Scott Jennings argues that Linden Lab needs to do a better job communicating with its customers and the marketplace in order to stop its inevitable death. (Via Wagner James Au.)
Linden Lab needs to even reach out to — rather than ignoring — perpetually angry customers, Jennings says.
But the loudest complainers aren’t killing Second Life. They have too much invested in hating Linden Lab to leave. They spend hours and hours writing vitriolic screeds about LL conspiracy theories. What would they do with that time if they left SL?
The people killing SL are folks like me, who start logging in to SL less and less and one day realize we’re not really logging in at all.
I had a brief spike in Second Life activity after I announced a couple of week ago that I hardly ever log in anymore. That was predictable: Thinking about it brought it back to the center of my attention, and the post had been triggered by a RL friend’s request for a Second Life tour. However, now I’m back to ignoring Second Life again. I’ve shunted all my email group announcements to a folder that I haven’t checked in several days.
What would bring me, and I think other disaffected Second Life users, back to Second Life is not better communications by Linden Lab — it’s something interesting to do in there. That’s all. If I hear about some kind of compelling speaker or event, I’ll go back. There’s one or two clubs I occasionally like to visit. But I’ve been busy lately with the new job and this blog and other projects, and haven’t felt like I wanted to invest the time in SL.
But I keep reading Second Life blogs, and SL Twitter feeds, and even writing about it (as I do now). Why? Because I enjoy it. I like the blogs. Two new discoveries among my favorites: Girl Wonder Speaks, by Tymmerie Thorne, and Second Life of My Dreams, by Chestnut Rau.
Also, Second Life’s decline leaves a hole in my social media life that hasn’t been filled by anything else. Doug Thompson, aka Dusan Writer, addressed this point. I said that Twitter, Facebook, and blogs are superior to SL because they can be used with short bursts of attention, even partial attention, whereas SL requires continuous, full focus for a long time (a half-hour or more at a stretch). But that’s not SL’s weakness, it’s one of SL’s biggest strengths, it’s immersive, like a great movie or book. It takes you out of your day-to-day life for a while.
By the way: I have enormous respect and affection for Wagner James Au, but I’m baffled by his continuing hammering of Facebook integration and point-to-move as needed to save Second Life. Are those features useful? Probably. Important? Maybe.
But, you know, painting a ship’s hull is important to maintenance. It keeps the ship from getting rusty and covered with barnacles and vastly improves the usable life of the ship.
However, painting the ship’s hull is not important when the ship is actively sinking.
Au argues that Second Life’s core customers bizarrely “hate and fear” change.
I simply don’t think that’s the case. I think it is more the case that SL’s customers have zero faith in Linden Lab. They believe that if Linden Lab changes something in Second Life, that thing will break, and be worse than it was before. They don’t want flashy new features while the service is still so buggy and difficult to use that most people don’t bother trying.
Jennings nails what’s really going on in a metaphor that is both perfect, and likely to be offensive to some people:
In fact, recent mishaps by Linden Lab (Second Life’s owner/maintainer) which I documented here essentially have turned the Second Life community into a battered spouse. “Just *stop hitting us* already! Leave us alone and let us do our thing, OK?”
I recall encountering this exact sentiment in interviews with women who have been seriously battered by their husbands, who have been sent to emergency rooms multiple times by spousal violence. They no longer wish for love from their husbands, or affection, or financial support, or help raising the kids or running the home. And these women know their husbands won’t leave them, or allow them to leave. They just want to be left alone.
And that’s the attitude of the remaining Second Life residents. They’ve given up any hope that Linden Lab will prove to be a competently managed company, they just want Linden Lab to keep the servers running, and not try to change things.
Somebody, somebody’s going to write a fascinating history about how Linden Lab created something as absolutely wonderful as Second Life, and then proceeded to screw it up. How can the same company be so brilliant and so stupid?
Despite all this gloom, I’m seeing some signs for cautious optimism. No, even that is phrasing it too strongly. Let’s just say that amidst all the gloom, I’m seeing parts that aren’t gloomy. New CEO Rod Humble seems to know what he’s doing (but then again I also liked former CEO Mark Kingdon). The new SL Viewer with Basic Mode is a step in the direction of allowing potential new users to come in and check out an event without having to spend an hour having to learn to use SL. And this week, Linden Lab hired a new VP of engineering.
