Second Life and Blogging Doldrums

You may have noticed I haven't posted anything in a while. Am I dead? Nope. Busy? Maybe. Less interested? Um, yeah, I think so.

I haven't posted because I simply haven't felt I had anything useful to say. Sure, I could comment on the latest party or event, but that's just not meaningful enough for a post, for me, anyway.
 
I was wondering why that is so.

The fact is, SL seems to be slowing down lately in some respects. I've noticed several friends fade away, or others tone down their SL existence for reasons unknown. Many businesses have closed or shrunk.  I've been fading a bit too. Perhaps it's just part of the Two-Year Effect? It's been over four years for me so far; maybe I'm overdue?

And it's not just the SL in world community, either. Linden Lab has dropped numerous staffers, strangely including most of the management level. Since the departure of M Linden, there haven't been any significant strategic moves - largely because interim CEO Philip really hasn't been playing the role, other than perhaps focusing on finding his own replacement. Indeed, when we spoke to Philip in person in Boston at SLCC it was shocking to hear that he hadn't signed into SL for four months. I'd be surprised if he's been in world very much since that time.

So now we learn of a new CEO to take over from Philip later this January. When you think about it, it's an excellent time to get fresh leadership in: largely clean management ranks, stagnant user base, poor media reception and of course, cranky residents. There's no where to go but up.

I really don't have any idea where new CEO Rod Humble will take Second Life, but I do know one thing: it must be a different place than where it's been. Current approaches have largely failed, in my opinion. What, you say things are not so bad? Maybe, but when you compare SL's progress opposite many other online services, which have grown hugely and continue to grow while SL seems to have plateaued. Maybe it's the poor scalability, or the heavy hardware requirements, or perhaps virtual worlds are just too complicated for most people.
 
If I was an investor in Linden Lab, I'd be seeking a new strategy to protect my investment. I'd do that by getting a new CEO with fresh ideas. They've already done this once, with M Linden - but as we know, that particular strategy failed and they had to start over.

Expect many different things to happen once the new CEO gets settled, probably starting later this spring.

Viewers, Viewers, Viewers: A Way Out of This Mess

Readers may have noticed controversies and discussions over Second Life viewer software in recent weeks and months. In some cases scandal, in others too much change, still others are simply inoperable in many situations. A constant question is, "which viewer should I use". There have been many answers - as many as there are viewers. Clearly there's lots of opinions and few are satisfied.

Meanwhile, new users continue to have challenges learning the environment. Let's face it: SL and 3D worlds are quite a different experience and it takes time for people to get accustomed to using them. Linden Lab knows this, since we've observed them trying to address that problem by deploying the controversial Viewer 2.0.

Viewer 2.0 seems to work for some, and yet not for others. Why is this so?

I've thought this for a long time now, and I'll say it again: there are two different audiences making use of viewers. First there's the new residents, who are frequently confused by the complexity of the interface, give up and never return, and the experienced existing residents, who yearn for more function to customize or simplify their sophisticated virtual existence.

Here's the problem we've been having all along: we're trying to service two entirely different audiences with a single viewer. Hence, Linden Lab creates Viewer 2.0, which includes features designed to simplify life for new residents, while still trying to address the needs of experienced residents. In my opinion, it didn't go nearly far enough in the simplicity direction for new residents. In the opinion of many long-time residents, Viewer 2.0 confused their operations and made their complex virtual lives more difficult. Viewer 2.0 missed the mark for both audiences.

While Viewer 2.0 marginally improved the experience for new residents, it was rejected by a great many experienced residents, a vast number of whom fled to use a variety of third party viewers. Unfortunately, one of the major third party viewers ran into issues and many residents now scramble to find an alternate viewer - and many of them wouldn't consider Linden Lab's Viewer 2.0.

I've seen situations like this before many times in real life, and a good solution approach is to realize the root cause and directly address it. In this case the root cause of viewer difficulties is that there are two audiences that have very different requirements. Thus, the answer is quite simple: we need Two Viewers, one greatly simplified suitable for stark newbies devoid of advanced and confusing features, and the other a more complex viewer filled with all the features one could imagine.

Of course, the challenge will be that Linden Lab is able to muster resources only sufficient to support one viewer. Right now, their efforts try to do it all for everyone, addressing both audiences but in fact doing so in a less than optimal manner.

