Robin Harper Becomes VP at Social Gaming Giant Playdom

Robin Harper, a founding Linden who pioneered Second Life's marketing and community efforts in the early years (which included hiring, well, me), has become VP of marketing at Playdom, the social game company specializing in Facebook-driven entertainment that was recently acquired by Disney for some $763 million. Before that acquisition, Playdom itself acquired Metaplace, Raph Koster's start-up (where Robin sometimes consulted) which initially began as a developer of a web-based virtual world with user-generated content, but after that failed to gain traction, repositioned itself as a social game company making Facebook-powered products like My Vineyard and Island Life. On her blog, Robin talked about this move in a very interesting post, suggesting how Facebook's success was a lesson for virtual worlds like Second Life.

Once she joins Playdom today, she writes, "Look for me on Facebook (Taliesin Protagonist) and let’s play some games!" As it happens, "Taliesin Protogonist" is the Second Life avatar name Robin took after leaving Linden Lab, and now it'll also be her Facebook gaming handle. This move comes very shortly after Cory Ondrejka, another founding Linden, announced he was joining Facebook. There's been a lot of talk about integrating Second Life with Facebook, so it's interesting to note how many of Second Life's top founders are themselves integrating with Facebook.

Photo from Robin's blog. Hat tip: Hunter Walk, who left Linden Lab in 2003 to become VP at another social media company that's embedded in Facebook, i.e., YouTube.

Comments

[Ghosty Kips]

Robin was one of the good ones. I'm glad to see she's found a new avenue - but I'll wager she'll not be as happy doing this as she was with the early Lab.

[Trin Trevellion]

She talks so nice about f*cebook, it's kinda weird. I'm looking forward to Diaspora. At least, they won't sell our identities to all kind of marketing creeps. And I'm glad that where I come from, f*cebook is sued by consumer protection authorities.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Facebook has many vices. But it has one important virtue: it works as designed. You never get stuck in Facebook as a glowing green cloud or featureless gray silhouette. Facebook doesn't make your skirt disappear when you walk across the wrong floor texture. Facebook doesn't randomly send you off walking through walls for thirty seconds like a ghost with a goal.

It might not get us Facebook numbers, but just smoothing, polishing and simplifying the first ten minutes of existance for a new resident would go a lot further than most people credit.

[Ciaran Laval]

Good luck to Robin, I was hoping she'd come back to Linden Lab, but that never materialised.

[Arcadian Vanalten]

How is she pulling off having a Facebook alias--Taliesen Protagonist--when that's specifically listed as a violation of the Facebook TOS? Has she simply not been caught doing that yet? Last I heard, anything other than your real name gets you booted.

This is one of the key reasons I for one will NEVER support SL integration w/ Facebook; they insist on full access to as much real info on you as they can get their mitts on despite a history of being far too cavalier with privacy and personal information issues.

I do have a Facebook account I use for professional networking, but I'm very careful w/ what goes there and who accesses what. It is MY choice to divulge my SL identity as I see fit, to whom I see fit. I do not trust Facebook to respect that if they ever gain access to that information.