The Two Year Effect

I’ve been contemplating reasons for the flattening of the online user stats in Second Life lately. You’ll recall that as recently as early 2009, there seemed to be a surge in growth. Every week new records for simultaneous users were being set. I believe it topped out at around 88,000 or so on an exceptionally busy Sunday afternoon.

But then no new records were set. Even after many months.

Why might this be? There’s a few reasons, most notably being Linden Lab’s new policy on bots. No longer do we have hundreds (maybe thousands) of bots cuddling in claustrophobic farms. That clearly put a boffo dent into the population stats.

But is there another reason?

I realized a social phenomenon might be in effect here. In my travels I’ve observed that many people tend to have a two-year attention span on projects. Whether it be a hobby, volunteer work or other activities, when people have no ties holding them back, their interest tends to fade after 18-30 months or so. I’ve seen this in real life many times.

I might be mistaken, but I think I’m seeing the same thing happen with my virtual pals in Second Life. Some, like Eshi Otawara, declare a vacation and disappear temporarily, or perhaps forever in some cases. Others like Bettina Tizzy change their approach. But I suspect there are many more who simply fade away quietly as their two-year period of attention draws to a close.

This isn’t particularly remarkable, as people change what they do every day of the year. But then I remembered what happened two years ago.

Two years ago it was a different virtual world. Second Life was constantly on the news and magazine covers, mysterious virtual entrepreneurs were evidently making millions and anyone could do anything. People from all corners learned of the amazing promises of virtual reality and they signed up in droves. During that period, Second Life grew at its fastest rate.

And that was just about two years ago.

Now, just as one would expect we see some residents of 2+ years vintage fading away. The huge blob of 2006/7 signups have been expiring over the past months. Combined with gains from ongoing signup rates and losses from the bot massacres, we just might expect to see flat growth for a little while.

Meanwhile, I’m wondering why I’m still going strong after almost three years?

Interviews with Entrepreneurs: Fianna Idora

From time to time I interview those who do interesting business ventures, and today's interview is with very ingenious and talented Fianna Idora.

Second Effects: How and when did you get started in SL?

Fianna Idora: I joined SL in October 2006. I was working full time as a web-based application developer and was also combining my technical skill with a love for art into a part-time graphic t-shirt business online. A friend of mine had posted a link to Second Life on a business community forum I frequented, as a possible new venue for our online marketing efforts. Second Life was getting a lot of press back then, as it was nearing the 1 Million Residents mark. It soon became apparent that SL would also appeal to one of my other interests - 3D content creation, as I had been a recently active 3D hobbyist in the Poser community. Teaching myself digital rendering, character creation & 3D Texturing. I was hooked to say the the least. I went premium within 24-hours of signing up and was sticking my virtual stake in my first 512m plot within a week. The first incarnation of my shop was called Fairy T-shirts, where I sold SL versions of my FL t-shirt designs along with notecards containing urls to where the shirts could be purchased in FL.

SE: What skills did you bring into SL that helped you get your business started?

FI: Between my work as a web-based application developer, operating online graphic t-shirt business and being a 3D hobbyist - I came in with a pretty mixed bag. The income previously earned from my t-shirt biz had already afforded me to purchase software including Photoshop (images/textures), Poser (animations/poses), and later ZBrush (textures, sculpties), so I had a great software foundation to cover the bases of content creation. 

My programming skills translated fairly well when learning LSL - although my primary focus in SL wasn't scripting, I was more interested in texturing and generally only scripted things on an as-needed basis to enhance a product or create a tool to make my Second Life easier. It wasn't until later when I realized that using LSL I could interact with external databases hosted on the web, that I truly began thinking outside the grid.

When I first arrived in SL I would have considered myself to be an adept user of Adobe Photoshop. However, After attending the 'Masters Fashion Design' program in-world at Soma School of Design, I'd say my knowledge and skill level increased 10-fold. SL became major creative outlet for me - so much so I wanted to pursue a design career full time. Last year I left the company I had been with for 7 years to return to college to Study Graphic Design - I'll be graduating from the two year program this coming May.

SE: You have been known to operate a fashion business - how is that going?

FI: My shop Enchant3D has been located on the mainland in Han Loso since January 2007. Its more of a costume shop than a fashion boutique, and really its just a hodge podge of whatever i felt like making at the time. I've tried my hand at animation, clothing, jewelry, props, roleplay costumes & skins with various degrees of success. At the moment I have about 100 items listed on xstreet - the accumulation of my content creation for the last 3 years.  Between xstreet and inworld sales Enchant3D *just* makes my tier each month (for 1/8 of a sim), so I am able to maintain it despite being a full time student for the last two years and not having a regular source of FL income. However, I've been considering closing the shop in-world after 3 years of operation, eliminating the majority of my tier fees and focusing on making xstreet sales, marketing my products online with the hopes that I can make the business profitable.