Your analysis of what is going on with SL/LL is absolutely spot on. Thank you for the mention. I am quite flattered.
I agree with most of what you said, except that I *do* find plenty of things to do in SL.
As far as Hamlet’s hammering, I think he is simply out of touch. He gives me the impression of a person who doesn’t log in often to SL, doesn’t follow the current issues, and doesn’t have any idea of the amount of diversity in the user community. I think he blogs out of nostalgia, and the belief that nothing has changed (except for the crappy users).
I joined in late 2008, when LL was already pretty well separated from us users. Unlike you, I disliked Mark Kingdon’s management style — he gave the impression of not liking the current user base, and that he was banking everything on a new replacement population.
That population would of course come from Facebook, but for no particular reason.
I attribute his fall and failure in large part to believing that pipe dream.
He once left one of his blog entries open to comment, and was astonished at the “us/them” quality of the responses… but I’m sure he was the ONLY one who was surprised — which is certainly a measure of how little he knew his audience.
I am german and also with some items in marketplace-sl. Linden Lab. don´t inform about lot changes and make every User lot of work. I loose more and more fun in sl. Yesterday the support of Linden Lab. write me in a ticket, I have to read everytime the Linden-blogs for informations. wow … *g
Thank you for your articel !
Chestnut – My pleasure!
Ossian – What do you enjoy doing in SL?
I’m surprised to hear you started in late 2008; I think SL was already in pretty steep decline by then. Though I started Copper Robot in Jan. 2009, even then I thought, “Do I really want to invest this much time in launching a project in Second Life? Does SL have a future?”
What do I do? In a nutshell: chatting and shopping.
Well, I have a lot of friends there, so I am almost never alone. Most of the time I’m chatting.
One of my oldest SL friends has also become a friend in RL, and she makes furniture and houses. We can literally hours gossiping while she works.
I also do a LOT of shopping and generally wear something new every day. The clothes in SL are so amazing and fun, especially the shoes.
I have a few hangouts that I go to and dance and talk, and often newbies drop in needing help.
The main thing really is that I’m male in RL, and SL allows me to have (what I think is) a really lovely female avatar.
I’ve lived in a number of places in SL, too, and each time found a community that was like a small town: I loved my neighbors and the places.
I have a great RL, but I have a good life in SL too.
Mitch, I started in mid-2008 myself. I remember there was a huge flap in late 2008 when they changed pricing structure for limited regions, but didn’t pay much attention since I didn’t own land then.
I think the big signs of a slide for me were the introduction of the execrable Viewer 2 and the huge layoff. But these precipitated the removal of Kingdon, and I’m hopeful that it’s not too late for the new CEO to fix things.
Really, the biggest flaps in Second Life over the last year were the Emerald drama and the recent Redzone flap – neither of which was started by the Lindens, though they did have to step in to resolve them.
Ossian – That’s pretty much what I do in SL, when I’m in SL. I don’t know many people in there anymore.
Class of 2007 here, Mitch. Well, late 2007.
Okay, very late 2007. December.
Well, it gets a little more technical than that. February 2007 if you consider the account that I created, used for a weekend, and then mothballed.
I’ve done a great many things in Second Life – probably enough to write a memoir far more interesting than my atomic equivalent.
Once I understood the potential of Second Life, my vision was to open a space for social interaction. Along the way I bought land, taught anger management to a Gorean neighbor, sold that land to him, became a part-time rabbit, met a wonderful person and partnered, DJed at a male burlesque house, taught myself how to build, opened a small store, closed that store and opened a larger store, bought more land including a sim, became a landlady, opened a shopping mall, met dozens and dozens of wonderful people and …
… Three years and three months later, I’ve returned to my original vision.
This month, I opened my own little venue in Bay City. A beautiful little space – if I do say so myself – where I can invite people around, share music with them, relax and engage. I’ve opened the space up to share with other friends who DJ, to play music at their leisure – for run, rather than as a job. That’s the important part for me. I’ve worn many hats in Second Life, and held down many jobs. And I nearly lost the magic in the process of schedules and deadlines and filling in and covering and … living my Second Life a lot like my First.
