Six months ago Philip Rosedale handed over the operational tiller of Second Life to Mark Kingdon, formerly of Organic, so that he could focus on vision, and technology, and electricity.
After a whirlwind first week, M Linden told the community that he had a “sense of what makes Linden Lab and indeed Second Life such a magical place. It’s people with passion for the virtual world. And, it all starts with the Resident community.”
But for the Residents, it was like greeting a noob. And we’ve all met them, because we’ve all been noobs before: there’s some kind of sugar rush that happens, a gushing sort of enthusiastic bouncing around, dancing, teleporting, buying way too many shoes or camping for way too long so you can get your first little 512 m land plot maybe, or a skybox with some fancy super security orb.
You don’t discourage the noob, you don’t tell them “get over it and settle down”, you just wait it out, you help where you can, and then you see how he or she feels after, oh, six months or so.
For me, the six month mark is the magic mark. And there’s a strange parallel here, because M Linden rezzed as Chief Executive around mid-May, and my rez date was May 20th. Six months later, I started this blog.
I started it because something happened around six months. After the initial energetic embrace of the place, I started to understand that maybe it was even more important than I’d first perceived. Maybe you had a similar six month aha! moment – it seems common enough, you made it past mastery of the basics, you found a home, a community, and then you started glancing around and realizing there was oh so much more. Maybe you started a little shop. Or got married. Or you started teaching classes, or playing music in the clubs. But somehow you had turned the corner, and were surely no longer a noob, you actually thought of yourself as a Resident.
With six months at the helm, does M still sense the passion of the Residents? And what’s next for the Grid? I interviewed M and am posting it here in its entirety, as tempted as I was to parcel it out and comment at length! I’m sure you have your own thoughts and comments in any case, so here it is:
Interview with Mark Kingdon (M Linden)
ON THE LAB, METRICS, AND CORPORATE STRUCTURE
Dusan Writer: What have been the highs and lows of your first six months?
Mark Kingdon: I have had more highs at Linden Lab in six months than I could have possibly hoped for.
One High/Low all in one was Lively coming and then going. Google validated the virtual world space just as Microsoft and IBM do. That was really cool. We got a lot of press hits, traffic and registrations when they launched. But it was concerning too. Google has a lot of money and a lot of engineers.
But as for Lively going dark, this stuff isn’t easy because 3D is more complex than 2D and I don’t mean just from a technological perspective. People relate differently to the 3D world than to the 2D world and that third dimension makes it very, very, very difficult on many dimensions. I guess you could say it’s a barrier to entry, which we like.
Openspaces
Another Low/High all in one was the repricing of Openspaces. From a business perspective it absolutely had to be done. We analyzed it over and over it and we talked a lot about the effect it would have on Residents.
Linden Lab has had in-world protests before, so I had a sense of what was coming. But I have to say that the visceral image of a self-immolating avatar is one I can’t erase from my mind. It was disturbing and a Low.
Oddly, there was a High in all of this and it’s what happened behind the scenes. We got a lot of very thoughtful comment cards and emails from people who make a business in Second Life. They offered their support (and sympathy, in some cases) and suggested many, many alternatives we should consider. That’s how we arrived at the pricing amendment – through great input from Residents.
Even more oddly, while I am sure there are some Residents who feel less close to Linden Lab as a result, I feel more close to them because I’ve learned a lot through the experience. Empathy is earned.
DW: Can you briefly describe any of the ‘structural’ changes you’ve made at the Lab? Are vertical markets, for example, a new focus? What other changes have you made that benefit current users and content creators?
M: For a body to grow, cells must divide and specialize and that’s what we’re doing. As part of that, we putting more focus on key customer segments – the consumer market, the enterprise market (which includes government) and the education market. We are not segmenting it any further than that. While Second Life is and will always be a virtual world platform, there are product requirements, go-to-market strategies and partnership deals we need to employ that are specific to a segment.
