Meeting M., Part Two: On A Developer Roadmap, The Internal Economy, And Surveying The Resident Community

Since posting Part I of my extended interview with M. Linden/Mark Kingdon, Linden Lab's new CEO has posted a summary of his experiences two months after taking the role, on the official blog.  After the break, continuing excerpts from our July 21st conversation, on the lack (thus far) of a Linden development roadmap, on analyzing the internal economy, and what he's learning from user surveys the company recently started-- on Second Life's log-in page, and, as it turns out, on the mainland continent of SL itself.

On the lack of a development roadmap, which Philip Linden promised in an earlier interview.

"We're working on it.  No question about it, it's really really important that everybody understand the direction in which we're going... we're thinking very carefully about our roadmap for our product features for each of our core markets... there's very much a renewed focus on that in the company."

On the possibility that adding some new Linden features may hurt Resident entrepreneurs who've created a business around its lack-- such as dynamic shadows, which would obsolete SL's cottage industry of artificial shadow creators.

"I suppose as we add additional feature and additional functionality to the experience, some users might be uncomfortable and others highly comfortable; it isn't our intent, though, as we release these new features, to break parts of the economy, or to deliberately impact people who've created businesses.  What we're trying to do is create a really rich and compelling experience. 

"I mean it's pretty tricky in such a large and diverse economy with so many different use cases to find improvements that are absolutely, positively comfortable for all.  What I can say is we're going to be very thoughtful because we really value our Residents and the wonderful, diverse internal economy."

"Do you guys analyze what products and goods and services are driving the economy?"

"To some degree.  Not as much as we'd like to... we get a sense of it based on the net positive Linden cashflow businesses in-world, but we can't as easily... track the skews.  So if you ask, 'Gee Mark, are men's shoes selling better than women's handbags?', I couldn't tell you, because the content's not tagged in the database in such a way.... Over time I'd like us to have a better understanding of that."

"Seems like you could track what you should develop for if you look at the economy."

"True, true, no question.  There's another way to get to the same answer, though, about what we should develop for in terms of tools, and that's just to actively involve users. 

"And they tell us.  The one thing about the Second Life Resident base is it's incredibly engaged at many levels and is not shy about telling us what they need...

"I think we need to get better at communicating with them, and connecting with them.  I mean, there are everything from in-world office hours to community forums to blog posts to surveys which we've started to do more actively... one thing that I would like to see us do even more of is really thoughtful engagement around the product, its features, and our roadmaps.  And I'm not sure yet how we're going to evolve that dialog.  But I think it's rich and fertile."

On what they've learned from the user surveys.

"[The Second LIfe experience is] not just about nightclubbing and live music and content creation, people are very focused on finding things that are relevant to them and finding new things.  And that's giving us a lot of insight into the new tools we need to create to enable that...

"I think the thing that probably struck me most in the survey data is this is a very social experience that we have a lot of opportunity to explore... and the social activity is not just about nightclubs, it's about connecting like-minded people to a wide array of topics.  I can't tell you how incredibly broad the Second Life experience is, and it's much broader than most people think...

On surveying the Linden continent.

"One of things we're doing that we haven't done in the past is land surveys.  Because it's going to be very interesting to know how land gets used.  That's easy in the physical world because Google can put a camera on wheels... we don't have an analogous tool inside Second Life, so we're doing land surveys to understand better how land is being used and what we should do differently from kind of a development perspective...

"Just started [the land survey]... just kicked it off.  It's manual, we're going to do it the old-fashioned way to start off, just feet on the street... there's a reason the US still does a census in the same way...

"So we're looking at segments of the mainland, simply to survey usage.  Like, is it retail?  Is it service?... think about it, in the real world you have SIC codes, so you can look at a given geography and know what businesses are in it.  We haven't classified land use in that way; we sell land and people build and make things on it.  But that kind of demographic study is one that we have under way...  I don't know that we'll publish it, we're kind of doing it more to inform the products we develop and [the way we] market our experience.  But we'll have the first land survey done on a sampling basis probably at the end of next week, so in short order... it's something that our land team is going to be doing on a regular basis so we build a living knowledge basis of it.  And I think it's going to be really powerful. 

