Linden Lab Hiring Senior Product Manager of Second Life to Shape the Original Metaverse's Future for "Millions of Customers"

Linden Lab has a new job opening that's been up on the website for at least the last several weeks:

Senior Product Manager at Linden Lab

We’re looking for a Senior Product Manager (remote) to elevate multiple facets of our Second Life product. This person would also enable growth and scale by shipping features that improve our customer experience... 

As a Senior Product Manager, you’ll utilize in-depth product knowledge to successfully drive key projects on Second Life. You’ll work alongside a supportive team of people across engineering, design, QA, and other cross-functional teams to build products and new experiences and play a pivotal role in shaping the future of the original metaverse. And finally, the pleasure of seeing your solutions ship, scale, and make a measurable impact on millions of customers' lives across the globe.

Emphasis mine! I've been hoping that the recently unveiled mobile version of Second Life would not simply be an app that targeted existing users, but instead aim to grow the audience well beyond the core established user base of 500,000-600,000. This new job listing seems like a solid indicator that Linden Lab is indeed attempting to grow the Second Life community, building off the momentum of the mobile app after that's launched (late this year/early next).

I can't emphasize how important a mobile app is, even for long-running metaverse platforms like Second Life:

Like I wrote in 2020, IMVU floundered for years as an also-ran competitor to Second Life; after it rolled out a mobile version, here's what happened:

IMVU has become massive in just about every sense:

It has 7 million monthly active users.

And 1.2 million daily active users.

And a peak daily concurrency of 140,000 users.

And peak average daily concurrency of 120,000 users.

The secret to IMVU's massive growth is mobile. Launched to iOS and Android in 2014, IMVU's userbase is now 80% mobile, 20% desktop.

For that matter, Roblox launched a few years after Second Life (2006), but only started getting truly massive user growth after it rolled out an iOS and Android app (between 2021 and 2014).

So it's a very hopeful sign that Linden Lab is looking to grow the SL userbase to "millions" as opposed to simply serving the existing user base. If they asked me (though they haven't), the best candidate for this new role has little or no experience with the Second Life experience as it exists as a PC app, and much more background for creating compelling mobile experiences.

For instance: Rather than just create a single Second Life virtual world app, why not many which are fun standalone slices of the larger experience? There are already numerous popular mobile apps focused around avatar fashion, or customizing rooms, or building in a sandbox world with prims, and so on. The Second Life experience could be carved up into a dozen or so mini-game apps which give a whole new audience a taste of the entire experience -- and attract a significant minority of them into the whole wolrd.

Here's the whole job listing. Know any veteran developers from top casual mobile game studios who might be interested?

Comments

[Kaylee West]

My concern is that as they grow they are going to start charging more for premium and premium plus (and whatever the next new tier will be). SL has always been the "every-person's" VR platform. As much as I would love to see and welcome newcomers, I'd hate to see those of us that have been in SL nearly two decades squeezed out (not even sure what I mean by that)...

[Lisle Canning]

i think it is more than time to invest in capable people to implement those ideas, even more in these outgoing metaverse hype. which linden lab should take advantage of. we are noticing a shrink of people and econonomy is the last couple of years. improvements on lag and rezing issues should be a worry as well. bugs that dates to its lauching in 2005. second life has and always had potential to reach millions of users but it demands work. the mobile app seems to be a pain for its developers. mostly for the vast ammount of rezing area and meshes inside the platform. but as it is said on the article. a few diffrent applications for diffrent things could do its job until they could manage a full working app that is usable.

[Ryann Palianta]

I don’t think bringing more people would raise prices in fact I think it would do the opposite. They’d have millions of people more to pay premium so they could charge us all less and make the money needed to hit their target goals and beyond. It’s kind of like how Walmart or Amazon can be the cheapest prices, it’s because they have millions of buyers.

Also think about being a creator or having things on marketplace to sell. Your going to make a ton more money!! Millions of new consumers buying into things like bloodlines breedables and animations/gestures etc

[Iggy 1.0]

Give someone a full sim to develop for $20 per month, without a huge setup fee, and you'd have a metaverse that could grow again, even with SL's clunky UI and physics engine.

LL has always been tight-lipped about their costs, but how much does server space for a sim cost, monthly?

Tier has always been a deterrent to making rich RP experiences in SL, via linked sims with common interests. The attraction of "build your own game" via SL Experiences is a secret sauce I don't know that the Lindens have figured out yet.

[Cambodja]

Will there also be a mobile connection tax now? How about a 4% mobile login fee?

Linden Lab is chasing away customers by making it incredibly expensive to just buy their Linden Dollar.

People are not stupid, they see the charge every single time they order Lindens.
It is a psychological thing, people hate taxes, yet every time they want to have a good time in Second Life they are presented with tax.

So what do people do? They just go to a place that doesn't charge them tax on tax on every single interaction they make.

600K active users? Wasnt' it 900K active monthly users according to CEO Altberg a couple of years ago?

Linden Lab lost 300K active monthly users in the previous 5 years?

[Wagner James Au]

600K active users number doesn't count the 200-300K or so who create a new account every month.