Dear Philip,

You indicated that your return to the helm would result in a return to transparency. While many of us have been waiting and hoping for this, it seems that we have the same opacity we learned to endure under Mark Kingdon.

If you want to instill confidence in us, Philip, you’re not going to do it with a quick Tweet that “SL is growing, not failing.” This is not communication, this is PR. If Second Life is indeed growing, tell us how it is doing so, something that gives us the confidence that you’re still genuinely connected with what’s happening in the grid. Because, Philip, the global economic catastrophes of the past few years have conditioned us to be deeply suspicious of voices that declare “Relax, everything’s just fine!”

At the present time, there is absolutely no reason for us to believe that Second Life is growing. The mainland is pockmarked with large swaths of abandoned parcels and plots of land are selling for as low as a L$0.5 per m2. We’ve just seen massive Lab layoffs, and the Lindens we relied upon to help us have been replaced with temps equipped with problem-solving laminate cards and no apparent sense of the grid. Mark Kingdon was fired in the middle of SL7B and no explanation was given. The Community Gateway Program was closed. The Teen Grid is being shut down. European offices that were just opened have been shuttered. Avatars United has been closed. And now the announcement that discounts for non-profits and education are being eliminated at the end of the year. Oh, let’s not forget Burning Life has been stripped of its Lab affiliation – as well as its name.

This is not to say that all of these decisions are terrible. Avatars United was a bad acquisition idea from the outset, and I hope that Mark didn’t spend too much money on it. I get the feeling, though, that Mark burned through a significant amount of the Lab’s money on his blind vision for the company.

As we enter into Second Life’s seventh year, the company seems – to many of us who are kept on the outside – to be forestalling bankruptcy for as long as possible.

The grid is starting to feel like Iceland.

We realize that Second Life beats with the heart of a corporation, not a democracy. We agree to Terms of Service, rather than forging Constitutions. We don’t get a vote – except for the money we spend on premium memberships, land auctions, estate purchases, tier, classified ad fees, show-in-search fees, and Marketplace commissions. Yet that money is truly the lifeblood of Second Life. For a very long time, I’ve tried not to become overly cynical about it all, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to remain positive. I look at my Linden Dollar balance and I wonder if now is a good time to cash out everything but the essentials, and I know that I’m not alone. Money talks, and lately, it seems that our money is the only voice that we have left in our little vitual world.

Second Life is wonderful, and there’s no other grid out there that can touch it. That does not, however, mean that Second Life can’t fail. One need only look at the demise of Blockbuster Video this year – a company that roared over the competition by early innovation, and yet died because management seemed deaf to changes in customer needs and choices.

Second Life is wonderful, but for most of us, it is not a necessity by any means. Any more than a daily Starbucks double-espresso cappucino is a necessity. Life in a virtual world truly is a luxury hobby.

Second Life is wonderful, but our concerns falling on deaf ears time and time again … isn’t.

Let’s face it, to the majority of the aware online community outside of our world, Second Life is a joke. But to several hundred thousand of us, it is worthy of a grand swath of our free time, our social time, and our creativity. The larger online world doesn’t “get it” – but we do. We bring our friends in and we show them around and we take them shopping and we ease them through the various rites of passage and we help them become the next wave of enthusiastic residents.

We are the evangelists. But like all evangelists, we need a message. We need vision. We need to feel as though we still belong. That we still matter. “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” And right now, there seem to be a lot of promises and a lot of reassurances, but no vision.

Your only Twitter post since SLCC is a seemingly-terse response to a comment from someone who stated their opinion that SL was failing because you don’t pay attention to social networking. Your response was “Oh yes I do! Plus, SL is growing, not failing.” If Second Life, at the end of 2010 – in the wake of massive layoffs, firings, cutbacks, closures, rate increases, and resident attrition – is indeed growing, then you need to explain to us how this growth is occuring. You seem to forget that we no longer trust that a company means what it says when it doesn’t provide evidence to back up irrationally exuberant claims of growth and stability. Stable, growing companies do not need to assure anyone that they’re stable and growing – its self-evident.

