How Will Second Life Cross the Chasm Into the Mainstream?

Metaverse musician and Web 2.0 analyst Grace McDunnough has an incisive and important post responding to a Harvard Business School case study called "Linden Lab: Crossing the Chasm", which provokes her to frame that topic in the form of a question: What will push Second Life to a point where it reaches mainstream adoption?

One business strategy, pushed by Crossing the Chasm author Geoffrey Moore, is to aggressively go after a particular market segment, and Grace wonders which one the Lindens should focus on. Harvard's analysis believes those include enterprise customers, educators, adult consumers or teens, but Grace is skeptical any of them will push Second Life across the gap. For example, viz educators:

I'm convinced the education market is saturated... and the introduction of land pricing model changes combined the recent departure of John Lester/Pathfinder Linden seem to indicate that the Lab's past love affair with the edurati is in that "old married couple" stage - safe, secure, not really growing wildly and with a lot less sex.

Well, how about enterprise? Grace balks there too:

As an "embedded practitioner" I know first hand how difficult it is to get people to download and install simple plugins for WebEx or AdobeConnect, much less go through the standard Second Life download and orientation so it's really hard for me to imagine that this is the "beachhead" Moore suggested.

Ms. McDunnough makes many great points, though I think she may be complicating the question some. What market will make Second Life cross the chasm? Here's one idea:

Everyone who's already expressed an interest in Second Life in the past, and who will in the near future.

Because that's the largest market of all. Since 2003, roughly 15 million people have already shown enough interest in Second Life to download and install the software. The problem is, nearly all of them couldn't readily access the content they came looking for in a way that was enjoyable enough for them to stay. Every month, about 400,000 people still download the software and make a similar search, and only a fraction are retained. This, in my opinion, is Second Life's core market, which should be pursued with an energetic marketing campaign and new user experience. If SL's retention rates are increased from their current rate of 10-15% to something like 20-30%, we're talking about a userbase growing from its current 800,000 active users to the several millions. And at that point, we're probably dealing with a population that's large enough to finally achieve a network effect of growth. And that's just drawing from the people who've already indicated an interest in SL. Only then, in my view, will education, enterprise, and other sectors become markets that will substantially grow.

In any case, what's your take? Before you answer, be sure to read all of Grace's analysis, along with the great reader comments.

Comments

[Not You]

Interesting, you have a solid point.

Second Life is not dead, it is still kicking after all of the hype. For the popularity and sheer amount of users and not doing any real advertising should say a lot about the platform.

So they did a little "Avatar" adverts, but they would have been stupid not to, as Second Life offers I think a wonderful community for fans.

Really dose not need to be said, they just need to focus on user retention rates. The new website could help, but it is more convoluted and scary hard to approach, then again I am one for simplicity in design.

[Vaneeesa Blaylock]

Is the sole purpose of NWN to push SL "mainstream?" Here's a prediction: SL will never be Facebook. No matter how much Hamlet wants that.

I know the dream of destroying an immersive virtual world so you can have a 3D facebook is tempting; I know video on a prim cube on your head could mean the invention of videoconferencing.

When it comes to beer, free or otherwise, the best ones are not the most popular. The biggest sellers are mop-water with generic appeal. The ones with taste that can grab you, never find that kind of market saturation, but for the more discerning drinker there's a powerful satisfaction.

The idea of SL getting bigger is nice, but not if the experience has to be stupiderer.

***

Best fix for Viewer 2.0: uninstall it and reinstall 1.22.11 - new features you'll immediately have access to:

1. killer UX featuring a Pie Wheel that spatially orients your options, and IS fun!

2. Randomize button on Shape pallet - yes, you want to noodle out the "perfect" shape, but life isn't perfect. Throw a little randomize in now and then... it's worth the journey... and you will find the fun.

[Ignatius Onomatopoeia]

She's right. It won't be educators. This quotation made me choke laughing:

"the Lab's past love affair with the edurati is in that 'old married couple' stage - safe, secure, not really growing wildly and with a lot less sex."