80% of our business is focused on the consumer market — which of course includes content creators. We are putting more than 80% of our investment in the consumer market because a good part of our investment in Enterprise crosses over (shared media).
We talk about Enterprise because we are doing new things there. We need to talk more about our plans for consumer because we have many big projects underway there.
If you look at recent executive hires, they are consumer or content creator focused. Our Chief Product Officer, T Linden (Tom Hale) comes from Adobe/Macromedia. Arguably Macromedia is one of the most important enablers of creativity on the web with Flash, Photoshop and their other content creation and delivery tools. Tom is going to lead us in wonderful new directions there that all converge on the consumer market.
(Editors note: Tom Hale was introduced to the community today on the Second Life blog).
Our SVP of Global Technology, FJ Linden (Frank Ambrose) comes from AOL where he helped the company scale for a huge market. Both are hires that are highly relevant for the consumer market and we have more coming.
In a future blog post, I will lay out our roadmap for the consumer business and explain what we’re up to.
METRICS AND LAND
DW: I’d like to get a sense of your use of metrics. In interviews and elsewhere, you’ve talked about user hours, for example, as one key metric. Land mass is perhaps another. Yet Glenn Linden also highlighted that there’s a $70M economy “outside” SL (Solution Providers). What numbers are on your management dashboard? What numbers or metrics motivate those who work at the Lab?
M: We measure everything imaginable, even love given daily using the Love Machine and we get continuous customer satisfaction data. If you’ve ever seen a Bloomberg terminal on a Wall Street trader’s desk, that’s what it’s like at Linden Lab. We measure everything and have real-time/near real time charts for anything you can imagine.
Because choice is a fundamental part of our culture, people create their own dashboard from hundreds of metrics that we can share like you might an iTunes playlist. The executive team has it’s own dashboard that we review every week.
To monitor the drivers of active user growth, we look at every stage in the user life cycle from cradle to grave so to speak – from web traffic to registrations to activations to an hour in-world to retention at 3, 6, 9, 12 months. We also looks at different types of users and their activity level — people who come to explore, people who come to create, people who come to run a business.
We are intent on growing our user base — bringing new residents in and retaining the great residents we already have and these tools help us see where we have opportunity. To monitor the health of the business, we look very closely at time spent in-world and user-to-user transactions. Both those measures are looking good as you can see in Zee’s recent blog post.
DW: Do you believe that the Second Life Main Grid has “land”? What does that term mean to you? Why is it important? Or are you renting server space.
M: The virtual world needs a tangible metaphor to be real, even when it involves fantasy. Land was a stroke of genius on the part of Linden Lab. Truly.
Why? It gave people something real and tangible that everyone can relate to. Having space and a roof over your head is pretty low on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs so that was a smart place to start.
I have to tell you that no one thinks of it as server space — well, maybe the team responsible for deploying simulators does. But even they think of it as land. A few weeks after joining, I got a notecard that said, “Please help me M! My landlord closed shop and now my house is gone. I’ve lost everything I own. I have nothing and nowhere to go.” That person didn’t say, “I lost my server space and I am having a problem with my account.”
We will never rent server space.
ENTERPRISE USE
DW: You recently launched Immersive Workspaces with Rivers Run Red. How do you see this as a benefit to other Second Life/Grid users besides enterprise?
(Note: I recently interviewed Justin Bovington of Rivers Run Red).
There is so much cross-over in Second Life and the innovations in one area always move to another. Think about media sharing. Consumers want it. Businesses want it. It doesn’t matter which segment we create it for because it will serve all.
Yesterday, I learned about a company that did a big training event in SL. The case study is phenomenal. But the part I liked most was that people stayed around afterward and explored Second Life. They had fun. You think that happens with WebEx?
Think of it like Las Vegas. People go to conferences and trade shows then they go out and party (or go to a museum, or go shopping, or relax in a spa, or go to a temple). Business doesn’t get separated or segregated in the real world. There is huge cross over. The same is true in Second Life. People buy clothes to go to work.
