Torley's art of life in Second Life - Part Three in a series

A few days ago, I asked our readers to name the first three words that came to mind when they thought of Torley Linden. Eleven of you responded with this:

High-octane Generous Resourceful Fun Love Watermelon Crazy "On" C*R*E*A*T*I*V*E Pink Green Torley Amazing Inspiring Awesome Video Cool Brilliant Artistic Kind Friendliest-Greeter-Ever! "Over the top" Exuberant! Ever-expanding-outward Giving Open Positive Super-teacher-extraordinaire


This watermelonish eye is Torley's trademark

To these I would add:

Eccentric Energetic Bodacious Giving Knowledgeable Bright Altruistic Unique Different Benevolent Magical Boundless Imaginative Weird Funny Patient Succinct Transparent Fascinating Entertaining Active Animated Bizarre Maverick Accomplished Thoughtful Quirky Soulful Vibrant Evangelist Sparkling Understanding Powerful Wacky Significant Loved Surprising Colorful Talented Wild Detailed Organized Unbelievable Credible Freestyle Inspired Inexhaustible Artful Big-hearted Open-handed Hard-working Smart Prolific Original Inventive

In fact, Torley is easily most everyone's favorite Linden and his sphere of influence is as broad as the grid is wide, for he is everyone's passport to understanding and enjoying Second Life®, from the basics to the most esoteric information imaginable.

While he may be an employee of Linden Lab, the company that owns Second Life, he has taken what could have been a thankless job and turned it into a magical one.


Torley's many Windlight Presets are among my favorite things in Second Life. A true gift! Download them here

I recently had occasion to ask Torley a few questions regarding his seemingly inexhaustible contributions to our world.

Torley, in my earliest days in Second Life, I thought you were a woman and married or in a relationship with Philip Rosedale! (It’s true! Sorry about that!). I vaguely knew that you loved watermelons and watermelon colors. Of course, it turns out that I was only right on one count. When I think of innovation in Second Life, you are the face of it. Your lively and rich communications are infectious, in the best kind of way. But do you sometimes feel the weight of this responsibility?

Torley Linden: LOL! It's certainly true I am a big fan of Philip, and one time when he was AFK, I prayed to him at the edge of the Ahern-Morris Welcome Area.

I used to feel more weight but things have changed, Linden Lab has grown, and we have more specialized Lindens helping with communication — for example, Katt is our Communications Manager, and our I-World Team in Support often gets the message out to Residents in-world and on the Grid Status Reports. As Resident Enlightenment Manager, my communications are focused on "bridging the knowledge gaps" and helping Residents solve everyday problems.

Can you point to one area or topic that we (your followers) aren’t especially “getting” yet that we need to pay more attention to

Torley Linden: I'm always fond of the opportunity to highlight little things that make a big difference: there isn't a single area/topic, but look for underused features with big benefits. For example, click actions (make buying and using objects easier) and FollowCam (better camera angles for machinima and general exploring) are SEVERELY UNDERUSED! A CRYING SHAME. It's true some stuff could be more intuitive to use in the first place, but there are plenty of possibilities which aren't being exploited. I'll continue to call out those specifics with applicable results.

Like NPIRL, I also strongly believe in getting more exposure for creativity and philosophy in Second Life, and coupling that with business stories — there are too many dry biz stories which don't have a personable, memorable touch. (Reference point: see the book Personality Not Included by Rohit, it's a gem.)


Who among us does not own many of Torley's textures? Get yours here


Torley's office hours are the stuff of legend

How can the Residents of Second Life help to promote quality content more to the Real World, beyond blogging? Do you have some insight and advice - or even requests - based on your experiences?

Torley Linden: Simply put: BRIDGE GAPS. Always, ALWAYS be looking for what other people are missing out on — unmet needs and unfulfilled desires they may not even know about yet. I get sick to my stomach when I hear "Everything's been done already!", that's so lame and myopic, because in plain view, we keep seeing innovations and incremental improvements march forth.

Sometimes on my personal blog, I'll state specifically what I want to see more of in Second Life. It's not just for my personal amusement; it's because it could bring joy to others. Get involved with coolhunters and other "trendy" groups — yes, there's a certain clique-ness to it, but PEOPLE WANT TO BELONG. PEOPLE WANT TO FEEL SPECIAL. And like it or not, to paraphrase Tim Sanders, life is a series of popularity contents. You'd rather be loved than hated — not by everyone, but by those who matter to you. And it's far better to be focused within those deliberate interests than trying to appeal to all (hint: it won't work).