Oh, great. Now I have to tell noob educators who visit SL that they missed the sex!

Will LL cross the chasm for edurati? Nope. Too many old and overtold stories of sex, lost inventory, griefing, lack of stability, and poor support.

Now that LL has addressed a good number of these issues, it's a bit late. Something like SL but PG-rated will cross the chasm or schools will build them with OpenSim. We have a history of owning our own hardware and tending to our own backups.

As for SL, it seems likely to remain a place for educators to meet and talk; the Linden-supported VWBPE 2010 conference was astounding. It worked like a real life conference but with far better tech support :)

Such community means a lot, but you don't need it to build good simulations. I hate to admit it, but LL needs to chase another market. We educators can make do.

[Hamlet Au]

"SL will never be Facebook. No matter how much Hamlet wants that."

For the record, Vaneeesa, I don't want that at all, nor is it even feasible. I'd be happy if Second Life reached World of Warcraft numbers, which has the upper limit on the market for immersive 3D virtual worlds. Beyond that, I don't know how large SL can grow. Some level of Facebook integration with Second Life, like an FB Connect option, is a necessary means to that end, but only a means, IMO.

[Hitomi Tiponi]

I was just comparing the initial impressions of the Secondlife and IMVU websites.

Going to IMVU you immediately get the impression that this place is like a great 3D chat room with fun things to do that you might remember from Facebook. And as you look more you realise you can have fun dressing up as characters and join in with others, and the great thing is it is all made to look simple.

Going to Secondlife you get a much more serious feel to it right from the start - but not so much about why you'd want to be there. It feels like it is saying 'if you are serious about virtual worlds come here, but if you are playing go elsewhere', which most people will do. Really that first page is a bit intimidating and should have something rotating along the lines of why you'd want to be here and what you can do, maybe set against the backdrop of the Destination Guide with it's stunning pics. Show people about role-play communities, events, destinations, creation straight off - and (something Secondlife needs to be better at doing) make it sound like fun!

Yes, Secondlife needs to retain more visitors, but it also needs to give a positive impression right from the start.

[Ciaran Laval]

Education was never married to SL, I'm extremely interested in how education uses SL, I'm on a mailing list and they are enthusiastic.

I also spend a lot of money on hardware in the education sector and know the demands of SL are beyond the basic education department computer. So education will tick along nicely as before and may grow but it was never huge. Education however is wonderfully inquisitive

Sex sells, LL might want to hide it, Grace might want to reconsider her view on the adult market. HTML on a prim opens doors that people may want kept shut but there's a whole lot of new adult material going to be viable.

HTML on a prim also brings the potential for news and print media to get into SL in a bigger way and that may well be a huge leap as well as self publisihing from magazines and book authors.

[Monkey Nuts]

LAG!

[Jura Shepherd]

For whatever reason, Grace's post has me seriously out of sorts. I guess it's because I have specific ideas about the magic that made all of us be the 10% that stuck with SL beyond the noob-grinder stage. Intentionally or not, Grace articulates that LL's actions indicate that they think that magic is some kind of burden or hurdle to overcome.

I'm not a fool and I know that progress moves on. I'm also self-aware enough to realize that maybe what a lot of us don't like is the idea of losing the sense of privilege that comes from being a part of something that is emerging. Even so, I've invested an embarrassingly large amount of time in this little world and can't help but be sad to see what I love about it being marginalized.

[Lili]

The Mainstream what? Seriously, I can't understand what it is everyone is wanting SL to become. Maybe LL didn't intend for SL to be what it is from the beginning.

But, let's say in the real world you decide you want to open a circus. Somehow though, you open a restaurant instead and you leave it like that for five or six years. Quite a few people really love that restaurant and they stay.

Now you decide to really get your circus going, so you start changing things. There are a lot of things that was promised to be fixed with the restaurant, but forget that, you want the circus. So what about the loyal (and paying) customers who love the restaurant? Just forget them?

