Readers on Slack & High Fidelity's Shift from VR; Philip Rosedale Q&A Soon!

Last Friday I had a great chat with Philip Rosedale over High Fidelity's recent layoffs and shift away from being so VR-focused in the short term, in order to build a kind of Slack-meets-Zoom-meets-virtual worlds for work app -- I'll run the full conversation in coming days. Until then, here's some reader responses to those moves (and my replies to those replies):

I'll say it before and I'll say it again. "Will it play in Peoria?" and "How does it work for/appeal to people who AREN'T the technorati/valleywags" matter... And why do you valleywags use slack? it's proprietary and duplicates functionality that exists in already-existing standards...like e-mail, jabber and IRC. Standards exist for reasons. - CronoCloud Creeggan 

In point of fact, Slack interoperates with a lot of common existing services, unifying them into a single shared virtual work space. And nowadays, it's hardly limited to Silicon Valley employees: It now counts over 10 million daily active users and is used by groups in 65 of the Fortune 100 companies.

Another update from Slack's blog, in opposition to another reader saying, "Maybe Philip opening up an office in Tokyo while seeing the world from a different perspective would help him and the project." The implication being High Fidelity's new move is coming from the Valley bubble. But as it happens:

More than half of Slack’s DAUs are outside of the United States, in 150-plus countries. In Japan, our second-biggest market and one of our fastest-growing, Slack is helping leading companies like Musashi to improve efficiency, transparency, and culture... the company expects that adopting Slack will reduce overtime work, meeting time, and the time required for all kinds of requests and approvals by 50%.

Slack, by the way, was originally founded in order to build a virtual world. One thing Slack does not do very well, however, is voice-based or video-based conversations, a topic Philip and I will discuss.

Reader Clara Seller says this about High Fidelity's upcoming virtual world for work product:

This has to start with a portable technology that can scan, enhance, and present the animated elite narcissists flawlessly. Image is everything. Its use will trickle-down in business after they have control of it. Philip needs to start there. It's a long way from jerky animated cartoons and California Dreaming.

Fair point -- more on that with Philip and me soon!

Comments

[JohnC]

I missed the post about the lay offs last week so I am just adding my "told you so" here.

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

My "will it play in Peoria" comment was more about High Fidelity and not Slack.

But...just because some companies use Slack, doesn't mean they're actually competently run companies and have any good reasons for using it. It's the new "it girl" of tech. Valleywags/technorati tend to hop on bandwagons no matter how practical they are. Companies that use Slack are companies obsessed with the "new hotness" that don't know how to use already existing standards, like jabber, IRC, e-mail, and icalendar. In fact, Slack's chat backend was once IRC! Not even taking account that Slack stores data in the cloud, meaning companies data doesn't stay in-house. They're paying Slack to do things they could do on their own...in house.

And getting back to High fidelity. If it was competently run, they wouldn't have had to lay off 200 people. Philip's a dreamer who has problems understanding practicality...which is one reason why SL has some of the faults it does. He just doesn't understand that VR just isn't that practical for some use cases.

For example, he writes this:

We found ourselves walking around and interacting with each other the same way you would in a physical office. We put up whiteboards and spaces for teams. Everyone felt better connected, remote workers felt less lonely, and people who didn’t sit together IRL got to know each other better. Meetings ran much smoother than when the unlucky person had to join with video conferencing. Although we sometimes used HMDs—for example at our company all-hands meetings—we almost always used just headphones. And we had fun too, with emote animations, impromptu dance parties, and even happy hours.

As I said before, that sounds like SL with whiteboards. Philip has a technology, VR, that he goes gaga over and is trying to find a business use case for it to make money. He is trying to make "fetch" happen.

He also said:
So could it be that the Metaverse starts with people working together in virtual offices, and then staying around and connecting for various reasons outside of work? What if the general trend toward remote and distributed work, as shown by the recent success of companies like Zoom and WeWork, could be accelerated even faster by virtual worlds?

What about those people who don't work in Silicon Valley style cubicles? Does he really think people want to stay around connected after work and not just go home and connect with non-work family and friends?

[sirhc desantis]

"One thing Slack does not do very well, however, is voice-based or video-based conversations" - two reasons it went up in my estimation already.

Because it ties in (to me) with the point ser Creeggan makes regarding staying connected 24/7 to people you work with - personally had enough of that BS when the tether was just a phone. Email was easy - it could wait. (don't get me started on all the social poo and frankly glad to be out of all that corporate crap anyway so if people now feel forced - tough)

Oh can you ask ser Rosedale if they have a company song and morning calisthenics yet? =^^=

[Clara Seller]

I'm agreeing with everyone's underlying sentiment. Better then Ezra made a comment about Philip visiting a shaman and that's a good idea. Maybe it's time for Philip and LL, for that matter, to absorb their failures. Deal with it.

Poor little SL is still chugging along and could really use the creative energy and resources of these entities. This is their legacy and they should stop crying about it in the high school restroom. Maybe they don't own the future of VR but they certainly have a big claim to the present. Be the best you can be right now. Join forces and save the relevance of the only thing you have ever done right. You have a chance to save yourselves. Just do it.

[Wagner James Au]

> Valleywags/technorati tend to hop on bandwagons no matter how practical they are.

It's true that the Valley operates in a bubble and often hops on the latest hotness, then eventually loses interest. (That includes virtual reality and virtual worlds a decade ago -- remember Google's virtual world Lively?) So the best way to check for that is to watch how much a given technology is adopted *outside* of the Valley. And in the case of Slack, while less than 10 companies in the Fortune 100 are in the Valley (and that's generously including Amazon and MS in Washington) 65 of the Fortune 100 use Slack. That's what breakthrough adoption looks like.

[U.G. Krishnamurti]

I think all of this was part of the plans all along..Finished!

It seemed the only part of high fidelity that was ever fully developed was the sound aspect....Pointless

Philip had to know the average person would never blind themselves wearing goofy goggles..Status Quo!

It is not leaving us anywhere...He is nothing but a tape recorder!

Philip trying to save us, that in itself is the destructive act that is destroying us!

Phil my interest is to point out to you that you can walk, and please throw away all those crutches.

[JohnBGood]

Just let go of it all Mr Rosedale. the only thing that burns in hell is the part of you that won't let go of your life: your memories, your attachments. They burn 'em all away. But they're not punishing you,They're freeing your soul.
If your frightened of dying, and your holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. If you've made your peace then the devils are really angels freeing you from the earth

[Wagner James Au]

Most. Random. 90s movie reference. EVAR.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FbtMOGlyKU