Think of problems in your own life, and make something that solves your problems. Or team up with someone who has the technical ability. E.g., I started video tutorials because doing too much text was both a time-suck and insufficient to SHOW what's happening in SL. It's been both a professional + personal boon.

The usual maxims apply: be persistent (don't give up), believe in yourself, be likeable, etc. — but always, ALWAYS BRIDGE GAPS. In case we haven't made that point strongly enough, let me just say how impressed we are by SL fashions which draw from first life influences, but are wildly eclectic enough to stand on their own, and fulfill unique spots where nothing has been before. Some of it is even physically impossible, but... it creates waves of opportunity for first life to be inspired by Second Life. Therein lies the magic.


Torley doesn't preach to us about how to live our Second Life. He lives by his own maxims and shares them with us as his formula for happiness. This extraordinary list on the topic of Creativity is viewable in the sky at Here, the new sim Torley and his wife Ravenelle recently inaugurated

Is building that is NPIRL (Not Possible in Real Life) important, in your view?

Torley Linden: It absolutely is, depending on intent/purpose. I love what bridges the alien and familiar, and obviously, there's no point to Second Life if all it can do is create mere knockoffs of what we already know to be true in their analogue forms. By taking first life and extending it to areas which are physically unfeasible (for the time being, anyway), we heighten the imaginations, invigorate the senses, and demonstrate — live in 3D! — fresh possibilities.

(And yet, should we be scared, we can always return to our "ground comforts" before flying — as our avatars do — again.)

NPIRL building is also important when it's intrinsically essential and a special, unique part of Second Life. That someone can see it nowhere else and experience it the same way. That someone who's sufficiently intrigued WILL come into Second Life to witness it. (And hopefully as the registration/login process gets easier, this will become more lucidly true.) I'd love to hear stories of people who, say, have read your blog, Bett, and CAME INWORLD because they were enchanted by what you shared. I know that's true of me and Hamlet's (Au) New World Notes way back.

Editor's note: In fact, I'm extremely grateful to a number of very special people who have contacted me to say that this blog enticed them to hop in for the first time, or return after a long absence.

Torley Linden: For the record, I don't think it's sad that we have accurate recreations of things like food and toilets in Second Life where our avatars don't need them. But I do love seeing those forms extended (e.g., a commode that roams the fields and cleans up after your sculptie-goats) and think unnecessary constraints suck. I hate being in buildings that are tough to navigate because the ceiling is arbitrarily impenetrable. That's just... ugh!

Beyond any labeling, I like to see reactions, and those of delight and surprise and novelty that come with much NPIRL-ish creations is a wonder indeed.

As I like to say a la infomercial: "ONLY... IN SECOND LIFE!"

See also:

* Celebrating Second Life's Power Couple
* Ravenelle and Torley sound out on maintaining balance between both lives

Reacting to Rosedale on LL press strategies and more

Thank you, Robert Bloomfield (aka Beyers Sellers) of Metanomics for creating an opportunity for me and my fellow bloggers Wagner James Au, Christian Renaud, Tish Shute, Ben Duranske, Nic Mitham and Dusan Writer to address key points made by Philip Rosedale, Linden Lab’s founder, former CEO and current Chairman of the Board, during your recent interview with him.

I’ve never met or spoken with Philip, but I look at photographs of his luminous face, radiant with an almost transcendent beatitude, and think about the immersive world he championed - and that I have such an insatiable appetite for - and I just want to thank him from the bottom of my pixilated heart. Moving forward though, I have a personal stake in Second Life®’s success, so I’m not going to pull any punches.

At Robert’s suggestion, I will speak to Philip’s responses regarding Linden Lab’s strategy for balancing the needs of all its communities and how it deals with the press, which you can read in context here.

Philip, I know that you were caught up in the conversation about security features and controls that folks from enterprise and education are asking of Linden Lab, and I realize that you had no way of knowing that your words would be scrutinized under the lens of public and community relations.

A little about myself: I’ve held senior positions in domestic and global marketing, public relations and community relations on both the agency side and in-house, representing companies and organizations in many different fields, including but not limited to high tech and entertainment. I’ve also managed accounts that became media darlings for whatever reason, to the extent that the coverage and the demand for information and interviews far exceeded our ability to manage it all, so I can well understand what it must have been like during that period between spring 2006 and summer of 2007. It’s a little like trying to stay dry when it’s raining sideways.

I’ve been vocal about my criticisms of some of Linden Lab’s marketing, media relations and community outreach tactics in the past and my feelings remain unchanged in some areas but are happily much improved in others.