Here's my proposal to make life a lot easier for everyone: Linden Lab should abandon development of the advanced viewer entirely and leave it to evolve independently by third parties through open source approaches. Publish and maintain a secure specification for accessing the grid and the underlying open source code, and let others do the job of building advanced viewers. This has worked in the world of web browsers and many other environments; why not here too? To some extent, we've already seen this happening, albeit somewhat placed in shadow by Linden Lab's highly visible Viewer 2.0, often selected by residents simply because Linden Lab made it. But imagine how well these third party viewers could advance if they weren't competing against Linden Lab's viewers?

Meanwhile, Linden Lab could then focus efforts on a truly simplified viewer specifically designed for new residents, one that could actually achieve the vision of "five minutes and you're in" that really has no chance of happening in Viewer 2.0. Consider how well they might do if they didn't have to worry about including all the features required by existing residents. New users could "graduate" to one of the more advanced viewers when they feel confident enough to do so.

Let's make things simpler for everyone. Linden Lab desperately needs a simplified viewer; Residents want (and have proven they can make) an advanced viewer. For me, two viewers is the obvious solution. What do you think?

The Emerald Implosion

If you’ve been reading any SL blogs lately, you’ve probably come across the incredible events surrounding the famous (or infamous) Emerald Viewer. Resignations, reformations, scandals, possible criminal acts and other mayhem ensued throughout the week. I’m not going to detail any of that stuff; it’s been well-covered elsewhere.

Instead, I am going to bring forward my thoughts on how it came to this. There’s definitely reasons why this week’s implosion occurred, and why it may not happen again. All these events are connected at a very high level.

But let’s start at the beginning.

We have a certain company, Linden Lab, who market a very unusual product: Second Life. This product is amazing, but it is also a very complex thing to deal with. In fact, it’s so complex that no one really knows how it should be set up.

The product, SL, is so complex that while it is amazing, relatively few people from the public are able to manage to successfully use it and stay using it. Everyone uses the standard viewer through which everyone experiences the product.

Advanced SL residents grow to want more from the viewer, as they’ve managed to learn many things about the environment, well beyond the basics. But they’re frustrated because they have only one option.

The Lab recognizes this need and responds by open sourcing the viewer code. They hope that the community will adopt the freely available viewer code to develop the advanced features that it wants, while leaving the Lab to put their limited resources against other problems and ventures.

The Lab focuses on growth. They believe that to attract more residents, they need to somehow simplify the experience so that it doesn’t scare people away. Indeed, the survival rate for new signups is abysmally low, perhaps as low as 1%. One of their simplification strategies is a less complex viewer. They begin a project to develop this new simplified viewer.

Several groups adopt the open sourced viewer code and begin tinkering. Some happen to be professional or near-professional developers, but others are not. Hackers and griefers also take a stab at making their own viewers - sometimes for nefarious purposes. A variety of viewer options emerge, all with differing features, support, release schedules and reliability. Some residents try them and begin to have opinions on their favorites, usually based on their particular needs.

One third party viewer (TPV), Emerald, becomes somewhat more popular than others, perhaps based on its frequent release of interesting and unusual features. This viewer is in fact the opposite of the Lab’s work: it’s a complex viewer including *more* features, not fewer. But these features are well-received by many long time residents in the community.

With popularity, more information comes to the surface about Emerald and the folks behind it. It turns out that several of them have known histories as griefers, some being suspended from SL in the past. It is further discovered that mysterious encrypted information is being sent from the viewer to Emerald’s server. The Emerald team does not reveal their real identities, thus making it very difficult to ascertain their level of responsibility.

Aside: it was at this point I concluded it was too risky (at least for me) to continue to use Emerald. Code written by anonymous former griefers, known to be sending unknown information to parts unknown, was simply too suspicious. I, and several others, deleted Emerald from our systems and changed our passwords in case they had been somehow recorded by Emerald. I feared an incident of some kind would occur at some point in the future and didn’t want to be part of it.

The Lab releases their new, simplified viewer: Viewer 2.0. Amidst fanfare, V2.0 included features intended to simplify things for new residents, but for existing residents it was too different, too simple and worse, beset with annoying bugs.

Viewer 2.0 becomes the default viewer - but because it doesn’t match resident’s needs, they flock to alternatives. Which one should they choose? Emerald was the most popular of the TPVs, and it’s usage grew significantly. Legitimate developers join the Emerald team, and it continued to be improved with additional features. Emerald gained many supporters as residents tune into its unique features.

