Bopete Yossarian has started a thread over at SLUniverse to discuss an article that appeared this week on Gamasutra : Why Facebook should buy Linden Lab. The article is posted by a community member called Nick Harris, rather than a regular member of the Gamasutra staff, the opinions in the article are therefore not the opinions of Gamasutra or its parent company.
The article doesn’t really delve into the reasons why Nick Harris thinks this is a good idea, which sort of undermines the article. However the idea is an interesting one, so is the idea that Microsoft or Yahoo! should buy Linden Lab. The ideas are interesting in terms of discussion but generally lack any real meat on the bones.
The article also falls into the trap of saying :
Facebook have tried to retain its dominance through simple critical mass, if that is where everyone is, if you have to join Facebook to not miss out on invites to your friend’s impromptu parties then their hope is that you will and you won’t mind the data mining they do on you for market research and the targeted advertising. You aren’t in a position to complain, really, as it is a service they are providing to you for free.
This is a pet peeve of mine. Facebook is not free, it’s an exchange of resources. They provide the service, users provide the content, Facebook then realise value from said content. Although there’s no money exchanging hands in terms of basic usage of Facebook, there is a trade of content for service. However that aside, the author really doesn’t make much of a case for Facebook to buy Second Life :
Not only is this primarily a social nexus like Facebook (a place where you can project whatever version of yourself you choose others to see, either using a younger image of yourself, or making an effort to dress up for the photo when you are actually a slob in real life, or use someone else’s image entirely out of low esteem, or some catfish scam), but you are encouraged to create an escapist alter ego through which to indulge your fantasies, to travel without time, cost, or hassle to “see the sights”, to meet new people who share your interests unrestricted by enormous geographical separation.
Whereas I can see to a degree what he’s trying to get at, he seems to be missing a gaping point about the differences between Second Life and Facebook.
In December 2011 Hamlet Au over at New World Notes reported : Facebook Reportedly Deleting Many Second Life Avatar Profiles; Linden Recommends Facebook Pages Instead. This is a huge difference between the two platforms, Second Life has long embraced pseudonyms, they actually pretty much enforce them. Ok these days you can change your display name but historically people used their Second Life names and many of us adopted them outside of Second Life.
Facebook on the other hand, does not like pseudonyms and when they get wind of them, they take action. Their platform, their choice, although I’ve always found this to be a silly approach because what Facebook really wants is your interests and habits and pseudonyms may well provide more of them than someone using their real identity.
Facebook’s insistence on real names reached farcical proportions when they were trying to get the author Salman Rushdie to use his first name of Ahmed, instead of Salman, his middle name, even though he’s widely known as Salman and that name carries more weight. Eventually Facebook caved in and apologised but it shows how silly their policy can be.
Facebook and Second Life are poles apart on identities, they really aren’t a good fit. I have a Facebook page, but I don’t have a regular Facebook account. I don’t really see any crossover here that would make a Facebook purchase worthwhile and it should be noted that Linden Lab recently fell foul of Facebook’s policies with regards to photo uploading on SL Share.
However other than the identity issues, Second Life isn’t really that attractive a platform for someone to purchase. The technology is ageing, the platform is resource hungry, the users can get grumpy, user generated content scares the life out of other organisations and some of Second Life’s content scares the life out of its own users. In other words, it’s really not an appealing purchase other than the user base and how many of them would happily go to a new Facebook owned world running with Oculus Rift and leave behind their inventories?
We’re back to a point I made in my previous article about World Of Warcraft having the people, Second Life has the people too but those people are attached to Second Life, they aren’t any more portable than World Of Warcraft users. The value of Second Life lies in its user base and they are not going to easily be bought.
Although I’m heavily critical of Facebook on these pages, I do think they get a lot of things right and I do think they’re right to branch out, but I really can’t see a compelling case for them to buy Second Life or Linden Lab. However I’d be delighted if Facebook bought Versu from Linden Lab and developed that!
Don’t worry.
They won’t.
Can I quote you on that :p
World of Warcraft users seem a lot more portable than SL users. The friends I have who used to play WOW have move all over the place to other MMO’s, I don’t think SL has had a good enough alternative yet to test wether SL users would move.
If anyone where to buy Linden Lab, I would imagine it would be for it’s technology and IPs not its content or users. But I don’t think anyone will buy LL when the founder is building high fidelity from the lessons learnt from building SL.
