When I was reading Dusan trying to tilt the focus by saying what happens “at night”, I recall telling people that SL has replaced the passive alpha-wave inducing television with a much more interactive world. I have told people that for me, SL can be like a television soap opera or sit-com where I can be one of the character/writers. Not only am I able to see places, people, and stories beyond my living room, but I am able to interact and build a story together.

SL non-land economy is stalled. There is a content glut and without noobs, all the paniced merchants are droppping their prices. This would actually make it a good buyers market if there were some new buyers in.

Land renters to Dirk’s point, better make sure they know if there landlord is going to keep their sims going. Could be that mid-month they find out that the sim is simple gone. Make sure you got copies of stuff out on the sim otherwise it could all just zap.

Seems like the complexity at LL has outstripped the management capability.

Members of Second Life’s Concierge Support group have in recent days been witness to members entering the chat literally crying because the economy has turned on them and they must abandon their land.

Mind you, this really has very little to do with the fact that the US economy is in a recession, it is simply poor judgment and execution on the part of Linden Lab. This poor judgment is backfiring with premium accounts and overall membership declining while Linden Lab grasps to assure that all is well by cooking the books on things like total square meters of its virtual world increasing. This trumped up statistic is meaningless given the fact that these numbers include openspace regions (which can sustain only 1/4th that of a full region that happens to have the same land mass)combined with huge swaths of mainland that remain unsold. Since Linden Lab can print up land at any time they could abuse the hell out of that statistic anytime they feel like it. Hey! Report due for Q3, flood the mainland so it appears that we’re growin’ dude.

Yeah, that’s a good idea. Stick your finger in the dike instead if fixing it.

But, why would something like this make someone cry? It is a game, a platform, just pixels, correct? I mean it doesn’t cost anything to enter Second Life and participate. Just cut your losses and hang out without the land you had to abandon. You can find someplace to mark as your home location. All your friends will still be there. It will be liberating. No more land fees to worry about! No more tenants asking you for help. Heck, you can do whatever you want now! Lord knows, if you need room to stretch out there are acres and acres of unsold land that you can just stand around on. Your world now depends upon your imagination even more because you can no longer build or run scripts on land that is set for sale. The sandboxes are too few and too full for you to rez anything. In fact just about anything that you want to do that will make Second Life rewarding and exciting for you now lives only in your imagination because you have no means to see them through to fruition.

Guess what? You could do the exact same thing, even if you didn’t have access to a computer at all. Just stand out in your front yard and maybe someone will pass by for you to chat with. You may even get creative and draw on the sidewalk with colored chalks.

You certainly aren’t going to buy any of that super cheap land in order to accomplish those things because you have already been violated and filled with mistrust. When land is part of the economy, you have no problem paying for land. It makes sense to you because it has a value based upon its location, good neighbors and support for your interests. It isn’t just a parcel pressed out and set for sale at a cheap price.

When we have depleted land and there is a need for expansion, certainly more land should be created. And that land will sell at a good fair price because at that point people will be looking to build out a community fueled by an economy that requires premium memberships in order to hold that land. If prices get out of hand, printing more land is certainly a way to offset that mania, but you do it in a prudent manner, you don’t just dump a continent. You aren’t doing anything to build your customer base that way. You are running them off in hopes of duping new residents into filling up all of that cheap land. What is it that you hope to engage these new residents with and retain them if you have run off the residents that are creating and building a world that will encourage new residents to participate?

Unlike Facebook, Second Life really is Social Networking. You must immerse yourself into the community and network to learn things and make things happen on a scale that is far more engaging than Facebook can even hope to offer.

Facebook is ludicrous. It is not Social Networking. There is absolutely nothing that you can accomplish on Facebook that you cannot accomplish with an Instant Messenger and e-mail running. I can send you really cheesy graphics of flowers, cakes and ice cream all day long in e-mail and pester you to look at it really fast and send something just as ugly back to me in instant message. How is that engaging me? How am I learning more about you and your interests on a passionate and meaningful level if all you are doing is sending me random bits of nonsense that was created by someone other than yourself? It doesn’t happen. The only reason YOU have Facebook is because it is free and someone you know also has it. The only thing you can really say for Facebook is that it is a glorified profile page.

