{"id":3836,"date":"2014-03-29T20:46:31","date_gmt":"2014-03-29T20:46:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/?p=3836"},"modified":"2014-03-29T20:46:31","modified_gmt":"2014-03-29T20:46:31","slug":"facebook-should-not-buy-second-life-for-the-sake-of-both-companies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/?p=3836","title":{"rendered":"Facebook Should Not Buy Second Life For The Sake Of Both Companies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bopete Yossarian has started a thread over at SLUniverse<\/a> to discuss an article that appeared this week on Gamasutra :\u00a0Why Facebook should buy Linden Lab<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The article also falls into the trap of saying :<\/p>\n

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.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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 :<\/p>\n

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.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In December 2011 Hamlet Au over at New World Notes reported :\u00a0Facebook Reportedly Deleting Many Second Life Avatar Profiles; Linden Recommends Facebook Pages Instead<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> but it shows how silly their policy can be.<\/p>\n

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 <\/a>with regards to photo uploading on SL Share.<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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!<\/p>\n

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