Why Linden Lab Struggles to Communicate to the Second Life Community at Large (Comment of the Week)

Above: The default viewer's log-in announcement message... if you can click it in time

While last Tuesday's main post was mostly about Linden Lab's upcoming features to the SL mobile app, it also noted why Linden Lab is now making such announcements through group video calls:

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. 

Prompting author Hari Sutherland to observe:

Balkanization and fragmentation of communication channels (as well as communities within SL) is a core problem, and getting worse...many residents (likely a majority) never visit the SL forum, if they even know it exists; maybe they use the SL site occasionally to check account data, but how many pull down the Community submenu?

 

Discord has replaced IM for many, and now we have Primfeed as well; oh, and Reddit.

 

I can't imagine that you can get news to even 20% of residents with a single platform. So how do you get announcements and important info out? I'm guessing push announcements on the mobile app may be one way.  

 

Welcome to yet another challenge to growing the Second Life user base beyond marketing:

Communicating with the existing user base to share new updates, events, and other content that would make them more likely to keep coming back. The problem has become even more problematic over the last 10 years, as most of the existing user base increasingly doesn't use the official SL viewer, so doesn't even see the official announcements displayed at the log-in screen. (Which are largely ignored, at any rate, since most everyone using the viewer is there to go into the virtual world, not check messages about it.) And 30% of the SL user base is not fluent in English (at a very rough estimate), requiring any announcement be translated into multiple languages, including Japanese and Brazilian Portuguese.

I think Hari is right that push announcements on the mobile app may be the best (or least worst) way of reaching as many SLers as possible, since we're already accustomed to getting most of our news and updates via various mobile apps.

I'd also love to see a Governor Linden NPC who delivers the news in a comical voice via fun old timey in-world radios positioned all over the mainland, and available as a free add-on option for all private regions.

What other solutions are scalable?

Comments

[Val Kendal]

idk, I get my important SL and LL news from NWN for about 15 years now :)

[Luther Weymann]

IM's and note cards to everyone in SL from LL. Never capped. Not hard to do.

[Joss]

I always see emails from Linden Lab -- can't miss them in the Inbox. Would emailing residents with news and invitations not work?

[Wagner James Au]

IMs and notecards are easily lost in a deluge of IMs and notecards sent by other people, and they're cumbersome to transfer off the platform.

Email is even more challenging, since our inboxes are overwhelmed by SPAM. The open rate for a company-sent email is 15-20% *on a good day*.

[Maxwell Graf]

Email 1st, then repost to discord/bluesky. That should cover the majority.

[tera jules]

Personly i try not to use apps,though i have sl facebook group and got this message on that,im also on primfeed now,but i am one of those that dont read sl website,i click links on the loading screen of firestorm if its a interesting announcement,like RFL or SLB21 ETC.

[Haridsam]

Actually, I'm with Luther on this and was thinking the same myself. A notecard newsletter -- especially on a regular schedule, say the 1st of every month, or every Monday, or whatever, clearly subject-lined and marked (say) SL NEWS, so it's not canned or lost...but with a set frequency and labeling...I think we'd quickly get used to it and nost would read it. Of course, it needs to be compelling and newsy and interesting. :)

I still think a push notification on the app isn't a bad idea, but many won't use the app -- I certainly won't, don't need it.

The one common denominator is everyone logs in and gets IMs (which do get capped, though maybe LL can circumvent that) and NCs. It's an interesting challenge.

Maybe do both?

[Ruth Resident]

People don't pay attention to Second Life news because there's been no real news to be interested in. The Lindens tack some irrelevant feature on from time to time but at the end of the day it's still the same poorly performing platform. I guess since logins are down and people are dumping their regions like hotcakes they want a bigger megaphone. Try doing something with the platform if you want folks to show interest.

[Glizzy_rizzler]

I honestly loved being part of the Creator Zoom call the other day. The in-world meetings are the least productive, because no one can control the topics and pin point actual issues that need to be talked about. In the Zoom call, we were able to raise our hands and express that we wanted to talk about a certain subject and put valuable input. Reading an article about an update or something, and posting a comment doesnt make anyone feel like they are being heard.

Discord and Zoom calls directly with certain communities I think can help, since in-world groups and in-world communication is broken.

As a creator and store owner, I have found that no one even likes to read in SL anymore. People just click around till something happens. I have spent so much time in scripting things that lead a customer exactly to what they are looking for, because notecards and group notices go unread.
Someone would rather HEAR what they need to know, over reading and finding the information for themselves.

[Beachy Piers]

I've recently gotten much of my news on Bluesky where's there's a HUGE SL congregation.

[Ava]

The Bloggers Zoom call on the 6th had 52 people in it, definitely not hundreds.

[Vic Mornington]

I run a YouTube channel, i'm part of the SL blogger network, but I never got a single invite to any of these "calls". So it seems that Linden Lab is...once again...managing NOT to spread the word out to even all of the bloggers and only to people they like.

[Sarah A]

"I run a YouTube channel, i'm part of the SL blogger network, but I never got a single invite to any of these 'calls'" My guess is that maybe LL is actually more interested in trying to woo "key influencers" to like their keen new stuff than really reach the population.

The fact is that announcements can be sent through the login screen. It's been done in the past.

I think as long as LL entertains the fantasy of somehow, after all these years, being the "next big thing" and drawing "the kids" in, instead of keeping the lights on and being "Eve Online" or "Wow" - vintage games that still make money and have a decent playerbase, they're going to have failure after failure, as they have with PBR, which has simply lost a chunk of the playerbase that used older machines, while the people that show up at meetings and rant about needing new futures are nowhere to be seen and don't care.

The focus should be simple. MAKE THE WORLD WORK. Fix stuff that's broken. Is it expensive? Yes! Was PBR and the mobile app no one uses or will ever use expensive? YES!

Getting SL on Steam would have been ten times more useful than getting a mobile app, because it's a text driven world and people can't type on a phone so the only residents you're attracting is new people who will be snubbed and leave when the most they can contribute to a conversation in a club is "u look sxy."

Yes six people have phones with keyboards. yay.

FIX CHAT
FIX TELEPORTS
Create economies by curbing (not eliminating) bot activity and anything else that forces resource use for marginal gain.

LL needs to retain the player they already have rather than throwing them away to fish for new people that will never come. Clearly LL leadership does not understand "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."

[Sarah A]

"I think Hari is right that push announcements on the mobile app may be the best (or least worst) way of reaching as many SLers as possible, since we're already accustomed to getting most of our news and updates via various mobile apps."

I think it's borderline delusive to think most residents care about the mobile app. Even if I could use it for a few admin functions (It doesn't support half of them), I couldn't actually talk to anyone in anything other than text speak.

Sure some people do supplement by "keeping in touch" on the phone. Lumiya is still a better app for that since, "keeping in touch" isn't really about seeing a badly rendered version of the world.