WoW is more portable in many regards because when you go through with one character, you’ll often roll another, so moving to another MMO is not as big a hardship, but people do get attached to WoW, that’s why so many go back when they release expansions.
Second Life is different, people are more attached there, they’ve paid for those inventories, that is an even bigger tie in, if people could export their content we might see more portability.
I think the users are the important aspect in Second Life, the technology is a bit creaky these days, although that could be ported to another similar experience, for example cloud hosting.
It depends on what they are planning down the road. And you need to keep in mind that plenty of Facebook’s IT worked on, indeed built, Second Life.
They would buy it as a temporary holding for Oculus. They would buy it for the patents, virtual currency, and Marketplace.
They wouldn’t need to allow their interested customers to even go into the old grid. They could build a new grid/chatrooms on top of it. They are not interested in the old SL customers and losing us would be no problem.
And once Rosedale’s HF is ready, they could kill SL to give it a monopoly.
This is all fairly easy to understand, I don’t know why people have blinders on about it.
“And you need to keep in mind that plenty of Facebook’s IT worked on, indeed built, Second Life.”
No-one is forgetting that. However, many who worked at SL are now working with Rosedale at High Fidelity.
“They would buy it as a temporary holding for Oculus. They would buy it for the patents, virtual currency, and Marketplace.”
SL carries massive baggage that exceeds the benefits. The IP is locked into a decade-old monolithic code structure (server and viewer) that is unwieldy, hard-to-maintain (to the point where fundamental updates to the platform requires years to implement), and which is seen as have a stagnant user base, a steep learning curve, and poor public perception.
As such the market value is limited, and the IP value questionable.
“They could build a new grid/chatrooms on top of it.”
Except the SL infrastructure is fundamentally limited in this regard due to the aforementioned monolithic nature. Everything is so fundamentally interwoven that buying it and slapping-on a new chat system isn’t as easy as it sounds (hence why LL themselves are poking at the group chat mechanism very carefully).
In this respect, were FB wanting a grid-based VW, they’d potentially be far better-off buying an OpenSim venture. Such as Kitely.
– It has IP that is definitely more leading-edge, in the on-demand region servicing and management code
– It has a micro-currency and a Marketplace serving multiple grids
– It is a small, agile company which can be easily absorbed with next to no associated overheads
– It has no additional investor baggage
– It even has Facebook integration built-in!
OK, so that last one was a little tongue-in-cheek, but even so, if you’re looking at a grid-based VW as a value proposition worth acquiring, there are potentially better alternatives to LL / SL.
Now to High Fidelity. I’ve already blogged why it is likely to be far more attractive to Facebook than Linden Lab.It’s young, hip, and with vapourware that can be turned to any task.
It is co-owned and run by the guy who worked with Cory Ondrejka to actually create Second Life and which, as noted, employee ex-LL staff known to Ondrejka.
So, again, why waste time acquiring LL and then trying to absorb it, or simply for the IP that’s unlikely to have major value, when you can grab the young sexy and grow it into what you want?
The only thing that might favour LL in terms of an future acquisition is whether or not they have anything hidden up their sleeve WRT “next generation” VW’s. Leave us not forget that in October 2012 – possibly 6 months ahead of the company investing in High Fidelity – Rod Humble publicly stated to me that LL is “investing” in virtual worlds (plural), although it would be (at that time) 3-5 years before anything would be seen of this.
Now, were that a hint that the company were working on something like a “son of SL”, free from the contraints of the original – then maybe they could have something worth waving under FB’s (or whoever’s) nose …
Read what I wrote.
I said they were most likely interested in HF. I said they would buy SL to kill it.
No one is buying open sim with stolen crap on it.
All they need to do is build a Facebook addendum grid to Second Life. It will be treated as a chat room or a display for oculus. They don’t need the old grid.
The old code, would only be a temporary measure until they get HF or whatever.
I swear no one reads what I write and only listens to their own musings.
Second Life no matter how many people denigrate is the ONLY game in town when it comes to a virtual world. Blue Mars and Cloud Party FAILED. Open sim has no one accept scammers and the NSA who don’t want to pay for premium. Any VR up and coming will have to compete against. Any VR up and coming will NEVER be as free thinking as SL is right now.
Obviously it will have to be shot in the head.
The LindeX …. that could be very valuable.