Linden Lab’s Anticompetitive Moves
It all started when Linden Lab stopped being a Land Provider and started to Make side jobs that the residents should do like the Editorial Work on the Showcases and that “Sandbox” newsletter. Most of the time, when Linden Labs gets in a Market they kill it by taking over it. But when is it forgivable?
Web Marketplaces
2 or 3 Years ago Linden Lab purchased the two most popular web marketplaces, XStreetSL (Previously named SLX) and OnRez and launched their own one.
Why you can forgive them:
It makes it easier for everyone, you don’t need two passwords, you don’t have to go to an ATM to deposit money for that separate account and merchants will get the new direct delivery system soon that will work better than Magic Boxes.
Why you can’t forgive them:
They Killed a market and also any chance of further Innovation, they could just have made API’s to get closer to that experience and they could use more of their staff on the important stuff that needs to be fixed.
Social Networks
Linden Lab bought and Killed “Avatars United”, which was a pretty big social network for many Virtual Worlds and MMO’s, they also Just released web Profiles for Viewer 2 that Include Status Updates “Friends Suggestions”, which is some sort of a small Social Network that will probably kill the need of any other Network. (Check out my blog post on what It could potentially do to kill this market too)
Why you can forgive them:
Second Life is already a social network, even if you don’t like how it sounds. Having the need to sign up for another site to Socialize with people is too much. It’s easier, all your friends are on it already and you won’t have to worry about another Social Network in your life.
Why you can’t forgive them:
They could just make Viewer Plugins that would be like advanced HUDs (Shared Media HUDs are a start) and anyone that wants to start a social network could do all that or more.
Editorial Work
Linden Lab has many people doing “Editorial Work” Like choosing which places get into their showcases and even started making Fashion and Decoration choices in their “The Sandbox Newsletter”.
Why you can forgive them:
It makes it easier for new users to like Second Life, which indirectly helps the market. That’s the single reason I can think of.
Why you can’t forgive them:
This affects multiple markets, it makes Mainstream Businesses richer and those new ones loose most of their chances to ever succeed. They affect the Editorial Market too, not that much since most people kinda hate it. Bloggers and Magazines should do that job, not Linden Lab
Conclusion
Most of the time these Business moves help Second Life survive to make it easier to use for less tech-savvy people, which helps the growth of the grid, something that will make everything better in all ways. Other Virtual Worlds like Active Worlds didn’t do these and they stayed as underdogs for even a longer time than SL, so at least we are not on the wrong path. Like it or not, this is how SL is evolving and succeeding
Its nice that the Lab started merging these things together, but to further inovation they need to make more API’s like you mentioned. The most important of the API’s we wish we had would be an account API. EVERYONE who is a major player in the consumer/business/social media world has these. Microsoft/ facebook/ google did it and it technically wouldn’t be that hard to implement either. A simple API like this would make the lives of those of us trying to push the technologies presented in viewer 2+ to move the grid to a new stage of web enabled and low script in world devices. At least i know that API would save me weeks of time designing a method to update an avatars entire information library thou relay scripts and other third party API’s.
I Also never used Avatars United, But i cannot and will not forgive them for that one. That was just a fiasco like no other. The social site was not just for second life, and if the Lab knew or possibly knew running it would not be fiscally valid in a few months then why buy it!… Unless of course it was bought due to some fancy technologies that were used to create it that later led to advancements inworld and on the official sites. But that we will never know.
Very nice, i suggest webmaster can set up a forum, so that we can talk and communicate.