I've never seen SL as a facebook/myspace/contest for who has the most friends and followers type of place. For me, I love to build my little world, make a few friends very good friends and *cough cough* lead my Second Life. And what is wrong with that? I mean, if this big 3-D facebook share with every stranger on earth thing is what so many people want, why doesn't Linden Lab open up such a place and leave Second Life the hell alone. They could safely cut the land mass in half and just allow paying members and I would be happy with that. The facebook crowd who want to be so hip and cutting edge (as if that what facebook is) could have the other half, and keep the freebie crowd there too.

Sorry, I just get so sick of constantly hearing what SL needs to be, when it already is something to a lot of people.

[Hamlet Au]

The short answer, Lili, is that Second Life changes people's lives for the better in myriad ways. I've seen it happen time and again with thousands of people. If Second Life becomes mainstream, it'll change *millions* of lives for the better. And if that happens, Second Life will change the world.

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

That's assuming that LL doesn't destroy what makes SL life-changing in the process of gaining the numbers they want--I hope they don't, but fear they will. Has FarmVille or Mafia Wars changed people's lives for the better in something more than the intermittent reinforcement of finding an item of country kitsch or grinding one's way to the next level? I doubt it.

[194.192.39.203]

Careful with that Kool Aid, Hamlet.

"Changes peoples lives for the better" is questionable. Maybe if somebody is disabled and can't get out of the house then their life could be improved. But for the other folk who just can't be bothered getting off their ass and going outside then places like Second Life can ultimately have a negative impact on their lives.

Second Life (and the blogs) can be dehumanizing. It often reduces people to text messages (and blog comments). In the long term people can end up being cut off from *real* people (and reality).

Let's just hope the technology improves and then we can bring some humanity back into it all before we all turn into the Borg.

[LittleLostLinden]

I understand needing a userbase to keep an enterprise afloat, and that's great, but mainstream? Ich.

I do not listen to mainstream music, why? Because it is junk. You have to go underground to find really good music.

Give me a niche market any day of the week.

Perhaps the same is true of some games, you need to dig a little deeper to find something worth while.

I would prefer SL to remain as they are without mainstream interference ruining it for us all.

I mean, I'm not sure how many here listen to FM radio, but, it is horrible. And that is what mainstream is into. Boring, lame, FM radio music. Ich.

I would like to boycott Mainstream. May it remain as far away from SL as possible.

[Adric Antfarm]

I'm not sure what drives this need of validation of your beliefs that Second Life residents are skinny cool people and the mainstream will come if we just change our ways enough to welcome them (saying hi on our way out).

While they only release Power Point that has been trained like a prize fighter when talking figures, I am pretty sure Linden is making money off us now. Granted, not enough for them, but enough that I would feel so damn stupid if I alienated those giving it to me while making way for a larger group that never came to give me money.

As for this mainstream thing, I do not celebrate the cooler younger trimmer me being gone, but I am somewhat proud of how I got along just fine no matter on the grid.

No has one has ever offered to mentor me or even give a friendly tip, so I look back with a sense of accomplishment on my first sculpt, the battle getting my first alpha texture, writing a script, etc. None of that is mainstream because the crowd does not come to learn, it comes to see and then goes away. They've already done it once and I honestly question if you think it will be any different this time.

We are here. We will be here. Maybe not mainstream, but we care about this too much to put a tramp dress on it and whore it out as something it is not.

No quote on what it can do for the masses will change that.

[Coughran]

What surprises me is that despite 3+ years involvement - at a usage level I would bet is at least in the top quartile - LL has never asked me to comment on what captured my interest and/or kept me involved in SL. Maybe they have done other focus groups, but I would think with all of the data and tools the Lab must have available, they could ask EVERY consistent user to give them feedback and learn a lot from the answers.

