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Residents
of Second Life have many different views of what provides the true
value of Second Life. For many, it is the community ideas and interesting people
that draws others to Second Life.Companies
wishing to do business, hire new people, or just advertise their
company brands in Second Life recognize this value.
They want
to reach people and companies who are willing to do research and even
if they have a high enough education, are trying to learn and try new
things. Yet
many feel that recent actions by Linden Lab have further eroded the
community and have done considerable damage to the Second Life brand.
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Others
feel that what is most compelling about the Second Life brand is the
platform. Second Life is the environment where you can most easily and
reliably create three-dimensional objects that they can sell and share
with other people just like you. For these people, the stability of the environment is
extremely important, especially as residents plan events where they can
gather with others to demonstrate new objects, new places, or simply
discuss important issues.
This
ties back to the ideas of the Second Life community. Yet recent
instability of the platform, together with changes in basic level
hardware required for the Second Life viewer have frustrated residents.
Meanwhile, it appears
to many as if Linden Lab views their most important asset as the
assorted trademarks that they own. They have instituted new policies
that go far beyond what normal companies do to protect their trademark;
they have threatened to ban residents of Second Life from using their
systems if they improperly use any Second Life trademarks. This would
be similar to Coca Cola Corporation managing to prevent anyone who uses
the word ‘Coke’ when referring any other soft drink from drinking their
Coca Cola brand soft drink. It has left a sour taste in the mouth of
many residents.
At
the same time, recent changes to Second Life have required residents to
upgrade their viewers. This has presented problems for many, especially
those in education who have to support many machines, which barely meet
minimum requirements to even run SL. In response to these concerns,
Linden Lab held a few inworld informational sessions with Pastrami
Linden. Pastrami discussed how to optimize the latest viewers for older
hardware. Linden Lab maintains that the latest viewers are even faster
than the old ones.
The
main grid, itself, has not been all that stable during this period, and
residents have sought different ways of dealing with their frustration
about the outages. Many have simply taken pleasant walks.
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Mannix
Mensing and Celina Lathrop have sought to organize residents to form a
group inworld that held a peaceful march in the Linden Village to
express their dissatisfaction. They are working on forming a players
association that, among other things, would work with Linden Lab to
establish proper quality of service metrics and guidelines.
Not
everyone believes this will be effective. Some complain that Linden Lab
has rarely listened to residents. They note the poor response to issues
brought up on JIRA. They also complain that most residents aren’t all
that interested and won’t join a players' association, or that the many
residents have big egos and will only join player associations where
they are the major players.
Yet
last week's peaceful march filled four Linden sims to the max. Mensing
and Lathrop's group is recruiting new members, working on their mission
statement, surveying members, and they have begun preliminary
discussions with Linden Lab. The question that sums it up for many of
the marchers is, “Why do tier payments never fail?”
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At last week's
LL sponsored "Day of Rememberenc" and this week-end's opening of the
new 1-World Help Island, residents could be seen peacefully protesting
against LL, while others wore group tags that read "Music not
Politics", apparenly in opposition to the protestors' appearances at
these LL events.
Many
prominent Second Life bloggers did their own form of organizing and
went on strike from April 15th through the 18th. This attracted the
attention of real life journalists as well as folks at Linden Lab.
After a lively discussion on the Metanomics channel, Linden Lab
released a statement attempting to clarify their latest position on
trademarks.
Is
Linden Lab starting to pay closer attention to its residents? Are they
starting to understand the importance of brand and community? Let us
hope so. The push and pull of senior management at Linden Lab trying to
balance the value proposition of a grid of formulas used by accountants
to create budgets and a grid of sims used by creatives to build
communit has surely not been an easy one. Which side eventually wins
may determine LL's future as a key player in the virtual world market.
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