New World Notes 2007 Roundup: Major Second Life Milestones for The Year That Was

By "milestones", I mean significant policy/personnel/technological/community changes, along with changes in outside perception.   Some are not necessarily major now, but may have deeper consequence in the coming year. As featured in New World Notes, they include:

January:  The Lindens open source the viewer.  I interview Cory Linden on the subject.

March: Second Life ranked among the top 500 of Wikipedia searches. (Last I checked, it had dropped to 925.)

May:
- Amid external and community controversy, the Lindens announce plans to introduce a 3rd party age verification system (now in Beta.)
- Sculpted prims introduced to the world, elevating the state of in-world building.  Resident-made tutorials emerge to help users learn to craft with them.
- WindLight atmospheric graphics introduced in First Look preview client.  Over successive months, Residents begin using it as their creative palette.

June: Engendering considerable confusion and consternation, the Lindens make broad prohibition against "broadly offensive" content.

July:
- Teen Resident Katharine Berry leads the open source/open platform revolution by introducing a Web-to-SL program.
- Major media backlash against Second Life-- or rather, failed real world marketing campaigns in Second Life-- reaches a peak with three fact-challenged articles in Forbes and the LA Times and Wired Magazine.
- The Lindens ban casino games in SL.  A week later, however, this policy doesn't impact population activity levels.

August: Several mainstream media sources report Al Qaeda activity in Second Life.  Reached for comment by NWN, a renowned terrorism expert confirms to me:  "[I]t may be more accurate to say Jihadists... We are monitoring them." 

September:
- Second Life machinima bought by HBO, promoted as Oscar contender; the most prominent SL-to-RL transfer of user-created IP rights thus far.  I interview the director.
- Number of active Japanese and Brazilian Residents in SL surpass those of all individual EU countries and other regions (besides the US.)  These demographics have since shifted, though both countries remain in the top five among active users.
- The Lindens introduce Havok 4 physics engine to the Beta Grid.  Within a couple weeks, cool Resident-made demo videos begin going online.

October:
- The Electric Sheep Company release the first major reworking of the official SL viewer, integrating web browsing with world browsing.
- Top-rated TV shows CSI and The Office both feature Second Life as a plot point.  Despite this, number of active users fails to significantly grow (see December.)

November:
- Influential Internet business blog Techcrunch reports that a major investor in Linden Lab has sold 10% of its holdings in the company to a private investor for half a billion dollars.

December:
- Second Life growth of total active users plateaus at about 550,000.
- Chief Technology Officer Cory Linden departs the company under unknown circumstances.

What milestones have I missed?

Comments

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

You've missed the rollout of voice on the main grid in August 2nd this year. This has been for many people one of the biggest milestones in 2007. Cheers!

[Hamlet Au]

Ack, thanks, you're right. Will add that ASAP. Anything else?

[Torley]

Jamlet, in terms of feature heavyweights, the introduction of NEW SEARCH is definitely a milestone! More info in Jeska Linden's post:

» http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/10/19/new-search-currently-under-development/

I am REALLY looking forward to greater educational strides in 2008, and by that, I mean Resident-created video (and other kinds of) tutorials. Nice to see that you mentioned Paulee's one — Natalia Zelmanov and Vlad Bjornson have also led the charge on using external tools to export to Second Life, and more knowhow is here:

» http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Sculpted_Prims

[Torley]

Jamlet, in terms of feature heavyweights, the introduction of NEW SEARCH is definitely a milestone! More info in Jeska Linden's post.

I am REALLY looking forward to greater educational strides in 2008, and by that, I mean Resident-created video (and other kinds of) tutorials. Nice to see that you mentioned Paulee's one — Natalia Zelmanov and Vlad Bjornson have also led the charge on using external tools to export to Second Life, and more knowhow is here.

[Tao Takashi]

It might not be that big in the news but on September 13th Linden Lab launched the Second Life Grid Architecture Working Group to create an open standard for opening up the SL grid.

This is not yet very visible but for me with Open Source this is one of the milestones which reach far into the future (with some luck not only of Second Life).