well from the press reference Rod Humble is quoted as saying:
“dio is a new shared creative space on the web, based around the concept of linked spaces, dio makes it easy and fun to create or visit experiences of all kinds. dio is still in development, and we have deliberately kept the tools as broad as possible, but so far our testers have created a vast range of spaces, from wedding keepsakes, to house tours, to games, to rich media-linked chat rooms about sports and ancient history. I’m really looking forward to seeing what people will create now that dio is more widely available.”
I think this is something we’re going to need to see in action to really understand what’s going on, but an interesting part of dio is that there’s talk of being able to earn money, initially via ad revenue and further down the line from creations and what makes this press release more positive, from a Second Life perspective, is that Rod Humble even makes a reference to Second Life in the press release! Hurrah!
Mr Humble is quoted as saying:
“One of the things that’s made Second Life successful is that users are able to monetize their own creativity by selling their creations. Second Life’s economy was extremely robust with over $500 million worth of user-to-user transactions last year. With dio, we want to similarly empower creators by sharing ad revenue with them and ultimately allowing them to sell their creations, and our hope is that this will encourage the kind of incredible dedication and creativity we’ve seen with Second Life.”
For a start, there’s a reference to the Second Life economy there, something we haven’t been hearing much about from Linden Lab recently and it’s a mighty impressive figure that’s referenced, so for all the deathwatch folks, you need to go away for a while longer, there’s life in the old dog yet.
However I’m curious as to exactly how revenue in dio will work, Linden Lab were not long back advertising for a virtual currency manager. Now you may wonder what virtual currency has to do with dio, well there’s a reference to it in the terms of service of the dio website (hat tip to Hamlet Au for pointing this out). Indeed it’s not just that virtual currency is referenced, it’s a specific virtual currency, the long loved Linden Dollar. There’s also a reference to the Lindex … hmmm so will Dio users be flooding the Lindex, causing chaos with exchange rates? Who knows, let’s hope not!
Anyway, if you do want an early look at dio in beta, you can request an invite from the dio website. Alternatively you can dig out the air guitar, get headbanging and sing about a Rainbow In The Dark.
I remain unconvinced on L$ being used in dio, and am still swayed towards the ToS being boilerplated from the SL ToS (something I commented on when covering the website at the start of the year) – but willing to be proven wrong.
As it is, the monetising aspect of dio has (at least in part) been made clear by dio’s producer, Bo Barfield: it is through advertising.
Each “room” that someone builds has a Google Adsense widget built-in to it. The theory is that the more compelling a place is, the more people will visit and spend time in the rooms – and the more ad revenue LL will generate, some of which *at some point in the future* will be shared with the place creator.
When this will be switched on (obviously, no account details, etc., are requested when signing-up at present), and what the percentage of the “take” will be, isn’t specified anywhere as yet.
dio is surprisingly easy to learn – but could take a good while to master. More than that I’m not saying until I publish my more in-depth review!
IP
P.S. nudge Peter via IM vis-a-vis e-mails. He is usually pretty good with them.
Oh that’s a great line about it being easy to learn but taking a while to master but I must say, I’m impressed!