Despite being overlooked, I will give the feedback anyway, just in case anyone is listening. First, my initial hours in SL were greatly enhanced through help from a Mentor (remember Mentors) I met at Ahern Welcome area. Autumn Thatch gave me good suggestions about how to use Search to find areas that might be interesting, taught me about money trees -which didn't yield that much money but certainly caused me to travel the grid, and offered lots of tips about dealing with avatars who might be less than friendly. Having a Mentor was a big win for me.

Speaking of the Search tool, despite its imperfections, I do believe that teaching new users how to use the tool, whether their interests tend to role play, science, dancing, charity --- whatever --- is the best way to capture the attention of the newcomer. The most common first question I hear from new residents is "What is there to do here" and my consistent answer is "What interests you?". Once that subject(s) is/are identified, it's relatively easy to search out locations where any newcomer can become engaged in the virtual life.

The best advisers on the topic of how to increase retention and immersion are those who have stayed awhile, and who spend a meaningful amount of time in-world. If LL is not asking these people what works, everything else is just guessing!

[Ignatius Onomatopoeia]

@Adric, I'm fond of skinny cool people. I need more role models to lose the next 10 pounds, at which point I'll be very close to my old skinny self. Let's get those skinny hipsters to inspire us to lose some more...

I sense the drift in your reply..."mainstream" means...what?

My take: Big-box shopping, TV-watching, SUV-driving, suburban office-clones fond of the NCAA March Madness.

If that's mainstream, I'd say "fugitaboutit" as long as VWs can make enough money to support us freaks. Intolerance for boring people is one reason why I went into academe: best capsule-universe of brilliant and often compassionate losers this side of an SF novel.

[Cube Republic]

Second Life will never reach mainstream acceptance; it fills a niche market and there it will remain. Firstly; ask most of the 6billion inhabitants of the world if they have heard of SL and I feel the answer you will receive is no. Secondly; who has time to invest in SL when they have jobs, families and social lives to keep them busy? Even if they did foray into SL, would they then spend $1300 on a sim? For that you can have a state of the art wide screen TV or even a foreign holiday with real white sand between your toes, however you won’t be able to adjust the time of day and will need to get up in the morning to appreciate a full cycle. Another point to make is Second Life is really old looking compared to the latest video games; it looks around 10 years old. Finally; there is very little to do in Second Life; I know there’s the ‘World of Shop Craft’ element to keep shoe buyers happy, and I can hear the shouts of ‘but there’s great live music’, but there’s great live music at my local pub and numerous social events at other establishments. I don’t wish to appear to be the bringer of doom; I’ve just been in Second Life far too long to swallow any hype, and the ‘online now numbers’ have remained more or less static since 2008, which further reinforces my earlier opinion regarding it being a niche.

[Hamlet Au]

"Big-box shopping, TV-watching, SUV-driving, suburban office-clones fond of the NCAA March Madness. If that's mainstream, I'd say 'fugitaboutit' as long as VWs can make enough money to support us freaks. Intolerance for boring people"

Your attitude *does* sound intolerant, Iggy, and I'm definitely not sure it's fair, accurate, or productive. Reductive broad brush assertions can get pretty boring too, don't you think?

[Hamlet Au]

"Firstly; ask most of the 6billion inhabitants of the world if they have heard of SL and I feel the answer you will receive is no."

Well, at the moment, just 1.5 billion people are even on the Internet, so you're setting the bar pretty high if mainstream means the entire world. Of that 1.5 billion, roughly 150 million are active in a virtual world of some kind (including MMOs). As I said, I'd be happy if SL got towards World of Warcraft numbers, 10-12 million. Not as mainstream as, say, a hugely popular TV show or movie, but mainstream enough to have a substantial impact on the rest of the world, and gain enough social awareness for all those who might benefit from it.

[Grace McDunnough]

My post is an "If - Then" Gedaken exercise. If Linden Lab under the leadership of M Linden was fully embracing Moore's CTC model, then what can we conclude from recent events about the market they may be targeting?