When communication fails, guessing and rumor and misinformation step in. Case in point, the Microsoft buyout rumor. I doubt I’m not alone in speculating that Linden Lab is seeking a buyer – perhaps somewhat desperately. Which leads us to ask, “Who might that buyer be, and how will it impact us?” And the flip side of the question, “What if Second Life is selling, but there’s no buyer – what then? Just how dire are things on Battery Street right now? And what happens if the time comes when we’re told that Second Life is indeed going dark? Will we be given the time necessary to back up years of memories?”

These are questions that are being asked, Philip. If our fears are unfounded, then you need to talk to us – and soon. But more importantly, you need to listen to us, and prove that you’re listening to us by having a conversation with us. And not just one token Tweet, but regular and substantive conversations with your residents. Because we are so much more than customers.

Or at least we like to think so.

Show me you’re listening.

Please respond.

Best Wishes,

The Avatar Known as Marx Dudek

PS: Give us back our identity. We are not “Residents in the Second Life™ Virtual World”. We are Second Life.

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I am really sad about this. I sat for a couple years on an email address, and today SL officially died to me, so I used it. I wrote to the email address you use as a Linden when you leave LL. I talked a bit to Cristiano, and he encouraged me to post this, so I’m going to. here is what I wrote to that address. The subject line was "so long, and thanks for all the shit".

Hello, and goodbye,

As you know, we’ve had a major restructuring this week. By that I mean

the new CFO has fired* a bunch of people so that the shareholders (I

will not capitalize that word) can make more money off our blood,

sweat, and tears; their ball of confusion is a higher priority than

ours.

for the tl;dnr crowd, save your time, I’m simply saying management has

been fucked, is fucked, and will always be fucked, because they don’t

understand the product and will never care about the people who make

it. For those who like to read, have fun!

Sadly, I am among those cut for the greater good – which I think makes

me not the greater good. I would like to thank you all for these

glorious 6 years, except I’m far too pissed off to do so. Instead, for

my departure letter, I’d like to single out some gentlemen who’s

particularly poor leadership caused this in the first place. Here come

some shoutouts!

*Philip – I was super-sad(tm) when you couldn’t get your head around

what you tried to create, much less take any responsibility for it.

.

*Mark – You are a penis. And not in a good way.

*Bob – The balls you have to do this cut after having a job in which

you have never actually interacted with your product are enormous, and

I admire that. There is a special room in hell for you, and if I’m

lucky, the devil will let me off my "mow this lawn, with your teeth"

job for a few hours every day to punch you in the face, while I get

lemonade. If I’m unlucky, I will get no lemonade.

As the wheels on the bus failed to go round and round, I can only

shake my head and think "told you so". From the early days through the

lunch menu and on into the future**, we have constantly provided a

substandard product with no accountability for it, despite the best

efforts of many of the people that got shit-canned today. I’d be able

to make a strong argument that the people laid off today were the

people who kept the fucking waterlogged boat afloat, and that the

executives named above are the entire problem. Time will tell.

For those of you who still have a job, I have nothing but admiration

and a strong advisement that you GTFO. This isnt a huggy situation,

this is a corporate situation in which your work is judged by managers

who don’t understand wtf you’re even doing, and sadly, don’t care.

Nothing you ever paid me for was worth this, you jerkoffs. Since this

won’t go to the people you actually

liquidated/fired/terminated/torleyated/whatever I will be posting this

elsewhere so that everybody will have the opportunity to understand

what you just did.

I’d like to close with this wonderful quote, which I think sums up how

we all feel:

"I’ve labored long and hard for bread,

For honor, and for riches,

But on my corns too long you’ve tread,

You fine-haired sons of bitches."

