Want to Understand What Linden Lab's Acquisition Means for Second Life? Ask the Owner of a Top SL Virtual Content Brand

Above: Mishi IRL and her Blueberry brand on Facebook

While the SL community's opinion over the world's new corporate owners is decidedly mixed, I put a lot of stock in the analysis of Gizem McDuff, owner and founder of Blueberry -- which has been, since its founding in 2012, one of the most successful and popular virtual style brands in SL. As such, Mishi has some of the best insights on SL's economic operations and Linden Lab's relationship to it:

I see a lot of speculation and fear over Linden Lab's acquisition.

First, Lindens want you to know that nobody is even considering touching the adult content on SL. The new future board members are very aware that SL comes with adult content and they are just fine with it. They do not want to mess with anything that's working. That includes adult content. It would be cool to give them a warm welcome when they are officially on the board.

Let me explore two chief concerns with y'all.

1: SL will be dismantled and shut down.

2: SL will be milked for what it's worth and shut down.

Mishi goes on to break down these scenarios in-depth:

You know what? These are not wild speculations. Especially if you are a gamer. Some of you see a pattern with game studio acquisitions and it's perfectly normal for you to fear the same for SL's future.

Let's take a look at how NCSoft handles their investments. They will invest in a game, support it until it either sky rockets or stales. Once it's stale and not making enough money (EVEN if it's profitable) they will shut it down and move on to investing in the next thing that could be the new Fortnite.

This is very common with publishers and game investors. Even outside of gaming, a project won't continue to get funding (usually) if it's not growing at the rate it should.

A company making $20m/year could easily fail to raise money from their investors if that $20m is less than what they made last year. But there is a very good reason for this. In most of these cases, growth is the only way the company survives and becomes stable. So the investors know that there is no point putting in any further funding.

Second Life fits into NONE of these boxes and these investors aren't interested in betting their money on something that explodes and grows x10 every year.

These are the type of investors who put their money in businesses proven to stay stable over the years. Who have already been through their growth years and now evened out. Which is another completely valid and successful way to invest. It's just not the trendy hip way to invest right now because most VCs are chasing the unicorns when it comes down to LARGE ($100m+) investments.

And this all sounds about right to me. It's possible that controversies over extreme adult-rated content and IP-infringing content may end up being more serious than this analysis assumes -- but that would be much more likely to happen if SL was still enjoying its spotlight in the media that it had 10-12 years ago. With most of that public awareness gone, SL is fairly safe to quietly enjoy its autumnal period in modest if comfortable prosperity. While brands like Blueberry -- not to mention its many customers -- can expect to enjoy Second Life for years to come.

Mishi's thoughts adapted, with permission, from some posts from her personal Facebook. Mishi IRL photo courtesy Mishi.

Comments

[Better then Ezra]

Yeah as if one of the lindens favorites who they sponsor & advertise would say anything bad or put in danger all that sweet cash pushed her way....LMAO!!

BTW.. she is talented but over rated..so many other great creators will give you a mega clothing Hud for 1/20th of what she charges for a fatpack!

To be honest her work really does not stand out like other smaller stores who spend more time on detail, who are more competitive. so many stores the lindens ignore to make sure a friend is taken care of.

[Josh]

She's just "hot" RL. OFC she looks good.

[Nodoka Hanamura]

So we're just going to resort to ad hominem and moving goalposts, then. What is this, Twitter? (Referring to the comments thus far)

I for one am happy to hear that Michi has a good head on her shoulders isn't panicking with the masses when in reality Waterfield is, as she said - a investment firm interested in companies that are reliable and matured. The reason you see investment firms liquify assets is if they can't swim, they salvage what they can to get a quick ROI, as much as they can.

There's a growing pessimism in SL about how well we're doing. We're doing quite well given the fate of other platforms of our time. There, IMVU and Moove are long gone or extremely inactive. Activeworlds runs out of Rick Noll's fucking garage and has fell into a one man show, and All the other virtual worlds pre-2010 have either bought the farm or are on life support. Compared to the others, Second Life is fan-fucking-tastic in the profitability department. And has been for a while. Yes, people have been leaving over the past decade, with the past two to three years being stagnant in terms of constant user logins. I'm not denying that at all, and to do so would be an exercise in blissful ignorance.

What I am saying - is the Waterfield Acquisition is not the end of Agni. It's not even the end of Linden Lab at large.

