New World Notes

Linden Lab Hires First CMO. Is It Good or Bad That He Has Little or No Metaverse-Related Experience?

This is the biggest executive move by Linden Lab since Philip Rosedale returned as an advisor last January:

Second Life hired its first-ever CMO as the race for the metaverse heats up...

Linden Research, Inc., the developer of pioneering metaverse Second Life and parent company of the newly launched virtual economy payment processing platform Tilia, announced the expansion of its leadership team with two key C-suite hires. Steven Feuling, a more than 30 year senior marketing veteran, has joined as Linden's first Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and Peter Capraro, who's held security and IT roles across his 25 year career, has joined as the company's first Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)...

Feuling has worked with and for some of the world's best known brands including Microsoft, Bloomberg LLC, The Walt Disney Company, 20th Century Fox, E*Trade and General Motors as well as several successful start-ups. 

Business Insider story here (reg req.), full PR here. As that passage above and his own LinkedIn profile suggests, Feuling has quite a lot of experience in media and adtech firms.... but little or no direct experience working on metaverse platforms, games, virtual worlds, or other related technology.

Not necessarily a criticism! I'd weigh the pros and cons this way:

Second Life Finally Adds Game-Like Achievement Scores -- And E-mails Them to Users!

Apparently it's my 16th Rez Day in Second Life today, because I just got this nice e-mail from Linden Lab:

Second Life is fun, weird, and always evolving, but the magic ingredient is YOU. The vibrant worlds you build and the sense of community you provide for others is simply priceless. Here's to another year of imagination and experiencing the impossible. -The Second Life Team

Even more notable, however, is the infographic at the bottom of that e-mail -- see at upper right, click to embiggenate.

Yes: User achievement scores. Comparing my usage milestones in terms of total log-ins, teleports taken, and days logged in within the last year, to that of the average SL user.

Or to put all that in virtual world terminology: Game mechanics.

Not sure when Linden Lab started sending these e-mails out, but this is something I've been writing about and advocating, for well-over a decade: Game mechanics that subtly nudge players to be more regularly active in the virtual world. I just mentioned this today to Parmy Olson of Bloomberg as a feature that Second Life sorely needed (but didn't yet have) to grow out of its niche.

This is a solid first step, and "Regions visited" and "Teleports" are great metrics to start with, as they'll encourage SLers to explore the world more. (Most long-time users don't even do that much anymore.)

Next updates to this? A couple jump right out at me:

Linden Lab Spinoff Tilia Becomes Verified Solutions Partner of Unity

Here's another 2022 New World Notes prediction that's already come to pass:

Linden Lab spinoff startup Tilia to announce major funding or partnership.

Because as it happens, Tilia is now a verified solutions partner of 3D engine giant Unity, with an official plug-in on the Unity Asset Store:

Tilia is a digital payments and wallet platform that enables online games and virtual worlds to build in-world economies and monetize user interaction. It is designed to maximize revenue and transactional functionality within virtual economies that rely on user-to-user transactions and user-generated content.

More on the official site. Notably, besides a brief mention of the blockchain-based trading game Upland as a customer, Tilia says little or nothing about blockchain or crypto. (Probably for the massive and unknown regulatory headaches the crypto world has coming for them soon.) So this looks more like a traditional MMO/online game/virtual world play.

Which kinda makes you think:

Can Philip Fix Second Life's Complex Avatar System? (Comment of the Week)

Good comment from Dee, one of many Second Life users welcoming back Philip Rosedale to advising the virtual world he founded:

I am MUCH more optimistic than I have been for a while where SL is concerned. I hope that Philips' return will bring renewed enthusiasm and fresh ideas that are outside the Linden Lab "box". I hope that he attends the creator group meetings held every other Thursday, or hosts a series of town hall meetings perhaps.

And the thing that is highest on my wishlist is a new avatar body. Where people can continue on with the system + alpha + mesh this that and the other OR a new integrated body. The body I envision is one where existing body and head creators could make deformers to create all of the body and face types they had in mind (and to sell of course) but one single thing to be worn and arranged. No more neck seams, no more crazy fiddling with all of the complexities of the current way of doing things. Just one seamless system way of adding a shape, a skin, applied textures, etc. Like the original system body, on beauty steroids. A body where clothing makers would only have to create ONE single version of their rigged clothing item and have it work with the blend shapes right out of the box.

I think it is critical for Linden Lab to address the current complexity (and expense) of trying to have a decent looking avatar in world. Even folks who have been in and out of SL for years quickly become frustrated with all these new complexities, mesh everything, BOM, etc. Dressing yourself should not require an advanced fashion degree!

This is all very true. Offhand, I'd estimate that a highly intuitive avatar customization system that was immediately fun and easy for the first-time user would grow retention by at least 5%. (I'm talking as seamless as it is in the The Sims series.)