- Black Bart, 1877

Love, Peace, and Hair Grease,

Taco Fucking Rubio

AKA _Linden, AKA KGB Linden AKA Fink Linden, AKA Spy Linden AKA CIA Linden

*Firing people sucks. Make other people do it.

**There is no future. You blew it.

P.S. if you are reading this, you still have a job there. I understand

that you probably have survivor’s guilt – "why do i have my job when

so many good people don’t!?!" – please do not dwell on that and

understand that you have your job because some shitty manager who is

trying to save his/her job made some decisions on how to best do that,

so that a director trying to save his/her job could say "look i’m

shaking things up". Don’t dwell, just let today be a wake up call to

you as a reminder that this is a company, not a family, and the rich

eat themselves. You aren’t rich, start looking for a new job now, you

will be next. Love you guys!

Last edited by Taco Rubio; Today at 12:56 AM.

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My take on this is pretty simple.

4500$ for one block of ads on one day?

There is no business in SL that would be able to make a decent ROI on this.

DO THE MATH!

4500 us$ is roughly 1.15 MILLION L$, or in other words, a constant incoming cash flow of 100.000 L$ per hour during the time the ad runs. Now lets say you do have your own sim, and the sim can handle up to 40 concurrent avatars at a time before it totally lags out, and it takes the average person around ten minutes to come to your shop, decide on a product, and buy it. Let’s also say one out of five persons actually does buy something in those ten minutes.

The above numbers give us:

• 240 different persons in the sim during an hour
• 48 sales

That amounts to a minimum price of 2100L$ for whatever you sell, only to break even on the costs of the ad.

I don’t think there’s any shop in SL that could generate that kind of sales with any kind of mass market merchandise.

Don’t get me wrong, I actually think that some kind of paid advertizing in the viewer is a good idea… but:

• the MotD is the wrong place, the start screen before you put in your password would be a better place… and that screen is HTML, it could actually have way more than one silly line of text.
• The price is way too high for any in-world business; The ones that make enough sales to afford that price don’t even need advertizing… and any RL business can get better advertizing for the same money in other places.

Disclaimer: I am not a MBA, so I used common sense instead to arrive at those numbers.

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There have been a lot of those over the past year. The Homestead bait and switch, the introduction of themed, Linden-built mainland areas, the ghettoization of Adult Content, “Linden Homes”, the flirtation with FaceBook and Twitter, the purchase of a FaceBook clone, the abolition of the Mentors, and the abolition of the XStreetSL and the official SL Forums.

There’s more on the horizon. The imposition of script limits. A dumbed-down Viewer 2.0. Favored status for some, but not all, content creators.

And of course, some real problems remain unaddressed. Lag. Inventory loss. Failed teleports. Maximum stable concurrency. Content theft and its mirror twin, false accusation of content theft.

With all of that, I thought it was about time that the Residents wrote a letter TO the Lindens. It’s arrogant of me, I know, to place myself in the position of speaking for “the Residents”. We are a diverse group with a wide range of opinions. Still, I think that a great many residents will agree with what I’ve written here.

Dear Linden Lab,

We love Second Life, the virtual world whose infrastructure you created and manage. Although it has many flaws, it’s far and away the best virtual world platform in existence. We want to see it flourish and grow, just as you do. Because of that, we are passionate in our opposition to a number of changes the Lab has made, and is apparently planning to make. We are passionate because we, as the people who are in SL every day, see the damage that they have caused, and greatly fear what damage the new changes will cause.

We are also passionate in our desire for improvements. We see the problems with SL. We are frustrated by them every day. So it angers us to see you ignoring these real problems, and us, in a quixotic quest for “millions of new potential Residents.”

Let’s think about that one for a moment. At present, the grid can only support a maximum concurrency of between 70,000 – 80,000. Somewhere in there, things begin to break and either some functions (transactions, teleports, rezzing) become unstable, or the grid itself goes down. Until that problem is solved, it makes no sense to waste time with policy changes that might (you hope) bring in huge numbers of new users.