"Here's one idea:
Everyone who's already expressed an interest in Second Life in the past, and who will in the near future. Because that's the largest market of all. Since 2003, roughly 15 million people have already shown enough interest in Second Life to download and install the software."

I think you might want to go back and read Moore's book as your idea is precisely contrary to his entire premise. You don't get to go directly to mainstream without first landing the pragmatists.

Pragmatists "care about the company they are buying from, the quality of the product they are buying, the infrastructure of supporting products and systems interfaces, and the reliability of the service they are going to get..." and most importantly, Pragmatists are trying to DO something. This is where courting all of those people that left might be foolish since they've already decided that Second Life was not useful.

[Ciaran Laval]

Ah I've been to New York a few times around this time of year and loved march madness, so maybe I shouldn't be a second life user if people who like Second Life aren't supposed to be fans of march madness :(

I agree with Hamlet here, the average Second Life user will like a lot of different things, we're not the borg, we all like different things, we're real people.

[Hamlet Au]

Grace, I haven't read Moore, actually, I'm relying on your interpretation because you're doing such a kickass job. :) If I read that quote about "pragmatists" right, it applies more directly to products with explicit utilitarian application. Most of those 12-15 million Second Life users created an account and downloaded the software in search of an interactive entertainment experience. However, I think most of those who left did leave for pragmatic reasons -- i.e., they couldn't quickly find and interact with great/cool/fun/sexy/exciting content immediately, so they left. (And who can blame them?) That is something the Lindens can address with the UI and first hour experience.

If by "pragmatists" you're thinking more of folks in the market for specific utilitarian applications like SL-based education and enterprise, however, I think that's a losing battle in the short term. It's fair to say most (all?) the educators and enterprise-facing folks who invested time and resources in Second Life *began* as consumer level, early adopter Resident users -- the desire to merge their work activities with SL came only after they became passionate about the fundamental SL experience. I'm sure they exist, but I seriously can't think of a single individual who embraced Second Life exclusively and initially for practical/utility reasons, can you?

[Connie Sec]

So, what number of users would be posited as "evidence" that SL is now "mainstream"?
I've always been of the opinion that SL chasing the education market was something like a program looking for a solution. As a recent student of higher learning in science, I found many aspects of the learning experience were perfectly well served by discussion boards and posting of resources online. Having been in SL for almost 3 years now, I think that SL just adds another layer of complexity for relatively little extra reward. Ever been to any University's Sims? The sagebrush blowing across the deserted Sim is all the proof you need of the utility of their site to their students. Or maybe the lecturers and professors are using their Alts for some Hanky Panky on the side. Nothing like a rush of endorphins to make you an "evangelist" :)

[Ignatius Onomatopoeia]

"Your attitude *does* sound intolerant, Iggy, and I'm definitely not sure it's fair, accurate, or productive. Reductive broad brush assertions can get pretty boring too, don't you think?"

Guilty as charged, Hamlet.

Though I do wonder what "mainstream" means to others responding to this post.

[Jura Shepherd]

"Though I do wonder what "mainstream" means to others responding to this post."

For me that would mean that when I write a press release about something happening in SL, I can simply say that it's "in Second Life®". As opposed to devoting half my pitch to selling/explaining SL to people who don't know what it is.

For example (and y'all are going to hate this):
My mom doesn't use Facebook but if I say to her "Hey mom, I saw your friend Joanne on Facebook the other day", she knows exactly what I'm talking about. That's mainstream to me.

[Ignatius Onomatopoeia]

ConnieSec wrote:

"Ever been to any University's Sims? The sagebrush blowing across the deserted Sim is all the proof you need of the utility of their site to their students. Or maybe the lecturers and professors are using their Alts for some Hanky Panky on the side."

Connie, I think we educators can find hanky-panky w/o SL :) Still, I think you have another point off here.

