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
Thoughts about Rod Humble / Rodvik Linden
I was reading Dusan Writer’s interview with Rod Humble / Rodvik Linden (Link Here) which made me realize that he wants to do something special with SL. I think Philip had the vision but I don’t think he continued it, M Linden had the Cash-in skills but no real vision and maybe Rod has them both, he understands the magic of live content creation, physics, events with people from all over the world and so on.
He is aware of the issues that “take the magic away” like lag and the current limitations of SL, and he probably wants to re-think Philip’s “Fast, Fun and Easy” strategy that didn’t really do lot of what he promised.
However, I feel he is understating “lag” as a thing he could fix by Q2 2012, and by that I mean (Mainstream mesh, perfectly working sim crossings, a more stable Region platform that could also support more avatars, long dead viewer 1.23 and a Viewer 2/3 that most of the people love to use) That is probably everyone’s wishlist, he needs to take away the “beta” feeling of SL that has been here since it came out of the beta in 2003.
I think Rod is the best person that could do this because he has an extensive background in Video Games where Lag is unacceptable, and I wish him good luck and I can’t wait to see the difference he will make here.
Why the New SL Display Names won’t be an identity crisis for SL
Many people reacted quite harshly when they heard about the introduction of display names (read more here) they are basically nicknames you can change on top of your SL User ID, in my case I could change my “Alvi Halderman” Nickname to just “Alvi” or “Alvi Blorbberman”, however the base name will always stay as alvi.halderman for logins and more official stuff like that
Many think this will be a huge issue, with trolly-noobs calling themselves Lindens or overall important people, but i think that something like that is an issue that could be resolved with regulations and this also happens on SL and on the Web already.
The Advantages might be huge, I have many friends and even family members that were interested in using SL as a Business or Educational Platform and the
need to have another name besides the one you already have in Real Life was a bummer.
A great quote I found up at NWN really tells a part of the story ”For Virtual Worlds to Grow, Avatars Must Become More Like Halloween Costumes Where Faces Can Still Be Seen”
I won’t even change my name because I started with “Alvi Halderman” and it became my brand but many people that want to make SL something like an alternative location to be with your RL friends and hang out like on IMVU or even Facebook instead of being completely anonymous would really work for some and I think this definitely opens up SL to another RL audience it wasn’t able to reach yet.
PS: If you’re reading this post and you’re an Engineer of some kind at Linden Lab better fix SL instead of adding fancy new things on top