SL is a communications platform. As such, it shares some characteristics with MMORPGs, and some with social networking sites like FaceBook. These other platforms and virtual worlds like SL compete for the on line time of a large number of people. But, although they are similar, they are NOT the same, and they have distinctly different strengths and appeal to different segments of that potential audience.

MMORPGs are graphically rich. They have (and users need and demand) high frame rates. They appeal to those who want to play a game, to compete within a fixed and relatively limited rule framework. SL, in contrast, is largely user-created. And it is open-ended, with a very loose framework that lets users pursue the activities they choose. While the graphics performance of a video game would be wonderful to have, SL trades off some of that performance potential in order to gain its distinct advantages.

Social networking sites are all about facilitating connections between people. As such, they are a tool to enhance a user’s life and expand their circle of friends. Such sites are used by people to find potential friends, business associates, lovers, or mates. They are outward-oriented, and closely linked to the real world lives and identities of their subscribers. SL, on the other hand, features anonymity. While users can use it for social networking, and reveal personal information to either those they choose, or to everyone, many Residents use SL as an escape from Real Life. Their SL existence is quite meaningful and real to them, but it is largely separate from, and carried on parallel to, their Real Life.

As users of modern internet connectivity platforms in general, we see the advantages of all three of these types of platforms. MMORPGs are good for entertainment and escape. Social networking sites are good for making connections. However, it is only a true virtual world like Second Life that is usable for both purposes. There are necessary and unavoidable tradeoffs involved in creating such a multipurpose platform.

Because of that, we see it as a grave mistake for SL to try too hard to become either an MMORPG or a social networking tool. For example, in acquiring Avatars United, LL may be opening a door through which many residents will exit the grid in favor of a tool that better suits their main purpose. If LL were to go in another direction, and take control of content creation in order to dramatically improve performance, residents who are interested in creating, or running a business, will depart.

You must pursue the middle ground that you have already staked out. No single application can be everything to everyone, and it is a mistake to squander resources in trying.

What you have is an entertainment platform with (potentially) broad appeal. Instead of trying to force SL into a FaceBook mold, or turn it into WoW, make it the best of its kind.

SL has another unique feature: its economy. This is perhaps SL’s greatest selling point…that people can come here, and leave (if they are skillful and lucky) with more money than they came in with. But this economy is fragile. There are a limited number of products that are possible. By eliminating gambling, you cut off a whole segment of that economy (the fact that it was a legal necessity is irrelevant. It still harmed the economy). By restricting adult content, you are slowly strangling another, larger segment. There are really only three basic commodities in SL: virtual land, content creation, and entertainment.

Linden Lab has ultimate control over all of these. Each policy change or shift you make has an effect on the thousands of merchants who use SL. When considering policy changes, you must do a better job of discussing them in advance with a wide range of Residents than you have so far. We would suggest that you ask yourselves (and us) two questions of any new proposal: “Who will this benefit, and how much?” and “Who will this harm, and how much?” And the “who” that benefits should not be Linden Lab! Not directly.

Any time LL raises fees, or cuts services, it might seem that it’s good for your bottom line. But in the end, if it hurts the SL economy, it hurts LL. If we make money, so do you. If we lose money, or leave the platform, you lose too. Any time LL competes directly with Residents within the SL economy, you ultimately wind up shrinking the economy. Nautilus, Bay City, and Linden Homes are examples of this. Instead of competing with your SL merchants and land barons, you should be developing tools to help them, starting with a better and more robust permissions system and a better process for detecting, reporting, investigating, and resolving content theft.

Here is a short list of what we, the Residents, would like to see you concentrating on in the coming year.

1. Viewer improvements. The enormous popularity of Emerald clearly demonstrates the kind of features your Residents want…and it’s not a dumbed-down viewer, it’s one with more functionality.