Second Life will go right down the toilet if they want to turn it into Facebook and it becomes a platform where you just sign on and rez a few prims on your super cheap land that lets people know you like jazz but hate cauliflower and your favorite color is red.

Would that be any less boring or useless to you because it is three dimensional?

Dusan is right. It is the emotional transactions that make a virtual world and in fact, social networking engaging and rewarding. We want to see things that we have not imagined ourselves or see things that we have imagined presented in a way that we had not imagined. This is compelling. This fuels our own imaginations so that the world is enriched beyond a virtual space. We put these ideas to use in scenarios that benefit our health, education, our social interactions, the ways in which we express our humanity through the arts and the way we govern ourselves. Strangely enough, it seems like that is the frontier that has always engaged us “hippie types” and still seems to engage everyone on the planet. It is a frontier that should never cease to exist. It is the frontier that the educational facilities are looking to explore and they are vaulted for doing so. There is no reason to disenfranchise the rest of the community when our goals are the same.

With regard to M Linden’s initial awareness of the passion in Second Life, I will venture back to the Concierge Chat in Second Life. I have been a member of this group for a long time now and I have seen virulent passion for SL and its future. Residents were hopeful and encouraged by the directions that Second Life was taking because the welfare of the community was looked after. Oh yes, we had issues crop up that were hard to deal with and that hurt the economy but somehow they worked themselves into states that we dealt with on different levels although there was no real solution. Still the residents believed and stood fast for the Lindens who were also residents at one time and just as passionate about Second Life as they were. You could not ask for better support and encouragement from your customers. They stood ready to weather anything. They encouraged their friends and family to join. They were the very best form of advertisement that Linden Lab had going for them. They created things, they sold things, they raised money for charities, they enabled the disabled, they found new ways of teaching, they did well for themselves, their families and the people they loved and they got positive media coverage for doing so. It was not the media coverage of corporations coming into Second Life and leaving because they did not have the time or understanding to immerse themselves into the community only to leave in a huff and make negative statements about Second Life. M Linden never saw that! And I am very sad to say that if he were to enter that chat now, he would see a very ragged group that feels that all of the support and passion they had for Second Life is being ripped right out from under them. They still KNOW that this is a great idea. They still LOVE the very notion that there are endless possibilities. But the fact that they can no longer participate in this world that they built makes them cry. The fact that friends and colleagues that depended upon them to provide a safe and sane place for them to work on their projects have lost their land as well makes them cry. No one wants to disappoint anyone. No one wants to feel that kind of hurt and shame. No one that lent their industry and support to Linden Lab should have to feel that shame if Linden Lab is indeed a profitable company. After all, if the residents didn’t build an interesting world, no one would have taken notice in the first place. The fact that Linden Lab never leveraged the ravenous support of their customer base any more than they did is a mistake they can’t undo. Now the Concierge Chat seems filled with bitterness where there was such joy and hope. I have heard residents say that Lindens had behaved rudely to them. Now I cannot say whether this rudeness was reactionary or not, I simply don’t know. I have never had a Linden be rude to me. I absolutely value each and every one of the friendships and interactions that I have with those that I have met and know. Still.. it worries me.. I had never heard anyone say such a thing before and it comes on the tail of a few other stories that I heard about Lindens listening in on private conversations and seeking retributions with their alts. I cannot vouch for the validity of such things but when you hear them from people you have known and trusted for some time it just kind of turns your stomach. I don’t want those things to be true. No one does.

What happened to our community? Does anyone remember when the Lindens used to send out notices that there was a dance taking place or that Jeska and Bub were arranging an event or a contest? When who you were as a person and a creative, contributing entity to the community really meant something to the company? You know? I think I’d like to be part of a Social Network where people care about me and I am more than just a picture on a profile that you click to make a few cents for an ad company. That is what Social Networking is all about isn’t it?