By 2007 Linden Lab had moved their communications away from the forum and to a shiny new blog. At this point a few things should be noted, firstly, Linden Lab made great use of the blog and engaged in some excellent communications. However Second Life was growing, fast. This meant that blog posts attracted a lot of comments and many of those comments were of a negative nature.
Linden Lab employees must have found this frustrating and some people speculate that Linden Lab moved away from communicating due to the level of negativity. However users were engaged and negative though many comments were, they were of a cruel to be kind nature because people would not take the time out to be heard if they were not engaged with the platform. This sort of thorny situation plagues many a company when it comes to communications.
June 2007
Daniel Linden blogged Keeping Second Life Safe, Together. Ok, this was blogged on the 31st May 2007 but the ripples ran into June … ok feeble excuse but this was a controversial post. Daniel was asking for users to keep reporting questionable content. However some users felt that this post was a dig at adult content in Second Life full stop and took umbrage with the post. The controversy seemed to revolve around the term “Broadly Offensive” which was used in the post.
Torley Linden blogged First Look: WindLight update – beauty & bugs! This post, not surprisingly, concerned Windlight which was new at the time. The feature looked very exciting with talk of multiple suns, moons, region owners being able to control visitor settings and making it easier to edit presets. I think it’s fair to say that although Windlight was a great addition, it has never really fulfilled its potential.
Jeska Linden blogged Voice First Look Viewer Available for the Live Grid. Strange as it may seem these days, voice did not hit the grid until 2007 and was considered a controversial move. This blog explained that there was a voice viewer available and that Linden Lab would be seeking feedback. Ah they really did engage with the community back then.
Sabin Linden blogged Día de la Liberación and Het-Grid. Unfortunately the Second Life blog archive appears to have eaten that post, but it can still be found on the wayback machine. This was a bold move in which viewer updates would be optional and server updates were set to be released only to certain parts of the grid if circumstances dictated. This was of course the forerunner for what we see today with server channels for updates.
Sardonyx Linden blogged An open source community update. This was a post that thanked the excellent work they had engaged with to help fix bugs and add patches. The problem Linden Lab had was that they did not have enough developers to implement these updates, but this post suggested that developers had been hired which was allowing Linden Lab to implement these fixes. Many residents were credited for their help, far too many for me to list but they included the likes of Nicholaz Beresford, Alissa Sabre, Tharax Ferraris, Fremont Cunningham, Dale Glass, Able Whitman, Thraxis Epsilon, Peekay Semyorka, Argent Stonecutter, Jacek Antonelli, SignpostMarv Martin and Strife Onizuka.
June 2008
Michael Linden blogged LDPW Highways: Your L$ At Work. This blog post announced that Route 1 was well on its way to completion. These days there are at least 10 routes of public roads on the Second Life mainland, you can read more about them here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Department_of_Public_Works_Roads.
Katt Linden (AKA Miss Communication) blogged Second Life Login Screen, Now with More Info, and a few Questions. This post explained that Linden Lab had added some new features to the login screen, such as the latest updates to the blog and grid status reports. The login screen has evolved since this point to include event listings etc. but at the time this was an impressive move. The blog post also suggested that login page polls would be appearing to help Linden Lab gather feedback. I can’t remember seeing one, but that wasn’t a bad idea.
LauraP Linden blogged Responding to Questions about the DMCA Process. This post explained a little bit about Linden Lab’s DMCA policy, it was as big an issue back then as it is today and content creators were frustrated about it. However this post started with an apology, as Linden Lab had inadvertently disabled some content over the weekend.
Jack Linden blogged Mainland supply on hold until July. This post explained that Linden Lab would not be auctioning off any more new mainland regions until July at the earliest. This was due to average price per metre of land dropping from a high L$12/m to below L$6/m. Linden Lab wanted the price to be around L$6-L$8, which is more than wishful thinking these days, but this was the age of the Land Barons and Flippers, although that age was coming to an end in many ways.
Everett Linden blogged SL5B Opening Keynote: Watch wherever you are! Second Life was five years old, an important and impressive milestone and this was a big event. The sims were full for the live keynotes, which was expected so this blog post explained how you could listen via websites, via setting a stream on your own land parcel or how you could wait for Torley’s recordings.
SL5B featured a couple of big keynote speeches, there was the opening with Philip and new CEO M (Mark Kingdon) :
The second was the closing keynote from Mitch Kapor, this caused a bit of a stir because Mitch said : “The pioneer era in Second Life is beginning to draw to a close. It has been five years and we are at the beginning of a transition and I think it is an irrevocable transition.”
People felt that the Second Life they knew and loved was coming to an end, that major change was coming, that didn’t really happen.
You can find more about Sl5B, including text links of the transcripts of those keynotes here : http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/SL5B
June 2009
Howard Linden blogged Viewer 2009. This blog post put Tateru Nino in the naughty chair for writing a blog post for Massively : Second Life 2.0: A sneak peek at the new user-interface. Howard said that the new viewer would look very different from the viewer Tateru had a sneak peek of. However Tateru may have been a tad premature with her sneak peek, but she was bang on the money about the name, rather than Viewer 2009, this viewer became the much maligned 2.0, but that would be some months later.
Jack Linden blogged Welcome to Zindra. This blog announced that the adult continent of Zindra was officially open and came complete with a map. This opening was before the migration to Zindra and was really designed for people to explore the continent and find plots they may want to migrate to. There were quite a few blog posts about Zindra this month but as this is only a brief review it would be unfair to hog this particular post with Zindra only posts.
Sardonyx Linden blogged Improving the quality of group chat. This post explained that group chat had not been performing well. This post is an interesting read because it highlights some of the problems with group chat and explains some of the steps taken to improve group chat. Unfortunately five years later, people still complain about group chat. However improvements have been made over the years, let’s not forget that.
Michael Linden blogged Hau Koda Municipal Airport. This post explained how the Linden Department Of Public Works, in particular Misty Mole, Naughty Mole and Silent Mole had done excellent work on the terminal, tower and hangar at the Hau Koda Municipal Airport, which was designed to serve Bay City, but you don’t need to be a Bay City resident to engage with the airport!
Rob Linden blogged Snowglobe 1.0 now available. This blog post explained that Snowglobe, a viewer built by Linden Lab in conjunction with the Open Source community, had reached version 1.0. The idea of Snowglobe was, in Linden Lab’s words, to create : ” to create “a widely-used, openly developed version of the Second Life client which is a compelling alternative for a broad set of users, and contains enhancements and development that then rapidly make their way back into the mainstream Second Life version.”
“Katt Linden (AKA Miss Communication)”
Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow. So true :).
And yes, dear Mitch’s SL5B address. I have the video and the audio d/loaded for posterity, although I tend to point more to his long-winded version of “shape up or ship out” when referencing it. You’re kinder than I …
As I recall, I was a tad more receptive to Katt than you were, she was on my friends list!