Suddenly, there’s an incident.
 
The Emerald home screen was modified by one of its developers to perform an attack on a rival site, thus using the computers of all Emerald users for this activity. Poor judgement? Yes, indeed! Just as I had lost trust in Emerald months earlier, this incident resulted in a loss of trust by many former Emerald supporters. In fact, Linden Lab removed Emerald from its official list of TPVs.

The Emerald team breaks apart due to the incident and its aftermath, but reforms under new, hopefully more professional management. Time will tell if this is so, as trust is easy to lose but very hard to gain. Good luck to the new team!

But both problems still remain: existing residents need an advanced viewer and new residents need a basic, simplified viewer. Neither group is adequately served today, and Linden Lab needs to develop a strategy to address this critical issue before they will begin growing again.

Avoiding The Spiral Of Death

Fast, Easy and Fun. How has it come to this?

Fast, Easy and Fun is the new direction of Linden Lab for their product, Second Life. It’s a reaction to the troubles they’ve gotten themselves into in the past year or so. Here’s how I see the sequence of events:
 

• A company discovers and builds a service around an amazing concept
• The concept, while breathtaking, is so new it’s not fully understood by anyone yet, even its makers
• The service is implemented in the only way possible, given everyone's limited experience with the concept: it’s difficult to use
• Reasonably large numbers of early adopter users, who are tolerant of difficulties, begin using the new service
• Beyond the early adopters, few people use the service because its difficult interfaces are forever past their capabilities and tolerance
• Company notices growth stalling as the pool of early adopters is exhausted 
• Company seeks ways to break into the mainstream market by simplifying the system
• The simplification attempt fails because the system is still not fully understood
• A few early adopters begin to leave for alternative services
• Management panics and makes big changes. New approach: Fast, Easy & Fun.

When I say “not fully understood”, I mean that while we may fully understand the use of the existing tools and interface, we really don’t understand the *right* way to do the interface. For example, the permissions system is simply unable to deal with many day-to-day situations. How should someone be introduced to the service such that they don’t immediately give up? No one really knows the true answers to these any many other key questions yet. This is a system still figuring itself out. It’s still an experiment.

Experiments are for early adopters.

I’ve written of this before, but it is a phase all companies must endure: the transition from initial “early adopter” mode to a more mainstream “easy to use” mode. Some tech companies don’t survive, others are utterly transformed and some are overtaken by alternatives that have a better approach.

But that doesn’t answer the question of the panic. Why panic so much? Why layoff huge numbers of people? I suspect it has to do with what I call “the Spiral of Death”.

Consider the situation myself and many SL shopkeepers find themselves in: we spend huge amounts of time setting up a shop in SL, making products, doing promotions, etc. and just barely make a living. Suddenly, some users panic and move away to other grids. They say “it’s wonderful, please join us over here!” It may be wonderful if you are, for example, an educator or business person who simply needs to build some type of installation. But if you’re a seller, it’s quite a different situation.

A seller needs a market, and right now SL is still by far the biggest grid with the largest number of potential buyers on it. Yes, there are OpenSim grids all over, but all of them are tiny compared to SL. It’s hard enough to make a living in SL even with its giant user base, let alone grids one one-thousandth the size. It’s even worse because in order to gain any significant amount of OpenSim market, you’d have to set up separate shops in multiple grids (thus spending time building multiple shops and paying multiple tiers. OpenSim grids may be cheaper per square meter compared to SL, but when you need several parcels on several grids, it probably costs more). It just doesn’t make economic sense to move virtual businesses to other grids.

But it would make sense if large numbers of users begin to bail from SL and move to a single popular alternative grid. If that happened, then SL would lose something very critical: its size. When the market moves, so will the sellers. And with them will go even more buyers. And so on, developing into “The Spiral of Death”. Once the user base starts shrinking, it will inevitably go down, faster and faster.

I suspect this is what Linden Lab fears the most. And it’s certainly worth a panic, because they risk their entire business. It could happen: more and more OpenSim grids are appearing, each with some type of innovation or another, but none with massive market share. Yet. Eventually, one of these grids will accidentally or on purpose hit on the right combination of services and interface and they’ll begin to win users over. Linden Lab, if they are to survive, must prevent the Spiral of Death at all costs.

That’s why there’s an “all hands on deck” mode and a focus on the basics. Fast, Easy and Fun are indeed the basic keys to success. If these are achievable, then existing early adopters will stay and newcomers will not abandon the service nearly as much as now. That should result in a growing service once again.

