Linden Lab Designing New World to Allow Transfer of Second Life Identity & Friends Network, Says CEO

Just noticed a Tweet from Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg, responding to a conversation with the former SL blogger known as Botgirl Questi and iO9's Annalee Newitz, who perceptively wonders, considering Linden's new world, "Is Second Life About to Become a Ghost World?". Botgirl says this:

.@slhamlet @Annaleen @ebbealtberg If LL ports existing SL IDs to the new platform, hooking back up with friends & groups should be fine.

— Botgirl Questi (@botgirlq) June 24, 2014

And Ebbe answers this way:

@botgirlq @slhamlet @Annaleen Yes, we clearly want to solve for that and let you bring you identity and friends across.

— Ebbe Altberg (@ebbealtberg) June 25, 2014

Which means Linden Lab is designing the new world to enable transferring SL avatar identity and associated friends network to the new world. Which is one way encourage migration away from Second Life. Which as it happens, tends to lend weight to Annalee's observation:

We've seen thriving social networks shut down before, and it's always a little sad. MySpace was once the place to see and be seen, though that's hard to imagine now; and of course AOL's dialup chat rooms were the most popular social networks of the late twentieth century. The question is always who will stay until the very last servers are shut down. Those people are in many ways like the stubborn citizens who refuse to leave their homes in a town whose industry and population have fled. Virtual ghost worlds may become more common as the internet enters middle age.

Because while many may choose to stay, any major migration will largely leave virtual tumbleweeds behind.

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[TribeGadgets]

Import current IDs..so as of an hour ago, all 38,589,463 of them :) Ok not exactly Big Data I suppose (even with the social connections). Very much do-able and probably easier to grab the lot rather than attempt to weed out the existing tumble weeds

[Eddi Haskell]

This sounds like it would not be hard to do, and would also be good business strategy. Current Second Life users can be given the opportunity to keep their names in the new virtual world. If you wish to keep your friends list it will be ready for you as will groups if your friend ports the new account over.

The real question as I see it is will the new virtual world be able to be operated on the same devices as current Second Life, or will you need Oculus Rift plus a thingamajig input device plus double your current bandwidth to operate the new virtual world effectively? In addition, ease of use issues will be paramount in determining success for Second Life 2.0.

[Eddi Haskell]

Has anyone noticed this line in the post over at the article Hamlet is linking to "Is Second Life set to become a Ghost World?"

"It's possible that this new virtual world is part of Linden Labs founder Philip Rosedale's new project called High Fidelity".

Is a merger of Linden Lab and High Fidelity in the works then? This is another bombshell if this has validity, or maybe I am not reading this right.

[A.J.]

Transfer of identity seems like a no-brainer.

It would be like changing your business location and burning your loyal client list.

It's almost pathetic that SL users would even question this, but it's a valid question given the contempt that LL has shown for it's clients over the years.

This whole thing has been handled so poorly and does not inspire confidence that LL has any clue as to what they are doing. Clients who regularly pay a lot of money to you and who have huge investments in your business should not be left dangling:

for a year, may two, who knows. We really don't know the details, we're making it up as we go along. Just keep paying us and don't worry until we're ready for you to scramble or we throw you off a cliff. Because, hehe, we tend to do that.
Also, there will be no direct line of communication, we'll just throw some chatter to chatterboxes and leave it to your imagination.

Also, odds are that the person running this show won't be around when, whatever this is, unfolds. It will probably be someone with a completely different vision and everything that you thought you know, you really don't.

[irihapeti]

how can you transfer a friends list?

what happens when the friend is not there in the betterworld?

what happens if the friend is not there in SL now. Do that name get transferred just bc you want to keep it?

if can bring my friends list (even if they aren't here or there) then can I bring my shop group list that I spent 11 years building up into 20,000 names?

is stuff like this where it starts to unravel

+
can accept that can maybe get your own same name in some way but other names? dunno about that

[irihapeti]

ps

bc I don't want to seem like a downer

can work by optin. Like on the LL/SL website is a button. Please transfer my account details to the betterworld and add me to the friends and groups I am a member of in the betterworld who are there already. And as they join please add me to them also

[Ajax Manatiso]

I have a feeling they will want you to download a huge XML file and then upload it to their new world in order to transfer inventory -- make the user do the data exchange work themselves. Of course you would have numerous time outs and need about 20 tries to get it completely transferred and they may have a limit of, say, 1000 items -- all to make you happy. Then as to maintaining your identity - I don't want to be Ajax Manatiso Resident - I hope that's not their idea of maintaining your identity. LL has a history of looking down their noses at the dumb saps who are their stinkin' customers.

[Ajax Manatiso]

Oh, and as to my sim - I couldn't handle private island fees so I managed to buy out all my neighbors to get an entire mainland sim - through months of negotiation. And then it was months of building it up to what it is. If I don't get an identical mainland sim in the new world, which I think the odds are zero to nil, I will just forget SL altogether and spend my time with something else.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Interesting... you know, what they could do is implement portals to allow individual avatars to move between the old world and the new world. Plop up a load screen, kill the current browser process, start the other browser, voila.

Something that would be harder to implement but perhaps worthwhile would be a channel for communications between the worlds. I don't know what form that would take without seeing the new world interface, but ideally you could still get Second Life notifications in the new world, pop through a portal, and attend SL events in your old world skin.

Full backwards compatibility is neither necessary nor desirable, there are non-trivial issues with inventory transfer (i.e. there likely won't be any) but there are still methods and reasons to build walkways between the old walled garden and the new one.