Brett Linden, head of marketing has said - in a personal capacity as far as I am aware, that Waterfield and Oberwager - the two heads of this investment firm, are not just familiar with SL's founder (Technically this is the words of Philip Rosedale, but still), but are up to speed on what Second Life is, and is not. They are willing to meet with the community and respond to concerns and questions. They are understanding of our needs and what is best for the platform's future if it is to stay, if not successful, then profitable.

People need to learn to quit being so goddamn pessimistic. Yes, things are rough in RL and SL right now, but this acquisition is not one of them.

I am honest to Ebbe God, sick and tired of the populace of SL fearing the end of the goddamn virtual world all the time when all they can do to realize it's not all doom and gloom, is look outside their goddamn window.

[Wench Aeon]

Better then Ezra not sure why you are trolling Giz she is a great designer and takes great care of her berries yes i love her clothes with a passion but you went off point here this was about the new buyers and linden labs not your feelings on Giz/Blueberry

[Tankgirl]

LOL. What was it again she predicted for sansar?

[adre]

Oh, suddenly Second Life designer becomes a business expert and knows every single decision the board will make? Interesting indeed! :)

[Alicia]

Really... IMVU is long gone, @Nodoka Hanamura? There's just one major problem with that. IMVU's numbers are actually doubled that of SL, as SL can have an off-hour/peak-hour from 24-48k to IMVU's 50-110k, despite IMVU's lack of movement and other things.

Don't assume that the new owners have seen everything that pertains to SL specifically, so get that thought out of your heads. Ebbe's good at one thing only and that's selling. He only needed to show them what he wants them to see. You think he's gonna show them the adult content? Nope. What everyone needs to remember is that the new owners bought a company with baggage (good and bad baggage), and they're going to look over everything and do what they feel would make their business portfolios shine; even if that means keeping Tilla, while SL's fate is in question. Never, and I do mean never, trust anyone that says "Second Life will not be touched.", or anything along those lines. That's the most frequent mistake everyone makes when new ownership comes in.

The bottom line is that you guys don't know how NY/NJ investment groups work, regardless of where their affiliate offices are located. They will get their money... one way or the other... and know every legal tactic in the book in the business world to get it.

[Nodoka Hanamura]

>IMVU
>50k-110k
Yeah, I'm gonna doubt that. If IMVU has a user peak equivalent to SL in its' heyday, then why do I never see anyone fucking talk about it?

Also, Alicia, I look forward to the crow pie eating contest. Because I have a strong feeling you'll be in good company with all the other pessimists.

[Wagner James Au]

Alicia's right, IMVU is still chugging along -- its website currently gets about 10 million monthly pageviews, about on par with SecondLife.com:

https://www.similarweb.com/website/imvu.com/#overview

The reason we don't hear about it much is IMVU's userbase skews much younger than SL and its platform is less robust, so it never captured the "mind share" that Second Life did, while there's way less users talking about it on Facebook and other social networks for the olds. (Olds being over early 20s in this case.)

[Luther Weymann]

Break up SL and sell-off the parts? LOL
What's the asset to sell?

The outdated software that runs SL? Anyone who looks at that will say "no".
The SL Marketplace? That has no value without SL active residents.
The premium membership? That has no value without SL active residents.
The region payments? That has no value without SL active residents.
All the stuff we uploaded? That has no value without SL active residents.
The rented servers? Nope, those belong to someone else.
The user mailing list? Hahahaha you gotta be kidding.
The brand name of SL? SL is no longer a brand name.
Furniture, fixtures, inventory, and equipment? Worthless.

There are no parts of value for a sell-off. The only viable investment is a long term holding for the profit cash flow from SL.

[Vitilas Razor]

Well of course it is in this merchant's best interests to tell her customer base not to panic. She wants them to keep spending irrespective of whether or not the sky is falling.

The top 1% on any platform, real life or virtual, care nothing about the general population. I will take what the say with a full sack of salt.

[blueberry]

Vitilas Razor,
Yes, I would say the sky is falling if the sky was indeed falling. I fought against LL tooth and nail -publicly in the forums- when they almost took away group slots from free members. I don't always agree with the Lab.
You aren't talking about a massive corporation here. Just a person, drawing up stuff in her pjs :) I do care. I care a great deal about this community.

Adre,
I know, right? What was Wagner thinking sharing my social media rambles?!

IMVU discussion,
IMVU has a fully functioning mobile app, which I am wildly jealous of. It's kind of a miracle that SL is keeping up being pretty much desktop-laptop only access.