If only. The core challenge is, there's already a massive cottage industry that depends on all that complexity:

Today at 9am SLT: Live Chat With Philip Rosedale About Second Life Stories & Designing the Metaverse

Join me in my Space! https://t.co/gF7lSTxyzt

— Philip Rosedale (@philiprosedale) January 25, 2022

Update, 1/26: Listen to chat above (hopefully).

Click here to teleport into Second Life for a live chat with Philip Rosedale starting today at 9am SLT -- along with Twitter Spaces, Clubhouse, and so other platforms. I'm hoping to join but am traveling in the material world, so we'll see. Here's my chat with Philip last week for background, and here's my metaverse fireside chat with Philip and Adam Frisby in Sine Wave's Breakroom last year. All the other links below:

BREAKING: Philip Rosedale Re-Joins Second Life as Strategic Advisor to Grow It Into Inclusive Metaverse Competing With Big Tech's "Ad-Driven Behavior Modification" Metaverse

Update, 8:05pm PT: For context on this move and what Philip might advise on the future of Second Life, here's a recent  interview with him suggesting Meta shouldn't be the one making the Metaverse and that it's not for everyone anyway, my post on how he started integrating High Fidelity spatial audio in virtual worlds like Breakroom, and (watch below the break), his chat on the Metaverse with Sine Wave's Adam Frisby.

Just got this message from Philip Rosedale, about the future of Second Life:

"I'm not back full-time, but it feels great to get to be talking to Lindens about design! I think the vital thing to focus on is demonstrating that a virtual world can scale to greater capacity while being inclusive and fair and safe for humanity."

He's saying that because yes, Second Life founder Philip Rosedale is now officially back at Linden Lab as a strategic advisor and an investor though this company High Fidelity, which will also share resources and technology with the Lindens:

Source: Second Life's Official Mobile Viewer Pauses Development

A veteran Second Life insider just sent me this message they received as a member of the test group for Second Life's long-awaited, official mobile app:

After reviewing the current state of the SL Mobile Viewer and the helpful feedback from residents, we have decided to pause development on this branch. The team is actively working on a new direction to take from here. We should have some news on that soon.

We’d like to thank you all for your time and feedback. It was very valuable to us! We will be closing TestFlight and the mobile regions on October 29th, 2021. Again, thank you for participation! Linden Lab

I'm reaching out to Linden Lab now for an official comment, but this message is surprising and likely to disappoint the community. We received word only last July that this app had been approved for publication by Apple.

That said, my source (who also shared the app images here), tells me the app itself had pretty limited functionality:

"It had been stagnant for months. Didn't have push notifications, and until a recent update would only work when you had the app open on your screen," they tell me.

Apparently there wasn't even a 3D graphics display -- but as expected, there was a special chat zone for app users:

Linden Lab Hiring Senior Product Manager to Shaping Future of "Original Metaverse" of Second Life -- But Mobile Experience Only a "Plus"

This is quite possibly a dream job if you have experience in game/Internet product development:

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. 

But apparently, if you scroll all the way toward the end of the job description, that future is not mobile-centric:

In a Virtual World Economy, User-Generated Content Prices Are Controlled by the Company, Not the Market (Comment of the Week)

Really interesting conversation on the problem of virtual currency in virtual economies last week kicked off by "Kyz", who explained how difficult it was for them to reliably run a successful business in a virtual world. Replying to the idea that the value of their content is decided by the market, Kyz goes deeper into the analysis:

That's true to an extent and there are parallels between virtual and real life markets. But there's more to it than just market demand and pricing.

For instance, my SL experience put an extra layer of cost into the mix. Linden Dollars are a product or were, to Linden Lab. The currency wasn't just added to the company as a convenience for users, it was acquired by Linden Lab from someone that discovered that virtual money was itself a product that could be profitable directly or indirectly.

The last part isn't quite accurate but the full story enhances Kyz's argument: Linden Lab reportedly made an offer to the user-made Gaming Open Market, which circa 2004/2005 was a popular platform for the community, then in late 2005, officially productized the Linden Dollar through the launch of the LindeX.

"I mean, I get it," Kyz goes on. "And if I ran a virtual world, creating an extra revenue stream from currency is something I wouldn't lightly ignore." But for content creators like Kyz trying to monetize on the platform, this led to additional hurdles and regulations:

Second Life Hit By 3 Hour+ Unplanned Downtime; UPDATE: All Services Reportedly Restored After Nearly 5 Hours Offline

Update, 4:04pm: All services reportedly back online as of 3:57pm PT, i.e. nearly 5 hours of downtime. I'm currently logged into SL.

A major unplanned Second Life downtime was officially reported at 11:14 AM PT today and as of this writing at 2:30PT PT, access still seems to be interrupted across major services. (I just tried to load the Marketplace website, for example, but it hung forever.)

Go here for more updates from the official status page. If I'm reading the @SLGridStatus feed on Twitter correctly, this is the longest unscheduled downtime of Second Life of the entire year.

More updates here when I have them!

Linden Lab's 2001 downtime image by Bub Linden. They really ought to reboot it for times like this!