New World Notes

Cajsa is Seriously Injured IRL and Needs Our Help With L$ Donations & Medical Supply Purchases

Above: Casja's home in SL and donation-collecting dog -- click here to teleport.

Cajsa Lilliehook's long-running and much-loved New World Notes' column did not run today -- because today, Cajsa was at her nearby wound clinic, undergoing debridement.

She has, as Cajsa puts it to me, "an infection in my leg, complicated by an impaired immune system. It's shallow but very broad, so quite painful."

Retired in real life, this condition requires medical supplies that aren't covered by her insurance.

If you want to help Cajsa with these supplies, you can go here to her Amazon wish list.

Or if you prefer, you can visit her lovely home by the water in Second Life, and click the dog by her door, which accepts Linden Dollar donations -- click here to teleport.

Watch: New SeraCast Featuring a FaMeshed Giveaway, Time To Penis Talk & Advice for New SL Bloggers

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Dropping now, here's the 10th episode of Seracast from the ladies of Seraphim SL, the most-viewed Second Life events/shopping blog.

Highlights include smart answers to a viewer question: "What advice would you give for someone wanting to start a site like Seraphim?" -- short answer: find a unique angle/market -- and also at around 22:30, the inevitability of virtual sex on metaverse platforms and TTP, i.e. Time to Penis. (Spinning off this New World Notes' post/article here.)

Other a giveaway to FaMeshed, the long-running mesh content extravaganza:

Now Open: New Bryn Oh Metaverse Art Experience, Inspired by Life Under Quarantine, Subsidized by Canadian Government

Oh, Canada: Home to great government-sponsored healthcare, and now, noteworthy metaverse art. 

Click here to teleport to Immersivist, the Second Life sim of longtime metaverse artist Bryn Oh, whose new experience, "Lobby Cam", is brought to us by the Canada Council for the Arts. (Watch the mixed reality trailer above.)

"When applying for a Canada Council for the Arts grant you are competing with a wide range of artists across the country trying to convince jurors that your proposal is important to support," Bryn tells me, explaining how she got the grant. "In this case I wrote why virtual art is unique and important right now and would send them the script, art samples from the current work but also from previous grant works from the Ontario Arts Council. They look at your budget, support material and so forth. Then it takes four months to find out if you get it as they go through all the applications."

So take that all as a tip for other artists who want to work on metaverse platforms.

As for the inspiration for "Lobby Cam":

Second Life Creator in Occupied Ukraine City Keeps Selling Her Virtual Fashion to Help Support Her Family. A Russian Friend is Assisting Her.

Among the many strange moments amid an utterly horrible war, this one must be the most surreal:

Hanna of OSMIA, a leading Second Life brand, is a Ukraine citizen in real life, and since Russia's invasion, has been hiding out in her now-occupied city. She is now nearly 7 months pregnant. But because OSMIA is a key income source for her and her now-growing family, she must still maintain her virtual world brand.

And so after many weeks of sporadic Internet service -- what with the sounds of gunfire, tanks, and explosions of a genocidal war happening all around her -- she was finally able to upload a new avatar fashion release, pretty clothes for glamorous, carefree avatars:

Cajsa's Choices: Incredible Avatar Action Imagery by Kou

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

We are on the wrong side of Kou’s weapon in 234. She numbers the pictures she uses for her microblog, using the Twitter description space for credits. I love her use of the CMYK colors (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black)  used in printing. They are such bold colors and from those four come all the glorious colors seen in magazine and color photographs. I love how she presents as a threat with a smile on her face. The contrasts are delicious. 

For more adventure, click here:

Quest 2 Install Base Estimate: Now 11-12 million, Based on Q1 Meta Report

With Meta's Q1 2022 earnings report now out, it's once again time to engage in some Meta-ology. (You know, like Kremlinology, except with a publicly traded company.) The core question for us XR/metaverse obsessives being: What's the install base of the Quest 2, which is central to Meta's  metaverse strategy?

Short answer: From what we can tell based on this earnings report, about 11-12  million.

Why? If you want to walk with me in the weeds, read on:

Surprising SL Economy Survey: While Most Creators Get a Better Revenue Split Than Competing Platforms, Most Pay Linden Lab a Lot

Of all the metaverse platforms active on the Internet today, Second Life by far offers the best overall revenue share to user creators on the platform. As a whole, the creator community makes about as much revenue from Second Life as the company itself, and 1,600 user creators earn over $10,000 a year -- a higher number than ROBLOX, even though ROBLOX has vastly more users.

Speaking of which, ROBLOX takes an eye-punching 70% cut of revenue from its creators, while recent entry Core boasted that its cut is only... 50%. By contrast, an SL creator could sell goods and services in the virtual world, and only pay the 5% fee for cashing out Linden Dollars into US dollars.

But the story of Second Life's economy is more complicated than that.

To get a clearer picture, I recently surveyed SL content creators on two questions: How much of their revenue is absorbed by Linden Lab through additional costs, for listing products on the web-based Marketplace, for renting virtual storefront land from Linden Lab, and so on -- and how that translated into real dollars.

Here's the results:

Cajsa's Choices: This Artist Beautifully Captures Blurred Avatars in Motion

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Sophia Reynolds brilliantly portrays the athleticism of dance in A Deal with God, a composite of four ballet positions. While her leotard is barely there, the shadows from the window framing is so solid it seems to clothe her more than her clothes. I love how some of the positions are more out of focus than the others, suggesting movement as well as signalling where her eyes are focused. I love the energy and the commitment she throws into her dance. 

For more breathtaking pictures, click here:

Why Meta's Retail Stores Miss Where the Metaverse is Most Powerful

What's our evidence that Meta's Metaverse strategy is helplessly muddled? Well, there's Business Insider confirming what I reported, citing an insider last year. But even more evident is Meta trying to market its metaverse platform in the real world:

Meta said Monday that its first physical retail space will open on May 9 in Burlingame, California. The store will be at Meta’s Reality Labs complex, the office where its engineers work on technologies like virtual and augmented reality... Although Meta will sell its video chatting device Portal and Ray-Ban Stories glasses on site, most of the store’s real estate will be dedicated to showcasing the Oculus headset, a Meta spokesman said. That makes sense given Zuckerberg’s reportedly obsessive focus on the metaverse lately.    

The practical difficulties are many. As I discussed with Bloomberg's Parmy Olson:

Wagner James Au, author of “The Making of Second Life,” who blogs regularly about metaverse platforms, says Meta can’t underestimate the psychological barriers to introducing people to VR. “I’ve worked for metaverse platforms and you really have to wrap your arms around someone and manipulate their head and their face while you put this headset on them.” 

And that was a challenge requiring "VR condoms" even before there was, you know, a deadly global pandemic. But even beyond those issues, the fundamental problem is this:

SL Content Creators: Last Chance to Take My Survey on Your Revenue Share With Linden Lab!

Click here to take by tomorrow Noon PT. (Use a laptop/desktop for best results.) Details published and discussed soon after!