Business will be good for Second Life.
DW: Do you have any advice for companies who would benefit from a firewall solution to enterprise application of the Grid? Should they wait? Are there ways to learn more?
M: Companies were emphatic that we have a behind the firewall solution so we are creating one. It’s in Alpha now and will be in Beta in the first part of next year. Alpha is filled up and beta is nearly so but if people are interested they should contact Chris Collins — ChrisC@LindenLab.com.
DW: Care to comment on what you see as the adoption curve for enterprise: growing steadily? Quickly?
M: Steadily and quickly. One thing, though, I have talked a lot about enterprise in the past several months and you have asked several questions. I don’t want our Residents to walk away thinking that we are changing the focus of Linden Lab from consumers to enterprise. That is flat wrong. 80% of our investment and focus is on our core platform and our core consumer user. We are building enterprise and we are improving the consumer experience.
INCREASING THE USER BASE
DW: You talk a lot about the first hour. There’s a new viewer coming, There have been changes to Help Island, direct SLurls through registration, etc. But this implies new users: why are new users important?
M: Dusan, you haven’t seen anything yet. In a year, new users will enjoy a very different first hour than we experienced when we entered this incredible world. It will be intuitive, natural, comfortable. Hopefully delightfully so. That’s a big promise but that’s what we’re going for. You’ll see a richer web experience, an easy-to-use, highly intuitive viewer and a very different inworld orientation experience. Stay tuned.
DW: How does increasing the number of ‘casual users’ fit in to your business model?
M: Our focus is not so much on casual users per se, it is about expanding the population of Second Life substantially with users who start out casually and then expand their role in the community, put down roots and begin contributing to the economy.
DW: What has surprised you about the SL community? Delighted you? Frustrated you?
M: I am not sure where to start! The biggest surprise is the astounding passion and commitment of the Residents. It’s inspiring. It is also humbling. One of the first things I did after I joined was visit Global Kids in NYC. Barry introduced me to one of his classes who were in Second Life, learning. It was an incredibly moving experience for me to see. Profound. I have had many experiences like that.
A couple of weeks ago, a service provider in Italy invited me to say a few words at a Second Life conference of breast cancer researchers from around the world who were gathered to exchange research, thoughts and ideas on how to cure this challenging disease. In Second Life!! Second Life eliminates barriers in magical ways.
CONTENT CREATORS
DW: If you had a message for content creators, what would it be?
It would be, “THANK YOU.” The content you create is what makes Second Life so vital and rich. It’s also what distinguishes Second Life from all the virtual worlds out there. It is impossible to take in all the arresting content in Second Life, but I try to experience as much as I can. I travel around, look at things, chat with Residents and buy a lot of stuff.
I have a skybox office in Linden World and it is jam-packed with stuff. The roof has a giant noobie and other great finds.
When I got my first island, I spent the weekend terra-forming the land. I wrote a blog post to the company about it with the title “There is nothing more gratifying than summoning a mountain from the sea.” I studied art and art history undergrad and I love to make things which means I use our product regularly and experience the same great features (and flaws) that others experience. I can’t fully walk in the Residents’ shoes but I try.
DW: What can content creators look forward to that will either add to the tools they have or that will improve their ability to create content?
M: With T Linden on board, we expect to make progress here. We’ll share a road map when it’s done.
DW: What types of innovations do you see arising “Web side” – new communication channels? Further changes to SL.com?
M: All of the above and more. We will be bringing more of Second Life to the web and more of the web into Second Life. You’ll soon see a redesigned website and new blogs/forums, with more to follow.
EXPLORING THE GRID AND THE FUTURE
DW: Share something that’s amazed you in your 6 months at the Lab. Favorite destinations?