But only if it works. I’m terribly interested to hear how “Fast, Easy and Fun” will be achieved. Perhaps Philip will enlighten us at SLCC 2010?

Chasing the Bar: The Linden Lab Layoffs

I read the latest news from Linden Lab, where they abruptly announced they were letting go approximately 30% of the staff, closing and consolidating distant offices and changing strategy. On the surface, and indeed for the unfortunate 30%, this seems to be very bad news. Is Linden Lab on the ropes? Are they desperately cutting expenses in a last ditch effort to buy a few more months of life before the inevitable cash crunch?

Maybe, but I don't think so.They're profitable, but not growing fast enough.

As a business, Linden Lab's role is to provide a good return to the shareholders for their considerable investment. As business managers, they do this by executing strategies that hopefully will accomplish that goal. Like any business, strategies sometimes don't work out and alternative strategies must be developed and deployed. If it doesn't work, try something else. I think this is the case here.

From his beginning at The Lab, CEO Mark Kingdon has spoken about simplifying the user interface, improving the first hour experience and growing the user base substantially. I even seem to recall seven-digit numbers being bantered about.

Over the past year we've seen some moves that theoretically should have supported those goals: viewer 2.0, Linden Homes, policy changes and several others. However, we are now in mid-2010, and we just haven't seen any significant growth in the user base. We also haven't seen growth of the business client base, in spite of the release of the Second Life Enterprise private grid server. These strategies, while good intentioned and reasonably executed, haven't done the job.

For me, the main problem that still exists is the incredibly difficult user experience. Yes, viewer 2.0 did simplify some things for new users (although complicating things for some existing users), but it's no where near the level of simplification required. Let's face it: users who can have a good time in minutes on innumerable other simpler systems just won't spend the time to learn the mysterious intricacies of the SL viewer and the virtual culture.

The Lab has been spending efforts trying to simplify their total experience, moving towards an invisible goal of easiness. But the bar has just been moved.

This spring the iPad was introduced and it is a monstrous hit, so much so that it's expected to be in the hands of tens of millions of people a year from now and many more after that. I'm not saying we should run SL on an iPad, but there's an interesting phenomenon taking place: the iPad has revealed that many people want ultra-simplified computing. Its amazing to watch seniors, very young children and those unfamiliar with computers to immediately use an iPad. It turns out that many people (but probably not you) just want instant on, touch and a reliable simple interface. They don't want software versions, graphics cards, DLLs, viruses, upgrades and all the nonsense you have to put up with to use a PC. Sure, techies will still want and use PCs, but who among us hasn't found ourselves helping a baffled relative with a PC problem - and you just know they have no business owning a PC as they have no chance of ever properly operating it. Those are the new majority of computing users, the folks who will be using very simple interfaces on simple devices - and not just the iPad, but many similar devices that will inevitably follow. The bar of simplicity has just been raised.

Back to The Lab. Their new strategy involves creating a new web browser based interface. You know, something that would run easily on all these new simple devices? The ones to be owned by tens or even hundreds of millions of people?

Does this mean we'll all have to use it? I think not. I think we'll see existing and sophisticated users keep the main downloadable viewer to create SL content: the content needed by the (hopefully) huge numbers of new simplified users. Perhaps some of them will like SL so much that they'll take the time to download the "full" viewer and become content creators themselves.

Meanwhile, there should be a great many new users seeking content - from the content creators, property owners and service providers who could enjoy a new boom. At least I'd imagine that's the theory; we'll see if it comes to pass.

One more thing: this post was entirely created on an iPad.

Viewer Complexity Revealed

One of Linden Lab’s greatest challenges is to increase the retention rate of new resident signups. I’ve heard various statistics on the survival rate of those who sign up and actually become active residents: approximately one percent. In other words, almost everyone who registers gives up immediately.

Maybe the percentage is a bit higher (or worse, even lower), but it’s totally pathetic. If this number were even slightly increased, we’d see tens of thousands of new residents streaming into Second Life every week, many of whom would stay and unleash their new creativity into the world. It would be a more vibrant place, with more creations and for business owners, more potential customers. It would be a Very Good Thing.