2. Lag reduction. Upgrade your servers. Streamline the code. Deal with issues like the notorious sim freeze when Mono scripts arrive via incoming avatars. If you must impose script limits, target the worst offenders…like resizer scripts in every prim of an avatar’s hair or jewelry.

3. Improved content protection. More vigilance in catching and punishing content theft. Improved permissions system, especially for things like textures and scripts that are often incorporated in another product and re-sold.

4. Avatar improvements. We want a better avatar mesh. Better facial expressions. More versatile body morphing. True transparency in the mesh. More flexibility in clothing layers. And one you can do right now, with a simple XML file mod…duplicate Emerald’s secondary attachment points.

5. Improved resident to resident and resident – LL communications. Closing the XStreet forums and the SL VBulletin forums was a move in the wrong direction. The new blogs are not forums, and their format does not support the development of a dedicated forum community. Such communities are an invaluable resource and need to be nurtured and encouraged. You need a better way to collect Resident suggestions and feedback. I would suggest something like the old forum polls, but with the polls coming from you, LL. Office hours don’t allow a large enough cross section of Residents, and feedback via forum or blog threads is too cumbersome to wade through. And, when you talk to us, please learn how to speak in plain , unambiguous English. Corporate weasel-wording does not promote user confidence or trust. Case in point: Creating a new position of “Conversations Manager” immediately prior to eliminating the primary means of carrying on conversations.

6. Improved in world communication tools. In many cases, this means adding the ability to turn OFF communications when desired. Being able to temporarily disable group chat and notices. Improving “Busy” mode to allow content creators some peace and quiet. Add the ability to send a notecard to a group of residents by Shift+click selection in the Friends list or the Calling Card folder. Add the ability to open a conference IM by clicking multiple avatars. Add features like basic text formatting to Notecards. Make them directly exportable into, say, WordPad. Here’s a business-related improvement for you: add support for PowerPoint files.

7. Improved New User Experience. Take back the Infohubs! Develop and implement more community gateways of the caliber of Caledon Oxbridge, or Virtual Ability. Sites with real helpers present, 24/7. Sites that feature in world moderators, with eject/ban powers. Second Life is not for everyone. As a Mentor, I met many people who were really looking for an MMORPG, or a FaceBook. I knew they would not stay long. But I met countless others willing to give this virtual world thing a try. If you can show that audience what SL is all about, what it can be for them, you will see the user base grow steadily.

We need these things. SL needs these things. We need them a lot more than we need a FaceBook tie-in or a free cottage. Your bottom line will thank you.

Sincerely,

Lindal Kidd

(ps: I’m going to be bad and cross post this in the bloggs too.)

__________________

It’s still My World and My Imagination! So there.

Lindal Kidd

Even their effing website is dead, so people can’t even file a support ticket to tell them that their shit is dead.

Isn’t that cool.

One of these days I’m just going over to Linden village and start shooting people.

Wouldn’t exactly hurt the stability of the grid.

Dear ***,

This email is notification of action regarding your Second Life account,
Yevad Doobie, for violation of the Second Life Terms of Service or
Community Standards. The violation in question occurred on November 5, 2009
in the region of .

Violation: Community Standards: Rules of Conduct

Within Second Life we want to support residents in shaping
their specific experiences and making their own choices. Our
rules are simple: treat each other with respect and without
harassment, adhere to local standards as indicated by
simulator ratings, and refrain from any hate activity which
slurs a real-world individual or real-world community.

All of your item listings on the Marketplace are in violation of the
Marketplace Listing Guidelines, located here:
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_ … guidelines -
Links to competitor Marketplace web sites are not permitted.

Action:
As a result of this violation, your Second Life account is
being temporarily suspended for a period of 3 days. It will
return to active status on Sunday, Nov 08, 2009.

In a related sidenote, I’m about to finish moving my wares from XStreet to slapt.me. Find me there.

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where employees are allowed to “dress” like that at work?

…that, dear audience, is a linden labs employee, who’s name shall be kept secret to protect the guilty.

more info here.