Monday, November 3, 2008

Can Linden Lab stop the exodus?

I dropped in on my new friends over at the Openlife Grid this afternoon and learned that they've enjoyed 30,000 sign-ups and over 1,000 land orders, just this week.

Meanwhile, Hamlet Au (aka Wagner James Au) has just reported that in his phone conversation today with Mark Kingdon, Linden Lab's new CEO said that "in the next few days, the company will post an update to this policy which will incorporate feedback from Openspace owners."

Too little, too late?

* Second Lifers have banned together in the many thousands to protest... well over 5,000 in the SOS group alone, and that's just one of four groups that I'm aware of.
* The LeavingSecondLife email address has received dozens of fascinating emails already from people that, while not claiming that they are leaving Second Life® for keeps, have made it clear that they are upset and looking elsewhere, especially on the Opensim grids.

Is Kingdon just putting a finger in the dam?

8 comments:

Cristopher Lefavre said...

The word 'exodus' is a RL based concept, building on the fact that you cant be two places at the same time, and that travelling takes time. Neither is true in our virtual worlds. Here, it will be a question of how much time and resources one spends in each world.

What keeps people in SL? Platform features, available content and the size of the population. Neither of the other grids are on the same playing field as SL, yet.

What LL has clearly done is making enough people upset enough to spend time and resources on competing grids. The sum of all that effort may form the critical mass that will lift some of these VW's from being mere experiments to be viable alternatives.

And that will spark a lot of effort in intergrid integration. None of us really want to leave the larest virtual world. But if we could have a 45000 prim island in an OpenSim for 50 US/month, thats where our private home will be.

My guess is that when someone develops a client enabling one to be online in two grids at once, allowing seemingly seemless tp's between worlds, IM and online chat working in both, then the 'exodus', or its VW equivalent, will be unstoppable.

ll did this to themselves.

Juko said...

Very sad to see Rezzable consolidating already. I agree that people don't have to exit - but content can :-(

http://rezzable.com/blog/rightasrain-rimbaud/cannery-and-dump-areas-be-deleted

Anonymous said...

awww I wish I had known you were coming, I would have logged in while you were there.

I hope you had fun. Sign ups are still going strong and log in attempts are insane.

For a marketing guru, M Linden seems to miss the point. Even if he totally back stepped this crazy new price hike people have lost trust in Linden Lab.

LL's greed over took their logic this time. Lots of us knew LL lost touch with it's member base when they closed off the active areas of their forums. This latest move was the last straw for people and showed how out of touch LL is.

It sure has been fun seeing all the people around OLG though. They know how to make a community spirit grow into a wildfire.

Bettina Tizzy said...

@ cristopher... I do agree that it will be easier for opensim grids to get funding, purchase new and expensive equipment, and hire new staff under these circumstances.

I should point out that it's a nightmare to log in to most right now and they are ULTRA unstable because of the stress. However, I'm told that they are doing exactly what I expected them to do: hiring new staff, buying hardware, and more.

As you have pointed out "the sum of all that effort may form the critical mass that will lift some of these VW's from being experiments to viable alternatives."

Yes, Juko. I'm afraid a great deal of content is disappearing already. :(

Hey there, Mac! I'm sorry I missed you, too! I looked for you but you weren't in-world. Hope to see you again, soon.

Anonymous said...

I'd like to see the stats from before, at the end of the week when I logged into opengrid, they had 34, 000 something, now they have 35,000 something. that's 30,000 new subs in one week? i call bullshit on that.

Anonymous said...

@Juko:

Rezzable was already thrashing around for a business model anyway, charging to get into Greenies was just evidence of it. I wouldn't read too much into anything Rezzable is doing right now.

Bettina Tizzy said...

Radarm: I went and checked the splash page and see the numbers you are referring to. I'd like the person who gave me these stats to respond directly.

Also, I will have a perspective on the growth surge from Steve Sakai, founder and president of Openlife, soon.

Anonymous said...

Just two quick thoughts/reflections:

Should the Lindens be referred to now as the Lenins now? Is Second Life now a to be a "planned community" or a community developed by its people, a vibrant dynamic city?

Microsoft built a its empire by supporting VARs (value added reseller)and providing platforms but tools for users, programmers and content creators. Did Mitch Kapor not learn this in 20 years ago?