I still have both my stores. But I create when I feel like it. I’m back to making things that I enjoy, and if others enjoy them, even better.
I am devoting most of my inworld time to my new space. The Listening Room in Bay City Dennis – a place to listen to music, and to each other.
I’d love for you to visit sometime.
Inspired by Marx Dudek’s lovely invitation, I logged in to friend her. I searched on her name. After a couple of minutes, I still got no results. And the Second Life client was slowing my Mac down. So I logged out again.
And that’s a main reason why I hardly go into Second Life anymore. It’s just BROKEN.
Search *is* barely usable. Don’t worry, I will find you.
And the grid has been the messiest I’ve seen it in over a year in just the past few days. I think it may have had to do with a recent region server upgrade. Hopefully it gets resolved soon – it was running so nicely last week. Even sim handoffs were barely noticeable.
And if you haven’t tried them already, perhaps a third-party viewer such as Imprudence or Phoenix might work better for you. I use both.
Apart from the technical aspect of ‘learning’ SL the reason it’s hard for new people is that Second Life IS it’s residents. We all love to see the wonderful things that have been created some enjoy shopping, live music, building, whatever it is you like it’s only possible because of the other residents, and it takes time to learn the social rules and build a life. I recently introduced a friend and it was fascinating watching her struggle with the technology and the culture. Second Life is tougher than pretty much any other online experience.
In a way Second Life already is facebook, only it’s facebook with real friendships, true passion, skill and commitment a place to immerse not just dabble your fingers.
If facebook went bust tomorrow, in a week who would care ?… but if SL went it would be missed for a long time.
I hope LL embrace the residents and learn to work with them to make sure this amazing creation continues.
Nice read, Mitch, and thanks for including why Second Life isn’t working right now for you yourself.
I agree with most of it, ‘cept I don’t completely agree with the “battered spouse” analogy of Jennings’. At least not as a generalization of everyone or even most of people left in SL. It paints a picture of an insufferable community left in world with one footstep out.
Most of my friend list never even mentions Linden Lab. They’re store owners, RPers, event hosts, singers and poetry readers and so on. Most are perfectly ok with their in-world rituals and don’t really get tangled in what’s talked about on these blogs, the forums, the JIRAs and so on.
Not all is roses, but quite frankly most people in SL are too busy with whatever they have going on to influence the “ship” in any kind of intended way. They’re just along for the ride and enjoying it.
Not all is roses but I believe the true minority
Meanwhile some of us remain engaged in a pitched battle for privacy against identity harvesters violating the SL TOS Section 8.3(i) and none of the “big bloggers” appear to care even though over the past 1.5 months this battle has garnered probably 1000 expressions of interest per day on various forums and blogs and twitter and plurk. That is a ton of page views the “big bloggers” all missed for their page ad views.
This is not vitriol. We have tried to have a productive dialog and, unbelievably, wiped out one “russian wannabee” crime ring that ran a password phishing operation. But the “big bloggers” don’t care about that. Why must it be so hard to deal with blatantly obvious issues?
We are not against LL. We want our music and social lives back. But that is gone until LL changes their staff to people against privacy invasion.
OK Mitch… May 2007. I loved SL from day one. I was fortunate enought to have someone from 2003 take me under wing and make me feel a part of.
Yup… the screwing some of us took in early 08 when private regions were sold for 1695… then reduced to 1000, that still didn’t run me off.
These last couple of years have been very rough…
No one at the Lab listens, or if they do it’s with selective hearing.
It’s not that we don’t want a different viewer… just keep the UI that was user friendly.
It’s not that FailBook is evil, (I think it is), don’t continue to shove it at me.
It would behoove the Lab to refuse to listen to those like Mr. Au that don’t spend time in-world.
Try and find Lindens actually in-world. I know of one.. and she doesn’t work in the front office.
STOP ADDING NEW STUFF…until you fix the old stuff… please.
Marx Dudek – I’m curious about how much of your time is spent in SL. It sounds like you have/had a very fulfilling SL experience. How does it compare to your RL?
Somehow I don’t think Basic Mode will solve anything. I think it will leave new folks confused, and most experienced residents unable to help them.
It will also leave the new folks wondering what all the (remaining) excitement is about.