SE: I understand you have two avatars - why do you operate two of them? 

FI: I'm a bit of a geek girl and originally created Light Bright, as an alternative character for my cyberpunk inspired photography, role-play and story-telling. In Late 2007 I began planning the Profile Picks project and since Light is my nodal thinker, it made sense that I give her an information project to manage. Using my alt for this project allowed me to script & work for hours without interruption. Light also functions as an accountant for this project allowing me to support my customers & track sales easily without intermixing with my day-to-day SL activities.

SE: I've been trying out your new product, "Profile Picks". How does profile picks work? What problem does it solve for businesses? For customers?

FI: One of my areas of specialization is the development of search engine marketing and search engine optimization strategies for the world wide web. In November 2007, Linden Labs unveiled their new Search (http://search.secondlife.com) which is built on the Google Search Appliance. The same strategies I had adopted for Google and the WWW now applied directly to the Second Life Search.

One of the foundations of how a Google ranks a web page in its results for a particular search phrase, is by determining its relevance, based on the number of inbound links it has from other web site pages with related keyword content. In theory, the more relevant inbound links a page has, the higher it should rank in results for that search phrase.

Second Life Places and Resident Profiles are now available as web pages in-world and on the world wide web if flagged to be included in the Search index. If you view a Resident's profile page under "Top Picks" you'll see that a resident's profile picks have been linked to their corresponding Place pages creating an inbound link to that location. The content of the Picks descriptions providing the relevant key phrases for that inbound link. Thus, the number of inbound picks received, and the key phrases used in their descriptions, play a key role in determining how your Second Life Place will rank for those phrases.

i.e.

Light Bright Resident Page
http://world.secondlife.com/resident/e597f8dc-798f-47f1-b705-a3dd874bcb4f

Profile Picks Place Page
http://world.secondlife.com/place/5bce8fcf-275b-cc41-6b0d-36b6dca83b95

The primary goal of Profile Picks is to educate business owners on the the importance of creating a Profile Picks Incentive Program (PPIP) as a key part of your marketing strategy. Members can also access our Learning Library containing regularly updated articles regarding the Second Life Search and best practices for optimizing parcels & profile pages for relevant key word phrases. 

The first product developed is the Profile Picks Gift Vendor now at version 1.3 - this vendor will deliver a gift to any account-verified resident who has your Second Life place in their Profile Picks. This type of Profile Pick Incentive Program can be operated with minimal costs, helping you to increase your rank in search while at the same time creating customer loyalty and exposing more potential customers to your products or services.

SE: Why is Profile Picks better than the competition (is there competition?)

FI: There are a few other products on the market that assist residents to develop Profile Pick incentive programs. However I feel Profile Picks has a few value added benefits including our online reporting which allows you to monitor gifts delivered, and the total number of gifts resident has received, from anywhere online. There are anti-abuse measures in place allowing you to ban a resident you feel may be attempting to abuse the system.  Members also receive access to articles I've put together with information regarding search and optimizing your Second Life place. Customer Relationship Management is also important to me and I encourage customers to contact me with any questions or suggestions.

SE: What barriers to business success have you encountered, and do you have suggestions for new business owners to overcome them?

FI: I think one of the problems I've experienced with Enchant3D is that my range of products is too broad. I've tried to learn a bit everything instead of focusing on becoming really good at one thing in particular. I've learned that businesses that are a focused on creating a specific type of product or service, in addition to achieving higher quality, stand to do better from a optimization perspective and are easier to market. My main roadblock this far has been time. I believe that success could be achieved with a full time effort, but between work and school I haven't been able to make that kind of commitment to SL. The SL economy hasn't proven stable enough that I would rest the needs of my home & family on it just yet.

SE: What might be your future plans for your businesses? Where do you see yourself in three years?

FI: When I graduate from college next year I will likely be working from home as a freelance graphic & web-based application designer. I'm hoping to return my focus to my graphic t-shirt business perhaps with its own expanded presence in SL. I also hope to continue to work and refine my skills as a content creator when I am able to return to SL with a fresh outlook and more freedom to grow the Enchant3D brand. Meanwhile, I am committed to expanding Profile Picks program, expanding the Learning Library and improving the products and services available. No matter what happens, I can't see myself not having some kind of presence in SL going forward, whether my focus is on content creation or using SL as a tool for promoting my FL products & services.