While many university campuses are wastelands, I've found that those builders wanted to simulate what already works well IRL: the classroom, in-person on online. Building a lecture hall for students you can meet in person has never made any sense to me, but universities are moving beyond that sort of construct.

I'd like you to take a tour of some educational simulations in SL, however, from Montclair State's simulation of the Freudian personality (as an interactive iceberg, with the Id at the bottom), NASA's builds, Genome Island, to any good number of medical simulations that provide training.

That's what educators new to SL forgot, at first: it works best for immersive simulations too expensive or not even possible (walk inside an atom! Visit Mars!) IRL.

It's also good training for talented photographers like you. If you need a tour-guide, give me a shout in-world. You also get Iggy's No Hanky-Panky Guarantee™.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

I would envision an experience with mass-market appeal something like this:

An Internet surfer, drawn by advertising or word-of-mouth, arrives at the Second Life website. The very first thing that person sees is a screen full of live streams of events happening in various locations at that very moment. If the user clicks on a screen, they're instantly taken to that event or location, inside the browser, no client, no registration, maybe a few seconds of buffering. Their avatar is a point of light labeled 'guest', and they can only communicate on a special guest channel.

From there, the guest is presented with some basic tutorial stuff on movement and the like that they can complete at their leisure. They also recieve instructions on how to register an account and receive their own avatar and access to standard communication, when they're ready to do so.

They can also choose to attend basic training, an area with paid Lab staff on duty 24/7, with zero-tolerance anti-griefing enforcement and an encyclopedic knowledge of SL conventions, customs and mores (including keys to the adult regions for those whose interests lie in that realm).

It may not be feasible with the current architecture, but the goal is to immerse the potential resident in something they find of interest, with as few barriers as possible, and save the paperwork for after they're already sold.

[Hamlet Au]

That's an excellent way of putting it, Jura! "Mainstream" doesn't mean stupid or bland, just that it's a widely recognized and influential element of the general social discourse.

[Mecha]

I think the discussion so far has overlooked some important points.

How do the Lindens mainly make money from SL. By renting server space, which means people buying and maintaining virtual land. This is the core of SL. People buy virtual space in order to create whatever they want. The Lindens do not direct or tell people what to create. There are Linden sponsored events to attract and keep users, but even these events are based on user created content.

If what current residents are creating is not interesting enough for new users, how can that be helped? In other words, the world created by the user base who have invested the time and money into making the world that noobs see might not be for the mainstream.

In order for SL to become more mainstream, it would mean that SL would have to create the content for noobs, which would change the entire structure and purpose of SL. That is why, as I have argued before, and will continue to argue, Hamlet is calling for the end of SL as we know it. This would mean the end of a dynamic user created 3D environment that is constantly changing.

A more static environment with Linden created content could have better graphics, more people per sim, would be downloadable to mobile devices, and would have a lot less lag. This would be the perfect architecture for a mainstream 3D experience, especially since people would not have to learn building, scripting and other complicated activities. They would be free to socialize and meet more people in an improved and simple 3D environment.

This is what Hamlet wants but this would no longer be SL.

The only question is, how would the Lindens continue to make money from this architecture? They could charge a subscription fee or claim a percentage of the price of virtual goods sold. Would this revenue be greater than that paid for virtual space on servers? I think not.

[Ignatius Onomatopoeia]

I like Arcadia's vision a lot. It does not--as I did--assume a "dumb" or "boring" mainstream but one curious about what a VW could offer. Her approach would orient visitors to SL by interest.

BTW, in talking about a how visitors could sample an event, she is describing something like the guest experience of Cybertown. In that case, one needed the client and appeared as a blue and speechless dolphin "guest".

[Hamlet Au]

"In order for SL to become more mainstream, it would mean that SL would have to create the content for noobs, which would change the entire structure and purpose of SL."

Mecha, there already *is* content for noobs -- it's called Orientation Island and the Welcome Area. A version of both have been around since Second Life existed. How would vastly improving both change the entire structure of SL?