What’s happening to fix this problem? We’ve all seen the Lab’s experiments such as alternative approaches to orient new arrivals, better default avatars and more recently the Linden Homes program. All of these and others I haven’t mentioned are directed at the problem of 99% resident failure. I believe it is the most critical issue facing the Lab, since if it continues as is, the resident population won’t grow and the Lab may eventually face the prospect of closing SL.

Another key strategy pursued by the Lab for retaining new residents is an improvement to the viewer, and I suspect the introduction of Viewer 2.0 will generate very significant controversy into the SL blogosphere. Many people will be confused by different interfaces and truly unhappy they must learn something new.

But it must be done.

I believe one of the biggest impediments to retaining new residents is the staggering complexity of the viewer. As a student of clean design, I am astonished at the unbelievable amount of buttons and controls that face every user each time they fire up a viewer. The numerous controls are hidden within layers of menus, dialog boxes and bars, seemingly designed to be never found by humans.

There are so many controls it must be totally overwhelming to almost everyone. Maybe even 99% of population. Hmm.

But how complex is it? I wondered about this and finally decided to find out myself. I launched a recent version of Snowglobe and laboriously counted up all the controls within this viewer. My counts are probably off a bit, as my eyes were fading due to the humongous counts and deep layers one must go to see them, but the counts are representative of virtually every SL viewer. Not including “close boxes”, inventory items and any personally-generated controls (e.g. gestures, etc.) I found the following:

• Menu Items: 504
• Ticky Boxes: 200
• Text/Image Entry Areas: 201
• Adjustment Sliders: 282
• Tabs: 66
• Radio Buttons: 41
• Regular Buttons: 414

Grand Total: 1,708

Let’s step back and think about this for a moment: One thousand, seven hundred and eight control items. ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED EIGHT! That’s This Many:

XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX

There are more than 500 menu items alone. Do you know what they all are? Do you know what they do? Do you know where to find each of them? How long would it take to explain them to someone? Can you even know 100 of them? 

Let’s compare this to other relatively complex things you must operate: your car, for example, probably has less than 100 knobs you can turn (without going under the hood). My browser appears to have less than 200 items. I suspect the flight control panel of a Boeing 747 has less than 1,708 buttons - and there’s serious training courses required to operate one of those.

And it gets much worse. If you enable the Advanced Menu in the SL browser, my totals went to this:

• Menu Items: 2523
• Ticky Boxes: 213
• Text/Image Entry Areas: 213
• Adjustment Sliders: 282
• Tabs: 72
• Radio Buttons: 44
• Regular Buttons: 445

Grand Total: 3,792

Many people enable the advanced menu in order to find a few evidently critical features, but must suffer through an extra two thousand controls. Not good.

And it’s even more complex on the third party open source viewers, which unfortunately tend to add features, not delete them. I can imagine the totals on the Emerald Viewer would be quite a bit higher than the above.

Many of these items are used for various personal customizations, and the remainder is quite a bit smaller. I wonder what this implies about avatar needs? 

These astonishing totals no doubt cause many new residents to freak out. Wouldn’t you, if suddenly faced with a 1,708 item control panel? That’s like having a four-foot square sheet covered with knobs every square inch (or a 6 foot square panel if using the advanced menus) pushed in your face. I suspect that very few people have the perseverance, technical skill and motivation to make their way through the 1,708 controls in order to determine where the 36 key functions they’d actually use are located. Maybe, say, one percent?

That’s why Viewer 2.0 is so critical. That’s why Linden Lab has been silent on viewer progress lately - they are putting lots of effort into creating this new viewer.

I’m hoping Viewer 2.0 will dramatically simplify the interface - but allow experienced users to “turn on” more complex features when they need to. I’m hoping Viewer 2.0 organizes the controls in a contextual manner, whereby the appropriate controls are visible depending on the situation. I’m hoping Viewer 2.0 enables many more new residents to successfully join our virtual world.

Some may wish for more new features in Viewer 2.0, but I don’t think that’s what it’s about. Instead it should be about Fewer Features and better presentation of them. Viewer 2.0 is not about you. It’s about all the people that aren’t here.

Yet. 

CopyCornered!

Today is a special day - it’s the Step Up! for content creators day. It’s a grid-wide protest, attempting to bring attention to the ongoing issue of content theft. You’ve heard about it before; rip-off artists show up with advanced tools that instantly nab perfect copies of virtual creations, then set up shop with cloned items at discount prices. Or worse, they give away full-permission copies of the stolen goods, thus destroying the creator’s business forever. I wish this protest succeeds.

