Recently, steampunk and Old West roleplayer Miss Diogenes Kuhr was wondering why the Lindens were sending out advertisements for the new suburban-looking "Linden Homes". Many have decried these ads as proof that the Lindens have abandoned support for SL's creative community in search of the mass market audience who enjoy The Sims. (In point of fact, that's a silly notion, because when Second Life launched in 2003, the Lindens were directly competing with The Sims Online, and created suburban community areas in SL largely to target that audience.)
Rather than add yet another uninformed "ZOMG it's the end of utopia!" rant into the SL blogosphere, however, Miss Kuhr did a novel thing: She politely asked Linden Chief Product Officer Tom Hale (T. Linden in SL) what the deal with the ad campaign was. And T. Linden replied:
Because the ratio of consumers to content creators in SL today is something like 20:1, and in the broader world [it's] probably something like 100:1, we have to spend disproportionately to acquire consumers. As a result, that marketing and message is much more visible, so I can understand where you are getting the impression that is our focus.
However, T. insists, the Lindens are still marketing to content creators. And thus informed (though still not agreeing with Mr. Linden's approach), Diogenes Kuhr starts a fruitful analysis and conversation worth reading here.
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