SE: Thank you so much for speaking with us today!

For those of you who'd like to see more of Fianna's work, please try these URLs:

http://www.enchant3d.com
http://www.profilepicks.com
http://www.popularitees.com

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

Spurt!

I attended Tymmerie Thorne’s amazing Halloween party the other night, where I saw many totally amazing costumes. I believed mine to be pretty good, but it paled in comparison to most of the others, especially Tym’s iron cage skirt, which must have been rather heavy.

A key theme of the party was, of course, blood. It was smeared all over the floor, walls, oozing from various body parts lying about and especially on clothing. There was even a kind of blood-sprayer on the floor wetting everyone down with the red stuff. By the way, if you haven't yet seen this build, I strongly recommend you take a look before Tym and Jerremy take it down. I especially liked the giant ants that devoured noobs, limb by limb.

While I had blood dripping from the corner of my mouth, I felt more was required in that scene.

Taking initiative during a dance, I managed to create a rather realistic and terribly gross blood spurting effect. It looks like you managed to sever a key artery, and is quite shocking. 

If you’re seeking a unique and totally horrifying item for your Halloween outfit, you might consider the Blood Spurter from Electric Pixels! (It's in the very dark Vampire section)

Anatomy of a Box

In an attempt to increase sales, I’ve been fiddling with my product boxes, and thought readers might be interested to see what I’ve done.

But first, the problem: In this case, sales were low, and my new theory is that shoppers get most of their information about product simply from the visual on the box cover.

In the past (and currently) I’ve tried live demonstrations, which are pretty much mandatory for moving particle effects that cannot be properly shown on any box picture. I’ve also tried notecards: every box at my shop delivers an explanatory notecard upon touch.

But the images on my boxes were previously quite simple, having only an action shot and the product name. It occurred to me that the nature of the product was not clear by merely looking at the old boxes. You had to either run the demonstration or read the notecard to "get it". I believe the demo and notecard are extra steps that some shoppers wouldn’t bother to do, and that they’d rely only on the box image.

My strategy was to replace the box images with something much more informative. But what to put on them? Here’s what I did:

(Click on the image above for a more detailed view)

• Consistency: Every single box has exactly the same style, size, fonts, layout and colors. The idea is that once people get familiar with one box, they will much more easily read other boxes. This is the same way grocery products are labeled.
• Information: The familiar “i” icon can be touched for immediate delivery of an informative notecard. If shoppers don’t recognize the “i”, it says “Click for Info!” as a reminder.
• Quantities: The number of prims and objects is stated. While this doesn’t make much sense for particles, which are most often a single invisible prim, shoppers often ask this question. Answer it here before they can ask.
• Permissions: Another question that is frequently asked is the object’s permissions. Unlike clothing or skins, particles are often sold as Transfer, no-copy.
• Description: This is a very important feature, I believe, as it may be the only way some shoppers find out what the item actually does, because it is faster than reading a notecard. The trick is to clearly capture the essence of the product in as few words as possible.
• Colors: I used colors to help people understand the permissions scheme, with green and red helping to convey the meaning. 
  
• Titles: While the product name is an obvious inclusion, it should be prominent and not confused with anything else. Also, I've added my store name as a bit of extra advertising. 
  
• Image: The most difficult feature is the image, as it must carry a vision of the product at a glance, much like a book cover. The image has to accurately portray the product in a setting that matches the product’s intent. The background must complement the product, and the viewing angle, model's "look" and model’s pose must also match the theme. This turns out to be fairly difficult to do, and took me the most time to do. Above you can see an image of one of my particle effects that tries to show the feeling of the product's motion in a still frame. These are very hard to do.
  

What did I not do?

• Price: I did not put the product price on the box, even though this appears to be a common practice. My reason was simple: once on the box, you kinda have set the price permanently, unless you redo the box texture and upload again, at your cost. Imagine trying to have a sale where all 200 products suddenly must have new textures! In any case, the price is available by simply mousing over the box.
  
• Language: You’ve probably noticed that all wording on the boxes are written in English, yet many customers speak other languages. I debated whether to have multiple box covers, but in the end felt that it was far too much work to do, and the information portrayed would be much greater than before in any case. It's my belief that most people are accustomed to seeing English products - and my monitors tell me that by far the majority of visitors to the store have set English as their language.
  
