As Fifty Linden Fridays Launches Its 12th Anniversary Party, Its Founder Tells Me How an Internet Meme Led to One of Second Life’s Largest Groups

Barb photo by Catalina Staheli, edited by Kreao Kujisawa

Click here to join the 12th year anniversary of Fifty Linden Fridays, one of Second Life’s largest in-world groups. Expect a massive crowd, however, because with 52,530 active members, roughly 1 in 10 of SL’s entire user base is a member of FLF. 

Founded and still managed by an SLer named OMGWTF Barbecue -- or just “Barb” to those who know her -- this celebration is quite a culmination for a young woman who, back in 2006, joined Second Life simply to have some rude fun. 

Hence her notably wacky avatar name:

“I thought I was signing up as a joke, to troll people for an hour and then never log in again, so I picked a stupid name,” as Barb explains. 

Before FLF, Barb (a fashion accessory/apparel designer in real life), launched a virtual clothing brand in Second Life, and struggled to grow her customer base. This led to the idea of announcing special offers costing just L$50 (about 21 cents in USD) every weekend, fashion and houseware items created by her and a growing network of fellow creators:

“I had the great luck to have made friends with some really popular creators,” she explains. “Apatia Hammerer of Pig, Allegory Malaprop of Schadenfreude, Autumn Hykova of Tiny Bird, Bubbles Clawtooth of Clawtooth. I saw how popular their stores were, and thought I could help my store, and ultimately theirs, if we all shared our customer groups. The idea was that each store individually sent the FLF list out, and as such we were all able to access each other's customer bases.”

Without any promotion by her, FLF rapidly became massive. Even Barb isn’t sure how.  

“Oh man, that's kind of a mystery to me! I think at the time [2009], the main way to market your store was via hunts where people search your store for a free item, which often didn't result in very many direct sales. I would guess that FLF may have been one of the first of the 'weekly sale' type of events, so maybe we had the benefit of timing?”

With well over 50,000 subscribers, Fifty Linden Fridays now has about as many followers as Second Life’s official Twitter account.  

And while you might think it’s bad business for creators to sell customers copies of items that took many hours to create for just 21 cents, Barb says that’s not the case. The dozens of brands that participate in FLF every week ultimately benefit from these deep discounts:

“They don't lose money -- the traffic from the event is high enough that the quantity of sales offsets the discounted rate. On top of that, it gives them exposure to potentially new customers, new people discovering their store who go on to buy things at full price.”

In a keen irony, while FLF helped Barb’s own fashion brand become relatively successful in SL, Linden Lab’s introduction of mesh to the virtual world in 2010 ended that. (As it did for many of the other creators who weren’t readily fluent with 3D graphics programs.)

So Fifty Linden Friday became her successful brand in Second Life. Given the virtual world economy’s core focus on virtual fashion, it’s fair to say that it’s indispensable to the health of Second Life as a whole, and frankly, to Linden Lab itself. 

As for Barb, she spends a few hours each week preparing the FLF list with the help of Gretchen of Fetch!, serving her avid subscribers, and the many SL creators who would struggle without Fifty Linden Fridays.

“I think there's a lot of stores that really depend on FLF,” as Barb puts it, “and I love supporting creators however I can. It also provides some income for me, so that helps.” (Evolving with modern times, Barb recently launched an official FLF Discord server here.)

All of which is quite a turn of fate for someone who first joined Second Life as a joke, and named her avatar after an Internet meme.

“15 years later,” as OMGWTF Barbecue muses now, “joke's on me, I guess!”

RL photo courtesy Ms. Barbecue.

Comments

[Valentina Kendal]

Great story! There are so many weekly and monthly events now that is such a part of SL for many people, it is interesting if FLF really was the first (I'm a member since way back).

[AnnaEnchantment]

FLF is one of my favorite events. Yes I remember many "old style" creators closed their stores after 2010. But since we have BOM, many of these classic clothes can be worn again. I am happy about that.