[Mecha]

"Mecha, there already *is* content for noobs -- it's called Orientation Island and the Welcome Area. A version of both have been around since Second Life existed. How would vastly improving both change the entire structure of SL?"

Maybe I have misunderstood the gist of this entire blog, but the impression that I have is that you want an improved new user experience in order to expand SL user base? If this is correct, you must be referring to content generally since Orientation Island and the Welcome area comprise a miniscule portion of SL. When I first started SL, I never went to the Welcome Area nor Orientation Island.

In fact, I send emails out to friends about my sim, and when they join, they go straight there without any orientation.

If all you want is an improved Welcome area, who would have any problem with that?

My problem is with this:

"A more static environment with Linden created content could have better graphics, more people per sim, would be downloadable to mobile devices, and would have a lot less lag. This would be the perfect architecture for a mainstream 3D experience, especially since people would not have to learn building, scripting and other complicated activities. They would be free to socialize and meet more people in an improved and simple 3D environment."

Can you confirm that this is not what you want?

You do realize that SL servers, with the current architecture, cannot handle 10 million users?

[Hamlet Au]

I'm not sure where you're getting that quote, Mecha, but I do think it's a good idea for the Lindens to create cached, static areas *for the first-hour users*. I.E., make the welcome area and orientation island part of the downloaded client, so lag is reduced as much as possible. I also think estate owners should have that option, so their patrons can have a less laggy experience. However, I definitely don't think the dynamic nature of SL's user-generated content should be generally changed, 99.99% of the public world should absolutely remain that way.

[LittleLostLinden]

SL needs to kill the lag and it needs to work with GPU's properly. Currently, it is like an old Commodore Vic-20.

I have a high end system and I get 10 to 15 fps in a crowded sim. That's just not right. It needs a lotta fixin.

[Mecha]

It's amazing to me that people on just about every blog complain about the lag, without understanding anything about lag.

I would recommend everyone read the technical information about lag and why it occurs.

Most times it's your own fault. The lag results from the dynamic nature of SL, which is what makes it better than any other VW. You just have to know how to manage it.

Lag results from too many scripts running at the same time, too many complex prims and textures, and your computer not being able to handle the information overload.

That is why I keep telling Hamlet that SL cannot increase its user base much because most people have basic computers and slow connections. SL will always be laggy in high end sims for most users because of these reasons and hence not enjoyable.

Only VW with static backgrounds, based on the current level of computer technology, can give the average user the stable experience that they want.

That's the crux of the matter for the niche/mainstream issue - Static vs. Dynamic.

Static means no more your world to create as you desire.

[LittleLostLinden]

I know, the lag is very old now. I hate having to monitor my ktris and a million other items every time I go to a popular sim.

You would think that a q6600 quad with 2 HD5870's, 8 gigs of memory, OCZ 200MB Read SSD's on a nice system could get better than 15 fps in a crowded sim, but currently, it's just not possible.

I like to tweak things, one of which is my SL experience, however, the slowdowns incurred by the fastest of PC's using SL is just plain ridiculous. Some day, it will be right....some day.

[Gwenette Writer]

Mainstream = a modern cliche. Mainstream = def where I do not want to be swimming hahahah. Mainstream = where people float with the current rather than stroke out on their own. Mainstream = where a zillion pennies are easier to collect than a mere million dollars. Mainstream = the current whose direction is radically altered by innovation from the edge. Second Life IS that innovation and the sooner it dives into the Mainstream the sooner more folks MAY manifest their own creativity to find solutions to a sustainable GLOBAL, HUMAN future . . . IF, and only if, sl remains focused on USER CREATED CONTENT and PERFORMANCES . . . the compromise path of creating a glorified 3d chat room that is "easy" that has "guided choices" that has world immersion-breakers like the whole world shifting to the left to open a black box full of TYPE!!! . . . LL can you hear our pleas from the bleeding edge: Do not throw out the baby with the bath.