• Fractional Textures: It’s possible to save a bit of money by creating textures that hold 4 box images in a 2x2 matrix. You could, for example, fit four 512x512 box images into a single 1024x1024 texture. By adjusting the offsets on your boxes, you can display the desired image only. This could save you 75% of your upload costs, and visitors would have a simplified texture rez experience (fewer, but larger textures to load). I didn’t do this, but could have if I had the time to do so (it’s more work to do this). One issue with this approach occurs when you need to change one image - you might end up redoing the other three, or at least must keep track of several versions of the multi-texture.

It was a terribly large amount of work to redo all my boxes, as I have around 200 different items for sale at Electric Pixels. The better part of two weeks was spent designing, shooting, photoshopping and uploading. But in the end, I believe it was worth it, as sales have significantly improved since the new boxes went out. The most interesting effect was that different items are being sold now - proving that box images are indeed very important for shoppers.

Collaborating Outside Second Life

Like most virtual designers, I am often collaborating with other designers or clients in efforts to build something or other. Initially this was pretty easy, as Second Life is a pretty decent environment for collaboration: You’ve got voice, text and can exchange images via textures, or even build small prototypes for visual demonstration. Often I’d use email to send material to and fro. Nevertheless, I’ve found the SL environment is often insufficient for certain types of collaboration.

So what do I do? Simple: I make use of several free or low-cost web services. There are the obvious choices for sharing information, such as Twitter, Plurk, Flickr and YouTube, but there are several other highly useful services you might not use:

Google Apps: If you haven’t tried Gapps, you should. It’s free and provides some amazing services. Imagine being able to build and access a spreadsheet from anywhere you can access a web browser. Further imagine being able to invite others to “participate” in the spreadsheet, and watching them changing cells in real time. Now try that with documents and presentations, too! Gapps is well thought out and indispensable.

Skype: The ubiquitous voice service now provides more than just voice, but now includes video, file transfer, instant messaging and other great features. Get it now if you haven’t already! You’ll find it most useful for discussing projects with team members when you are not in-world.

Dropbox:  Dropbox is a wonderful tool that provides a completely free 2Gb virtual disk. What’s the big deal? The disk appears just as if it’s installed on your machine, but is in fact somewhere far away on the Internet. You can put this virtual disk on several machines - I use it to share files between my laptop and desktop machines. The best part is the ability to add others to your disk - and thus you can seamlessly share files between people simply by drag & drop into the shared folder and it’s automatically updated on shared dropboxes. Indispensable! If 2Gb is too small for you, you can certainly buy more.

Delicious:  The biggest social bookmarking service is Delicious, where you can share a stream of URLs with others. There are also several browser plug-ins that make creation of bookmarks a breeze.

 

Etherpad: It’s an incredibly simple multi-user shared text editor. What’s that mean? A page you can edit with others in real time. Different colors show you who’s changed what, as everyone types at the same time. Cut and paste the resulting text into a notecard and get your collaboration done much faster. 

YouSendIt: Files too big for email? YouSendIt will come to your rescue, as it enables direct sending of bulk files. It’s not quite instant, but one of the best ways to get a lot of data moving.

Tinypaste: It’s another instant service for storing a chunk of text. Again, very useful for keeping notecard-style information in a semi-permanent state. As long as you can remember the obscure URL, that is...

Are these the only services to use? Not at all - there are dozens, perhaps hundreds more, and those above are simply the ones I use. Which services do you use? Tell us in the comments below.

Seasonal Stuff

I haven’t done any shameless advertising on this blog for quite a while, so I thought I’d mention a few items in my shop that you might find very appropriate for the season. And that season is of course Autumn (at least in the Northern Hemisphere) and Halloween (in both Hemispheres).

For Halloween I have several particle effects involving bats. Bat Hair Day, seen above, produces teeny-tiny bats around your face. It’s on sale in the “Pretty” department at Electric Pixels.

 

If you need more bats, the Batty effect makes your own personal flock of bats. For room-sized clouds of bats, the BatMaker or BatMaker Thick effects can be installed for your Halloween party and have bats buzzing around all your guests.

CandyGiver is a Halloween basket that you wear on your hand. When you do, it scans the area and asks you to whom it should give candy. Once you select someone, a stream of rather sweet candy items flows to them. It and the Bat effects are available in the “Occasions” department at Electric Pixels.

You might also find something spooky in the “Vampire” department, which has a variety of demonic and evil items.

One of the items I’m very happy with is LeafMaker, which produces a scene of beautiful falling leaves. They’re several different colors and based on real leaves, but the effect works because of their motion. It really feels like you’re standing in a forest at that special moment when all the leaves are falling down around you. I also have several species of falling leaves: red, yellow or brown, in both “thick” or not-so-thick packages. Just place the emitter in your tree, and leaves fall gently the ground.

Have a great Fall and Halloween, everyone!