"Second Life is really interesting because all the content is user-generated.  And on something like YouTube, it's fairly easy to create a tagging and search tool and a simple kind of directory or taxonomy for the videos so that people can find and search and discover and enjoy videos that are interesting to them.  That's a two dimensional experience, but when you get into the 3D world, when you get into Second Life, it's a lot richer, and just as in the real world, we have a lot of navigation tools at our disposal...

"We have a lot of energy making the real world easy to navigate.  We need more tools inside Second Life to make it equally easy to navigate."

To be concluded next week

Comments

[Ann Otoole]

I don't know about anyone else but I have observed a drastic overall improvement with Second Life in the two months since Mark Kingdon came on board. That is quite an achievement given the nature of Second Life and it's vastness in all conceivable ways. I'm looking forward to more improvements and hopefully a lot more concurrency capability so the Lab can actually market this wonderful place to a broader range of potential residents!

[Tateru Nino]

Kingdon hasn't been in long enough to have any influence on things that would filter through into practical results. What we're seeing is the results of the work of the old guard; Philip and maybe even Cory.

[Ann Otoole]

No Tateru. It sure isn't anything to do with the old guard because very little happened with them at the helm except erosion of quality. The new CEO is making changes and it is obvious. Someone is actually driving now and it is obvious because the entire effort was adrift and going nowhere before.

The difference feels like there is some*one* in charge now. Not just a bunch of people doing whatever they please because the boss is too afraid of them to fire them.

[BJ Tabor]

If they want to find out how the in-game economy really works why don't they survey the businesses like the Fed does in RL?

[Rusalka Writer]

Very interesting. Those were questions I had wondered about as a content creator. I am already thinking about avenues for diversification, should any of my current businesses go away due to upgrades. I'm glad to hear that LL is thinking about the impact of their decisions on in-world businesses.

So long as LL keeps to the forefront that stability is Job #1, we should do well. I agree that the entire experience has been improving over the last few months. Heck. I haven't TP'ed somewhere to find all my attachments stuck to my behind in weeks!

[Timeless Prototype]

And so, history shall repeat, yet again. Everyone ready to profit from the predictable?

We'll see privacy issues and intellectual property issues being raised in relation to LL studying transactions and land usage in too great a depth. Please consider that some of the edge that a business has over another is that they themselves did the groundwork on market analysis and moved to meet it at the right time.

Vertical niche fillers will be able to fund next generation in-world research and development, but if you level the playing field you'll get a flood of everyone doing whatever the stats say is successful, decreasing the value of whatever is produced and no single entity scaling up to larger levels. More than likely all going bust.

Why should Linden Lab be allowed to publish the secrets of what makes one company successful if that company did all the research and hard work to do well with their own product/service? That would be abuse of power, IMHO. If the successful company chooses to publish their facts and figures for a fee they'd be competing with figures published about the same business for free by Linden Lab. Again, completely devalues what we do in world.

Bottom line: yes, LL has the data but they should take the moral high ground and keep it fair and not analyse it in such great depth.

I'd rather LL worked on tools we can use as businesses to *manage and run* our own businesses in world and perhaps even manage and secure intellectual property across temporary staff in world. Can anyone imagine EVE Online business management and accounting capabilities merged into SL? Now *that's* a roadmap I'd enjoy. And throw in EVE Online whilst you're at it. :)

M Linden, ignoring the people will make you just like any other big corporate CEO who's lost sight of what made the company a success in the first place. Don't fall into this predictable trap, it's all too easy to do. From what I see here is that you want to hear us, but can't see how to do it feasibly. This is equivalent to totally ignoring everyone until there is an established means of communication.

Oh, and welcome to SL, M. :)

Thanks Hammie for bringing us the word from the Man. :)

['It is obvious']

Ann Otoole's self-confidence = Complete fail