Second Life Mobile App Roadmap: Upcoming Features & Marketing Strategy Revealed

Originally published on my Patreon

Last Friday, Linden Lab's mobile development team led by CTO Philip Rosedale and company head Brad Oberwager shared upcoming features to Second Life's mobile app -- and the long-term strategy which drives it. Pluto Linden, lead UI/UX designer on the mobile project, unveiled the top line updates.

Coming this month (December 2024):

Create new accounts in the mobile app using the existing the web flow. "We're trying to break down barriers of people coming in-world," explains Pluto.

Push notifications for select groups. Linden Lab believes this will be "vital" for engaging SLers around in-world activity from their phones.

Persistent chat conversations and IMs on your device (see above). "If you come in [on mobile] today and come back tomorrow," Pluto explains, "that conversation will still be there... [This should] induce people to stay and remind them of the vibrancy of the experience."

Planned for first quarter of 2025:

• Address bar to enable sharing SLurls and creating landmarks.

• maps.secondlife.com will work on the mobile browser.

• Shipping a first version of a communications lobby (above). While the world loads, users will have the option of starting in a lobby where their various messages are waiting for them. ("We'll put the communication aspect front and center.") This is also intended to make the Second Life mobile app relevant for people who have mid-tier/lower-end smartphones who can't fully display the virtual world view.

Coming early Q2 2025 (see image below):

• Quicker and better access to chat.

• Item-level avatar editing.

• Tap-based object interaction. 

"We're a small dedicated team just plugging away on this," Pluto notes, saying that the app's foundation was laid out in 2024. "The real exciting stuff is coming 2025."

And yes, they know many rigged mesh-based avatars aren't fully displaying on mobile. Fixes, said product head Grumpity Linden, are "coming soon".

Linden Lab's Mobile Marketing Strategy

If you're wondering why you haven't seen ads for the mobile app, it's because Linden Lab isn't targeting general consumers yet.

"The mobile app was not designed for new users where I spend a million dollars to bring [them in]," as Oberwager put it. "We built the mobile app for current residents... we're not putting marketing dollars to bring in new people."

Under their strategy, they even expect mobile users may create an alt account for mobile, yet continue using the desktop client:

 

 "Our goal is to bring people back and to do outreach to new communities," he says. "Having a vibrant community depends on bringing in new residents." By "new" in this context, he mainly means "lapsed residents", which the company defines as established SLers who haven't logged into the world over the last 6-12 months.

This also means they're not simply trying to drive as many downloads of the app as possible -- they're instead focusing most on how many times someone uses it per month, per day, and how much time they spend in-world. (What we call KPIs, for key performance indicators.)

So Linden Lab is not putting all its resources on mobile. Responding to a blogger asking if the app was an "all eggs in one basket" deal, Brad flatly answered, "No."

Rather, he answers, "Our presumption is people will use both mobile and desktop." And as he did during our interview for my latest book, Philip again expressed skepticism that people even want to use the mobile app for everything SL offers.

All that to one side, says Oberwager, you should expect to see some Second Life marketing starting now:

"Everything we're making [in SL}, we're putting it back in. I'm gong to start putting that money into marketing dollars. Our product is relevant, it's not for everybody, but there's an imperative that Second Life continues and it's extremely valuable that people come." Second Life ads are starting to "dribble out" now as they test out different approaches and targets, but expect that to pick up in January and February. (More on this topic in another post.)

I was on the Zoom call with dozens (hundreds?) of fellow bloggers, YouTubers, and assorted SL influencers calling in from around the globe. Which led to one of them asking a question that came up after the last Zoom call: Why not just announce everything on the website, rather than do group calls like this?

Oberwager (who has a gravelly voice eerily resembling California governor Gavin Newsom) acknowledged that the company hasn't been great at communicating with the community in the past -- and also noted that official announcements posted on the site aren't seen by many SLers overall.

So rather than just post on the site, the Linden Lab team decided it's better that they also reach out to as many community media figures as possible. They haven't done that in the past, but that's what these group Zoom calls are about:

"The best time to plant a tree is 30 years ago," as Brad Oberwager put it. "The second best time to plant a tree is today."

What do you think of these mobile updates and the strategy to target lapsed users? Discuss in Comments!

This post brought to you by metaverse partner Hari Sutherland, author of the new coffee table book Second Life: The First, Best Metaverse in Words & Pictures.