Many ask Linden Lab to fix the problem. Get rid of those thieves! Ban those viewers! Delete the stolen copies! But it’s just not that easy.

There’s a fundamental problem in the design of virtual worlds.

As everyone knows, you run a viewer on your workstation, and it communicates with the servers back at the Lab. But what does that mean, exactly? At it’s most basic level, it means that the servers send descriptions and locations of objects to the viewer so that it can draw them on your screen. Yes, you guessed it: object designs and the textures to paint on them are sent directly to the viewer.

A viewer with a criminal twist could simply record those descriptions and textures for later use, regardless of their original permissions. A special command could later “replay” the recordings and thus create exact duplicates with new permissions. That’s how copybot, builderbot and other such tools work.

As long as the viewer respects the original permissions, things are not so bad. But there’s really nothing stopping a viewer from ignoring permissions other than the intentions of the programmer.

Why can programmers do this? It’s because they have the source code to build new viewers. Linden Lab gave everyone access to the code (open sourcing) in an effort to spur original feature development and experimentation some time ago. But the price for doing so was to enable nefarious feature development, too.

Some say the Linden Lab should restrict the viewers able to connect to the grid to ensure only well-behaved viewers have access to the object descriptions and textures. I suppose that’s possible by issuing special digital keys for authorized viewers, but the notion that Linden Lab would have to certify each viewer by examining every line of code seems impractical. That’s what they’d have to do to ensure nothing bad could happen. Worse, they’d have to do a line-by-line code inspection for every new version as well. I just can’t see that happening because it would take so much effort. Even if it was attempted, it could only be done for a small number of viewers, meaning that the original purpose of open sourcing the code (many experiments and new feature development) would be severely compromised.

Probably the only course of action that could practically work would be to allow only Linden Lab-built viewers to access the grid. Then copy functions would be entirely controllable. But you’d lose out on all the very interesting open source development.

Even if that were done, copying would still take place, just not quite as automated. One of my shop owner friends was a constant victim of manual copying. Each week she deployed new and original items, and each week a competitor would come by to see what was built and then duplicate it as best they could. There’s not much that can be done about that.

Because it’s pretty much the same in real life.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/biwook/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

A Rewarder Experience

 

This week I happened to listen to an unusual podcast in which Linden Lab founder Philip Rosedale was interviewed by tech maven Jon Udell in his wonderful series “Interviews with Innovators”. Philip spoke on his ideas for managing a software company, and in particular some of the very unusual people management techniques he’s pioneered at Linden Lab. 

Everyone knows Philip is a visionary and technical whiz, but after hearing him speak during the 44 minute podcast, it’s quite clear that he knows a lot more than simply the technical aspects. He has some intriguing ideas for motivating people that I had not heard previously.

Philip describes an internal system known as the “Rewarder” used to award monetary bonuses to deserving staff. Here’s how it apparently works:

• An unspecified portion of the Lab’s profits are set aside each quarter (and yes, Philip indicates that Linden Lab is quite profitable today, unlike some other companies like Twitter, for example)
• Every quarter each employee is awarded a fixed and standard quantity of “points” in the rewarder system that they can award to other employees they feel has done great work
• The points cannot be kept for themselves, and must be awarded to others
• Points can be assigned all to one individual or split up among many in varying amounts, with no restrictions other than staying within the assigned quantity of total points
• Points can be awarded to a “proxy” who can award them on the individuals behalf (for example, if a project was successful, you could award points to the project’s manager to split them up among the project’s team members)
• The profit allocation is then split up among all staff based on the point totals awarded to each participant at the end of each quarter

This is a very different scheme for motivating the staff; most companies have a traditional bonus system where managers go into a smoky back room and do battle over their favorite employees’ bonuses. Usually this approach is not particularly accurate or welcomed by staff - although I'm certain staff enjoy any money received. But Linden Lab’s Rewarder approach is very innovative and places the responsibility for determining bonuses directly in the hands of the staff themselves, not in management’s control.

It’s reminiscent of Second Life itself, where the content is managed by the users. At Linden Lab, bonuses are apparently managed by the staff, too. Who can argue with that?

If you’d like to hear the entire podcast (and be aware it’s 44 minutes in length), you can find it at IT Conversations right here.

