Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Quote of the day

Second Life will "soon" launch an internal search mechanism, Rosedale says -- but won't say when. Now, you can't search for much of anything on SL -- can't look for people, events, nothing. That will change


Philip Rosedale aka Philip Linden

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

We will let ya know when SL is ripe for the picking - Said the Ad man.

So I was reading an article today and happened upon this gem from an Ad man via NY. Seriously unimpressed with how big business has stepped into the virtual world of Second Life; I keep these quotes to remind me how arrogant and ignorant the Ad men are to how Second Life "is".

-----

"We have counseled our clients to stay away [from Second Life] for the time being," said Drew Neisser, president-CEO of Renegade, a New York-based integrated marketing agency. "The quick-hit PR route is now closed, so marketers need to carefully consider why they want to be in Second Life and make sure they have a sincere commitment to the betterment of Second Life."

Neisser pointed to issues such as technical glitches, security concerns (for example, hackers breaking into presidential candidate John Edwards' virtual campaign headquarters on Second Life) and difficulties attracting a sizable audience.

"There are a lot of other ways to engage your targets online and offline that may in fact be more cost-effective and more rewarding than Second Life," he said.

However, he added, "We are monitoring Second Life on a continuous basis and will let [clients] know if and when the time is ripe for their participation in Second Life."

----
Dear Ad Man;

Second Life is a unique world unlike any other; you wish to market your real life products to a very large customer base....that's all fine and good but do you even realize the majority of Second Life users enter the Second Life world to escape your corporate reality?

No I didn't think so; or you wouldn't be failing so miserably.

Cat

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Cristiano Diaz has gone off the deep end again!

Not that this is the first time Cristiano has lashed out as Philip Linden or Second Life or even Linden Lab for that matter. However one of these days calling Philip an "asshole" is bound to get this guy into hot water. Well we can always hope so anyways. Sorry Cris but I dig Philip, I dig Linden Lab and I adore Second Life. Someone should give this guy a virtual pop in the chops!

Cristiano; Without Philip; there would be no you. k thanks bye :)
Read it here.

Angry Dear Philip: You're an Asshole KTHNXBYE
I was reading an article about Second Life on news.com, and stumbled across this:

Quote:
Originally Posted by cnet
Linden Lab, too, is a bit unapologetic about its technical headaches, promising that it has been working to eradicate them but encouraging both current and prospective residents to accept them as a necessary component of such an experimental medium. Second Life got to where it is, Rosedale explained, by not waiting for the kinks to iron themselves out.

"If we had had that sort of traditional 'stop, think carefully, seek feedback, listen to everybody' (mentality), I can tell you that as the entrepreneur behind this thing, even starting in 1999, we wouldn't be here. We wouldn't have made it," Rosedale said
So in other words, we just need to accept worsening conditions, monetary loss, and the other myriad problems, because Philip has a vision and his crack team doesn't have time to stop and think and plan because they have a metaverse to build. We just need to shut up, pay their salaries, and play with our prim hair if it manages to rez. Pardon my French, but fuck that. What insulting, pandering tripe and a pathetic excuse for why the grid is so royally fucked.

If they had stopped to actually fix things instead of taking big bong hits off the Love Machine, SL would be on a solid foundation instead of the house of cards it now sits on. Congratulations on making it - so what if the entire thing now falls apart because you didn't bother to actually screw anything correctly except your customers. I would look for the middle finger smiley but it doesn't convey my disgust strongly enough right now.



Here is the full link:

http://news.com.com/Second+Life+The+....html?tag=item
Cristiano Diaz

reprint of the boston globe piece

Finally an article I can get behind. This one finally nailed it on the head where all things Linden Lab are concerned. 2 million US$ per day being traded before gambling became illegal in Second Life. Hard to believe but that may be true; seems like a hot bed for money laundering if you ask me. However I am sure the Feds are very keen as to what is going on in Second Life these days. Anyways the unpopular Zen Linden also has a few things to say in this article I was not surprised to read his limited view of Second Life as a place to socialize and advertise. Yawn Zen get out more visit some of the role play, residential, and unique communities popping up in Second Life. Even Linden Lab might be shocked at how creative ppl are when they are NOT making 30KUS for doing a project.

Read it;

Even a virtual economy needs a Ben Bernanke
Zee Linden - the online persona of John Zdanowski, Linden Lab's CFO - manages the economy of Second Life. Zee Linden - the online persona of John Zdanowski, Linden Lab's CFO - manages the economy of Second Life. (LINDEN LAB VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS)

By Associated Press | September 5, 2007

NEW YORK - Just before a global credit squeeze roiled US financial markets this summer, an equally dramatic financial crisis threatened Second Life, the much-hyped online world.

On July 25, the company controlling Second Life said it would no longer allow gambling. Economic activity was cut by nearly half as gambling halls shut down.

That's a recipe for disaster in any economy, with job losses and a possible currency collapse, but the online world stayed on an even keel. That's in part due to the fact that few people make a living there. But Second Life's equivalent of Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, also keeps a firm grip on the currency.

It's just one example of how economists and virtual worlds are teaming up, to mutual benefit. Outside Second Life, a game company just hired its first full-time economist. Another economist, coming from the academic side, believes that just as virtual economies need economists, so economists need virtual economies - to experiment with.

The Second Life equivalent of Bernanke is John Zdanowski, chief financial officer at Linden Lab, which runs the online world. Using Second Life software, he spoke to the Associated Press in Linden Lab's virtual headquarters.

Before the gambling crackdown, "residents" exchanged about 2 million US dollars a day in Second Life. That dropped to $1 million shortly after. Gambling wasn't quite as important as those figures indicate, Zdanowski said. Second Life is more than an online Las Vegas - it's a place for socializing, games, advertising, and other activities enabled by a world where residents can, with sufficient skill, create almost anything they want out of thin air.

Gambling inflated the economic activity because it meant small amounts of money changed hands relatively quickly, often several times a day.

But the gambling shutdown was still a potential problem, because Second Life has its own currency. The Linden dollar is convertible to US dollars at an ostensibly floating exchange rate.

Losing even 10 or 20 percent of its real economy set it up for a currency crisis, as gamblers and gambling hall operators tried to cash in their gains for US dollars and put their money to use elsewhere.

If the exchange rate started to plummet, remaining, nongambling residents would also feel compelled to trade their virtual dollars for real ones, making the currency nearly worthless. Zimbabwe is currently struggling with that kind of hyperinflation. But in Second Life, that's not what happened.

"The reason it hasn't hit the exchange rate is that we were exercising one of the controls we have," Zdanowski said.

Linden Lab has for more than a year put a ceiling on the value of its currency. It's done that by selling Linden dollars on the currency exchange for around 270 to the US dollar, and that's where the exchange rate has stayed since then. In a year, the company has made about $5 million on this trade.

Like China, "we basically manage the supply of our currency so that the exchange rate stays fixed against the US dollar," Zdanowski said.

With visitors taking money out of the world because of the gambling shutdown, Linden Lab simply stopped selling its currency to compensate for the greater supply of Linden dollars for sale on the exchange.

Eve Online, an online science-fiction game, has avoided some of the complications of having an online currency by banning its conversion to real money. Yet the company this summer hired its first full-time economist to keep tabs on what goes on inside the game and to look at whether more complex financial institutions, like banks, are needed, and try to cultivate relationships with real-world academic institutions.
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.