Metaverse analyst and musician Grace McDunnough has an interesting take on the recent news that Blue Mars is ending development of its PC program, and after laying off some of its staff, aiming to develop a version of Blue Mars for the iPad and iPhone. As regular readers know, I did some consulting work for Blue Mars last year and am constrained by an NDA from talking about the steps which led up to that decision; I will say they're probably more complex than is generally understood. All that to one side, however, Ms. McDunnough brings up the important concept of a pivot:
Eric Reis introduced the concept of the pivot - "the idea that successful startups change directions but stay grounded in what they've learned. They keep one foot in the past and place one foot in a new possible future. Over time, this pivoting may lead them far afield from their original vision, but if you look carefully, you'll be able to detect common threads that link each iteration."
Grace cites the case of Flickr, which began in its original form as an MMO that totally failed to gain traction, but then became the mammoth photosharing success we know today. I'd add another pivot example: Second Life itself, which was originally launched as a monthly subscription online game, but pivoted in early 2004 to totally change its revenue model to sell virtual land, and offer SL to users as a monetizable content creation platform. And this happened after, as I write in my book, Linden Lab laid off 2/3rds of its staff. To be sure, some pivots are more successful than others, but for the sake of this space, and the very smart folks who are still working on it, I hope Blue Mars' particular turn is a worthwhile one.
actually Hamlet - the second life pivot is more extreme:
linden lab originally developed HARDWARE for the metaverse. the "rig" they called it - it was a full body haptic feedback harness/cage.
they originally developed the world of second life to show-off the rig.
or so legend goes.
Posted by: qarl | Friday, January 21, 2011 at 10:31 AM