Leaving Linden Lab

Last year at SLCC I had the pleasure of speaking at length with Robin Linden, one of the originals at Linden Lab. Sadly, she’s no longer with the company, having moved on to other pursuits. But she’s not alone. Several long-term Lindens have recently departed, most recently Ginsu Yoon and Zee Linden, the CFO. They were all pre-exited by CTO Cory Ondrejka some time ago. Today we hear a rumor that Lee Linden is about to exit stage left as well.

Is the sky falling?

By no means. I believe the universe is unfolding as it should - it is simply the transition of Linden Lab from small start-up company mode to a large-scale operation. Different types of people are needed for each mode.

In a startup company, you need highly creative, action oriented people who can quickly make useful things out of whatever they can get their hands on, making up things as they go. That’s quite different than a large-scale company that can’t do that when there are 100,000 times as many things to look after. You have to transform that creative energy into consistent business processes that can scale up to a much larger size.

It’s no different than any task you might have to do yourself. For example, It’s really easy to hang a picture on a wall once. But could you do it a million times? Nope, you’d need to hire people who could be trained to do it correctly and consistently each and every time. That’s quite different than just doing it yourself. That’s the transformation that’s happening now at Linden Lab.

We’ve all heard complaints about Linden Lab’s activities, but I read it to mean that the original organization’s approach simply reached it’s maximum capacity. The reaction by the shareholders was to begin transitioning the company to a configuration that would be able to handle large-scale activities. A new CEO appears, along with new people with new approaches. Existing staff departs. This always happens to successful companies; they grow until they need to modify their approach to handle larger and larger operations. Failed companies don’t make the transition, so I’m quite happy that Linden Lab is making all these changes.

Is this a bad thing for those who are leaving? Perhaps, but on the other hand people who like the wild ups and downs of a startup company might not enjoy working at a more regimented “larger company” that pursues consistency, so perhaps some of those leaving have gone seeking other new startups where their talents are are more suitable.

In the long run, what does this mean? I think it means that Linden Lab is getting themselves organized for a truly massive expansion in the future. You think 88,000 concurrent users is something? It is for now, but it’s nothing compared to what’s going to come.

It’s Not OpenSpaces, It’s ClearSpaces!

Maybe this has been revealed before, but it was news to me. Some electronic detective work has uncovered what might be the future for Linden Lab’s community strategy. We’ve all heard complaints about the existing Second Life forums. We’ve also heard rumors of something new coming to replace them. Last October, Robin Linden posted a report on this topic, where she said:

I’m happy to report that we have some great things ahead for the Linden Lab Blog. We are on track with a multi-stage process of upgrading our Web presence, including both the Blog and the Forums. Our goal? To improve the information you get about Second Life and enhance our dialogue with you.

But what could it be? Every time something twitches in the existing forums we all ask, “is that the change?” and “can’t they do better than that?”

Well, perhaps they can.

There is evidence that Linden Lab is or has been evaluating Jive Software’s Clearspace community software product. For those who are not familiar with Clearspace, it’s a very sophisticated integrated community system that includes not only forum, but blog, wiki and document features as well. And it’s all integrated in a very clean fashion that is quite easy to use. If you want to try it, you can sign up for a free demonstration on Jive Software’s test site right here.

If you try it, you’ll soon realize how powerful Clearspace can be. It’s striking to imagine the kind of community that could emerge should Linden Lab actually use Clearspace.

Wait a moment, you ask, “what evidence do you have of this?” Consider the following forum post on Jive Software’s support forum dated October 2008, from a rather familiar friendly Linden:



There’s another similar post right here.

A re-read of Robin’s post lists several features that one would find in Clearspace, including clustering, plugins, etc.

Does this mean we’re going to see Clearspace soon? Clearly, Linden Lab was in fact evaluating Clearspace at that time. Further digging turns up some trails suggesting they had at one time a private Clearspace evaluation area. This testing may still be underway, but we can’t tell since it is private, after all.

Searches for Clearspace don’t reveal much after this date, which could indicate that Linden Lab has ceased their evaluation. Therefore I would not place any serious bets on this particular outcome. I suspect their evaluation showed that Clearspace had too much functionality for their needs. If I were them, I’d also be examining various Open Source alternatives such as Drupal or Joomla as well.

However, the evidence does tell us something important: Linden Lab is serious about revamping their community operations, to the point where they are evaluating some pretty amp’d tooling. We’ve seen their homepage undergo some serious surgery recently, and we should expect to see something to emerge on blogs, forums and wikis one of these days, too.