[Pull My Finger]

If I had a large brand in Second Life that I was financially dependent upon, you could trust that I'm going to give you the straight dope on how I feel about my new owners. I think they are super duper fantastic and everything is going to be just fine.

For our next unbiased opinion, let's ask the many, many faces of Chung Estates their viewpoint on Linden Lab's acquisition. I'll bet they are proud, happy, and thrilled.

I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that there is a consensus among every entity that has a financial and reputational investment in the SL status quo, that everything is going to be just fine.

[Argo N]

Alicia --> "They will get their money... one way or the other... and know every legal tactic in the book in the business world to get it."
(indeed they will).

Luther Weymann -->"There are no parts of value for a sell-off. The only viable investment is a long term holding for the profit cash flow from SL."

Using the Weymann test: will SL able to maintain or even improve its profit on cash flow 1, 5 or 7 years out? What could happen to make SL NOT meet its cash flow projections? What could happen to make SL *exceed* its projected cash flow?
We have little choice but to "dance while the music is playing," but we could and should understand how the powers that be will be making decisions.

Nodoka --> So we're just going to resort to ad hominem and moving goalposts, then. What is this, Twitter?
(sadly true)

Been through a few such buy myself (who hasn't?). Anyone who could financially gain from a buyout, (or maybe just break even), you have to factor that into their opinion. Expect it. Nothing new here. Ad hominem attacks, yes have a right to be upset, please remember flame gets your writing instantly skipped over by the people you would most like to influence.

I'm not sure where I come down yet, still collecting information and ideas. But I do know SL's world probably will continue but at the command level it will be different.

Argo N.

[Callan Pinkney]

I like to think that a fresh approach is maybe just what we need. Linden Lab has always sucked at marketing the product. I don't think they ever really felt they should HAVE to. If the new owners could figure out some way to create a sustainable growth of 2 or 3% a year, perhaps make some hard choices about the kludgy legacy content and make a few needed changes under the hood, they can keep pulling cash out of this until the mass of user base starts dying off @2035-2038.

[Luther Weymanns]

A couple comments following up on my "no assets to sell" post.

The software that runs SL cannot be radically changed or updated, too much will break and the time it takes to fix massive changes only results in more problems. This is the inherent problem with very old software that a lot of people have worked on and the code is now very difficult. Happens to many legacy software that never gets a full rewrite every four or so years to stay competitive.

SL is not a growth business and any review of the user base will tell a good business person that diluting their investment so they can raise the capital to rewrite a new SL from scratch for use by the current user base is not good business. It's better to take the current profit and don't rock the boat.

The thing that will probably happen is this. Eventually, the investment company will tire of their SL investment. SL will be sold again only this time to a company that needs a slow loss company they can use for tax advantages. Once that slow loss can't be written off anymore, SL will be shut down like so many other tech and software companies that have followed this path have. If this new company is really disenfranchised from us SL users that shutdown could be abrupt because we don't own anything we have uploaded. And abrupt could be without notice and no more logins ever with one press release and no comment ever again. That type of shutdown.

SL will fail eventually and none of us have any insight into the financials so we won't see it coming. Your World, Your Imagination will someday end and that ending is currently in motion.

[Isabella]

MMM...I think her guess is as good as anyone else.. she is not a Linden.
She makes clothes paying other people that work for her.. And her clothes are a copy of RL. Yes, they are cool, and thank you for all the giftcards.
But I don't spent real money in SL because I don't have a dollar salary, I don't have a credit card (and I wish I'll never have a reason to have one) so LL see me as non important for them, as well as all the creators in SL (some of them aren't even creating anything.. they just copy RL, or pay professionals to do the work, or steal the work from websites like renderosity)
LL want's money and I don't have it. And these new investors come from a place that wants to generate more money...
You may not see this, because you may live in a capitalist country that overspent and live out of debt.. but I'm not. SL ask for your money all the time seducing you.

[pixels]

Ya'll need to organize a 12 step Pessimists Anonymous group. Hamlet can lead it. Good luck.

[Tealcie]

Some of us are heavily invested relative to our income and this unexpected change is unsettling. Hide and watch i guess.

[Wagner James Au]

"If I had a large brand in Second Life that I was financially dependent upon, you could trust that I'm going to give you the straight dope on how I feel about my new owners."

You're missing the fact that Second Life the company is more financially dependent on major SL brands than vice versa.