[Carlos Loff]

Migrate to Kitely - Is exactly the same as SL but we are all being pioneers there, helping each other free of charges

Is 50 times cheaper and growing everyday and the BIG BOSS Ilan Tochner is reachable and helpful

Dont think twice, give it a try - Wont regret it

Not spamming, just telling facts from my recent experience

[Inara Pey]

@Eddi Haskill

The Lab's new platform isn't anything directly to do with Rosedale's High Fidelity.

Ebbe made that clear right off the bat when taking questions at the TPV Dev meeting.

If you want to hear his comments from that meeting, I spliced together an 12-minute audio clip from my own recording of the meeting here:

http://modemworld.wordpress.com/2014/06/21/ebbe-confirms-were-working-on-a-next-generation-platform-with-audio/

The key comments made are also bulletted.

[irihapeti]

@Ajax

I don't think you will get a Resident lastname

maybe something tho like:

Ajax Manatiso But Better

jejeje (:

+

lol !!! I hope they come up with a better name than Better pretty soon. Or Ebbe going to rue the day he ever said is gunna be like SL but Better

[joe]

If you want to get a clue where Ebbe is "taking" SL 2.0. Read from his own lips about another product he worked on at microsoft for 11 years.

Sept. 6, 1999-"Vizact 2000 reinvents what people can do with documents,'' says Ebbe Altberg, product unit manager at Microsoft. "It's an innovative product that unleashes a new set of possibilities for grabbing and holding a viewer's attention.''

Development was ended due to unpopularity and the program was discontinued on April 1, 2000.

Not bad for 11 years worth of paychecks.

nuff said.

[everton]

Good evening, just think bring friends list, it would be good to take our inventory, have 3 years of second life, and spent a lot of money already spent rle still, people with more years of life spent, and nothing to lose everything, I totally wrong I make this appeal, PLEASE LET OUR INVENTORY IN NEW PLATFORM.

[Mariko Nightfire]

Is that the crash of the SL economy that I'm hearing. People are telling me that they will not longer shop as they will be loosing all their inventory. And why buy or rent land when all builds will disappear?

[cathartes aura]

'It became necessary to destroy the town to save it'. But don't worry or concern your pointy little heads with the messy details. Trust us... It'll be just like SL "but better". LMAO!!!

Will LL rig the "new world" economy to benefit only the chosen few like they rigged SL 1.0 over the years? Will the land barons be given a new "Atlas Land Program" to continue their rigged corrupt business advantage over other land owners? Will LL reduce pricing for land?

If the past is any indicator of future behavior by LL then the answer is things will get worse for the "average resident" in the "new world". LL only listens to the largest land owners and certain content creators when forming inworld policies. LL scratches their back and they scratch LL's. At the expense of the other 99% of residents...

[Arcadia Codesmith]

The issue with transferring content might be one of rights rather than technology. When you buy an item in Second Life, what you're buying is a limited license to employ that particular content for personal use in the specific context of Second Life (some creators bestow additional rights, but that's not common).

Linden Lab has asserted certain rights over all user content, but I strongly suspect any attempt to exert those rights beyond routine promotional use would end up providing gainful employment to a small army of gleeful lawyers.

I imagine you'll be able to import anything you personally created, assuming the file format is compatible or convertable. I'm not certain anything created for the obsolete architecture of Second Life will be useful in a next-generation framework, but we'll see.

You have no ethical or legal right to transfer anything you bought in one virtual world to any other virtual world, even one owned by the same company, unless you have an explicit contract that grants you that right.

[zzpearlbottom]

By what im understanding, Liden Lab is already loosing to much by now they had to put Ebbe saying this:
http://sl.governormarley.com/?p=4045
As more know, Not only Kitely but Open sim are a alternative, much easy, much less expensive and now, more known then ever before.

[Metacam Oh]

Before I even slightly give a damn about their new virtual world, I'd like to know if it's going to be the same business model, ie: Bend over pay us 1000 to setup a server (that's now automated) and 295 for 1/4th a core of a cpu a month. If i couldn't afford their outdated problematic first virtual world, I assume the 2nd one won't be cheaper.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

The dominant model in more recent virtual worlds is to provide land to everybody for free or very cheap and make revenue off virtual goods (either company-produced merchandise or a healthy skim off player-to-player transactions). The SL model was profitable, but most societies find feudalism unsustainable in the long run.

[Carlos Loff]

What part of - Its a whole new world and different fro SL and SL content is not compatible with it - Very clear - Its new its different - bye bye SL

[Flashing Merlin]

All the questions above demonstrate how badly this is being handled by LL. We shouldn't have to worry about these questions; we should be provided with the answers. Had to read the meeting transcript just to realize the two worlds will initially operate in parallel, with the option to enter either.

However, how can this possibly work economically? Land owners already complain tier is too high, while Hamlet keeps warning that this business model isn't sustainable; now LL expects land owners to maintain land in both virtual worlds? If the business model in the new world is different, and tier is lower, then landowners will migrate, but then how can the original SL survive?

[Fred]

I just can't wait to see this happen, I don't want to sound like a downer but I would be suprised if LL handled this elegantly. We residents are a picky bunch and we'll be hard to please, and LL has a trackrecord of screwing things up and turning a deaf ear onto the community - this could never go wrong could it?

Arcadia: what a great idea with a portal, THAT would be something LL should put someone to code right away.

My contribution would be friendslists who spanned over the two worlds so it's not simply one or the other as in online or offline.

Linden Labs: ask Hamlet how much money he want and hire him! you need someone who can deliver a the message and atually knows the target audience and can refer to other vitual worlds. Cryptic twitter messages only creates rumours....