* My biggest beef with Linden Lab is the way it lets loose some eye-brow-raising dictums to the community and then acts like it didn’t. Case in point:

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: But you do have some control over the perception. I know, for example, there were controversies over the Second Life fifth birthday celebration where certain groups were in, and then they were out, and then they were in, and they were out. It appeared at least to be Linden Lab attempting to manage then and reduce the perception of not safe for work behavior.
PHILIP ROSEDALE: Inevitably, this is such an exciting new space that there is a lot of media hype, so I think we do sometimes try to tone things down a little bit. I think we need to do more of that as time goes by, to just say, “Hey. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.” Reasonably speaking, here’s what the picture looks like. It’s not all one type of content. It’s not all business use. It’s not all marketing. It’s not all any one particular type of thing. It’s funny, mostly our PR strategy has simply been to help connect and embellish the stories that kind of come from the community anyway. I mean, for every stressed-out story about people’s love lives or infidelities or whatever in Second Life, there’s a story that’s equally good about people meeting in Second Life, or some people learning in Second Life, or whatever.

I am pretty unclear on what you just said here. Do you mean to say that Linden Lab needs to restrict participation from events like SLB5 more or that you need to tell the media that it’s a diverse community and to get over it?

Many Resident groups labored an entire year to make SLB5 the best that it could be only to be informed that their participation was not welcome, and then that it was, and then that it was but only in certain ways… Again, Second Life is as diverse as the Real World. How hard is it to make both PG and mature sims available for an event of this nature? Linden Lab’s management and communications in this regard were disappointing, polarizing, and unnecessarily hurtful. As Chairman of the Board, I would have liked to see you step up to the plate here and address this situation more fully. An apology would have been in order, too.

• We're different, diverse and we like it that way.

You say:

PHILIP ROSEDALE: I think that you’ve got to let people broadly create content in as open a way as possible. There’s a meeting in the middle. I think enterprises will recognize that the utility gains that they can get from taking advantage of virtual worlds are very high, and they’ll be willing to tolerate the fact that, yeah, if they wanted to kind of brand approve their neighborhood, the fact that they’re in a virtual world, and, yeah, there’s content they don’t like in a virtual world, they’re just going to have to live with that.

What are you doing to communicate this? Taking a pro-active stance would save you a lot of trouble, time and money.

* Since you are making a big push to attract corporate participation and monies, I think it would be beneficial to develop ways to better inform incoming companies and organizations that are just getting started in Second Life about best practices.

For example, you might show them the difference between an in-world facility that has ongoing avatar representation and events, and one that simply builds out a sim and then expects people to come running. Tateru Nino over at Massively just wrote a good blog post on the topic of unstaffed versus staffed virtual presences. Two excellent examples of companies that are succeeding in this regard are Warner Brothers’ Gossip Girl and Languagelab.com. In fact, why not build out a tutorial for companies and educational orgs to show them what works?

Must your website depict everything in such a bland state? Why not occasionally offer corporations some alternatives and ways to rethink their virtual environments, like images of Syncretia by Alpha Auer? Or meeting areas like Sugar Seville’s incredible auditorium seating at the Odyssey? Help prospective clients to see what the future of education, architecture and business looks like. Ravenelle Zugzwang just addressed one aspect of this in an excellent blog post about alternative seating.

* Regarding press management, Rob asked and you replied…

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: [T]he Wall Street Journal had that big article about the guy cheating on his wife in Second …. Is that something you guys are trying to manage so that it doesn’t stigmatize Second Life for the enterprise community?
PHILIP ROSEDALE: Well, again, I mean I think the answer there is yes. Certainly, when I talked about security being a requirement for the enterprise community. And I think that content restriction and separation and insulation is a part of, is kind of a close cousin to that part of the problem. So I think that we’re doing the right things, thinking about how to better support the enterprise in looking at how to move Second Life more behind the firewall if we can, add security features, add controls for those users. That said, http, the web protocol, moves around a lot of different types of data, some of it certainly objectionable to enterprise users, and enterprises still use it. So I think that there is a future where, again, there’s a single standard; maybe the branding is a little different, but there’s still a single standard for how you use virtual worlds and how you interconnect them. I think that’s going to work out because, again, I remember the early days of the web. There was, of course, a real concern that corporations were being stigmatized by building websites because there were so many other websites that they thought were objectionable or adult content or whatever. So I guess I’m not kind of giving you a clear answer because I don’t think there is one.

People take up new technologies as a means to a way that will stimulate and nurture their own varied interests. You stand to benefit if you pro-actively demonstrate and pitch stories to the media to show them what’s cool in the way of user and 3rd party content and concept development. In this regard, your media relations strategy appears to be reactive in the extreme. There is no way you will be able to stifle all the empty sim and sex stories, and yet an ongoing proactive campaign about cool content and in-world initiatives will make the bad press much less visible and important. It isn’t hard to identify great content and stories if you just follow the blogs, and I know your staff does monitor them. Maybe your new PR person will be able to help with that.

* Please don’t limit yourselves to just pitching the business press! Diversify and share the cool and positive stories more!

Why isn’t this dress by Eshi Otawara being written up in W magazine or Vogue or Elle? It is certainly oozing in style and it is definitely newsworthy enough.



Or how about this hairstyle by Sinnocent Mirabeau?



Look at how AM Radio is using Second Life to restore Real Life photography… and while we are on the topic of AM, his wheat fields have raised enough money for a herd of Real Life cows to benefit third world communities.

I think many publications would be fascinated to learn that they have not one but two choices if they wish to visit and experience Escher’s Relativity House in-world.

In fact, why not aggressively look for ways to encourage crossover and show them how Second Life is beginning to have a genuine impact on the way people live their Real Lives? Other virtual worlds and digerati are often sailing past Second Life in this regard nowadays.

* What is Second Life? I was shocked to read the boilerplate (descriptor) in your press release dated September 3, 2008. So this is what Second Life is to you now? I wonder, fellow residents (corporate, educational or otherwise)… does this description mirror your experience in Second Life and express the advantages and opportunities you see in it?:

About The Second Life Grid and Linden Lab
Consisting of a series of sophisticated content creation, land management and transactional tools, the Second Life Grid is the technology platform used to power the Second Life virtual world. Provided by Linden Lab, the Second Life Grid platform enables businesses of all sizes to develop their own virtual world environments. Whether connected to the Second Life mainland or secured and blocked off from public access, custom virtual environments increase internal collaboration, enhance customer engagement and reduce overall business costs.

Linden Lab is the company that created The Second Life Grid platform and hosts the Second Life virtual world. Founded in 1999 and headquartered in San Francisco, Linden Lab was created by former CEO and current Chairman of the Board Philip Rosedale. The company is led by CEO Mark Kingdon, former CEO of Organic, Inc. and counts noted software pioneer Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Development Corporation, among its board members.

* It’s clear that you already think of your Residents as stakeholders, and Torley does, indeed, amplify our awesome, but so much of the intense goodness in Second Life never sees the Real light of day because Residents don’t know how or when to promote themselves to Real Life media. Linden Lab might be the greatest beneficiary of all if it empowered Resident groups with the tools and basic know-how to do their own pitching. Your PR agency might conduct regular seminars with and for in-world groups to help them implement their own media outreach to the Real World rather than keeping all this positive news inside the garden walls.

* Hype is overrated and trust and credibility are paramount. How can the media – and the Residents! - trust you if you make this claim?

“Second Life® is …inhabited by millions of Residents from around the globe.”

Not only is this published in numerous places on your website, but your press office has been quoted as saying as much. Your Residents know the truth. Daniel Tierdeman over at CNET knows the truth. Tateru Nino at Massively has published the truth. Anyone who spends a little time in-world can easily see that the vast majority of the registered members never made it in-world (probably held back by technical difficulties as I was initially), and several millions more simply never came back. So why oh why do you persist with this fallacy? How or why should we ever believe another word from Linden Lab again?

* I don’t see enough messaging about the fact that it is a fantastic platform to unite and help educate people all over the globe in an economically sustainable and an environmentally friendly space with distance learning, cross-cultural programs, collaborative experimenting and communicating prototypes for nearly every field including agriculture, space and medicine research. Please stimulate research and showcase your own and third-party stories about the cost differences of having a brick and mortar storefront or school, or the savings in time and money (and to the environment!) when it comes to using Second Life as a meeting ground. This press release by IBM about its Virtual Green Data Center tells a timely and positive story.

* Not long ago and on Metanomics, I mentioned that I’d reached out to your press office on behalf of Burning Life 2007, seeking assistance with Real Life media outreach and in-world promotion. That help never came. I’m glad to see that this year you’ve promised to make an effort to secure Real Life media coverage for the juried artists. Still, one week is not enough time for all that other quality content (twenty two sims brimming with creative goodness! Thank you for that) to be celebrated and reported on. Let bloggers in early and encourage their writing this up to maximize exposure.


Philip, all my thanks to you for shepherding this brave new world into existence, and thanks, too, to the many incredibly talented people at Linden Lab. Together, you've dramatically changed my life and made it infinitely better and more interesting. I look forward to the coming years and to looking for ways to spread the word about its transformative powers.