M: I spend 2-5 hours a day in Second Life, in meetings, working with Linden Lab teams or meeting with partners, residents, reporters, service providers, etc. A year ago, I was skeptical that it would be a great productivity tool for work. I can say without reservation, now, that it is an amazing productivity tool. I don’t think I could do another web conference or video conference. Spatial voice, the sense of presence, the ability to give presentations, the ability to feel connected to people who are on the other side of the world, all while sitting around a campfire by the beach is a killer application that no one can match. As M Linden, my favorite location is my island. I travel around as my Alt on my free time, and he has many favorite locations.
DW: Do you have an alt? Share one thing that might surprise us about your alt.
M: Well, it’s a him, not a her 
. He has sleeves (i.e., tattoos from shoulder to wrist).
DW: We generally think of Philip as the one with the crystal ball, maybe. But looking say 2 years out – where do you see SL?
M: That is a very perceptive question. I talk about how my horizon line (in looking forward) is 2 years and that’s what I plan to.
SL will be growing rapidly. We will have cracked the code on quickly and comfortably acclimating people to the virtual world. We’ll have many new content creators, land owners and merchants. We will have added the discovery tools that allow people to quickly find the people, places and things that bind them to Second Life. We will have extended key elements of Second Life out to the web. Our in-world economy will be thriving. People will be happy.
We’ll be another big step forward on our misson to change the world for the better.
I wonder how he’d react to Eric Reuters’ post today.
@Crap – By which you mean this post
Well, Eric Reuter has his opinions, and I sort of agree with them, but also don’t. It seems to me the current use model of SL can only go so far, so I think he’s wrong there. I do think he’s right about the current rep of SL in the mainstream press, but a lot of that is willful ignorance and stupidity on their part.
Great interview, Dusan, at least it shows he’s paying attention and that he does seem to care. Also you do realize the LL employees felt the punching bag effect of the reaction to openspaces, as opposed to how the blithering masses think LL doesn’t care and is trying to take them for a ride.
Thanks for this post.
Great interview Doug! I feel I really have an idea of the state of play at Linden Lab now. I have been thinking a lot lately about how Web 2.0 and Virtual World technology have a lot offer each other, even though Second Life continues to be pretty isolated from the Web (something that it seems will improve in the future according to Mark Kingdon).
Second Life and Wikipedia are the two great experiments in collaborative co-creation of our times. They show us many of the keys to creating the kind of participatory global culture that will be foundation of sustainable living, and the way to create a viable alternative to this economy of escalating consumption that has us in its death grip today.
I am happy that SL continues to have a visionary hand at the helm.
Excellent content and style…keep up the good work!
Nice interview, Dusan. Reading M’s answers might make people think “Oh how great and shiny everything is and how even better it will be!”. And yes, it is. On the surface. Underneath it things look very different. People were always critical of LL, but they also were always hoping and (most of them) ready to acknowledge positive developments. Many of those voicing harsh critic about this or that on the other hand still defended LL in general. For many, these times are over.
What I see these days is a more and more growing “F*** LL” mentality – not really a surprise looking at how bad they messed with us. I just checked the economic statistics: 1105 regions less than on oct 31st – while there should be some 750 more. People are giving up on SL, not even waiting anymore for january when the price hike will come into effect. People just don’t like to give their hard earned money to street robbers and backstabbers.
The OS price change was a necessary business decision? Even if it was (and I seriously doubt it really was, at least not in this totally mad dimension), the way it was done and communicated is even more upsetting than the 67 percent price hike itself. Inviting people to discuss, naming forum threads like “Discussion with…” or “More talk with…” and then more or less *never* really discussing or talking? How poor is that, what does it tell us just how “important” the residents are to LL? And the crown of it being an “ammended” policy/price change that actually is worse than the original. “Look what a great company we are, we listen to our customers! We won’t cut off your heads in january, we will only cut off your right hand! … Your head we will cut off in july. Enjoy!”
So Mr Kingdon, I’m sorry (actually, I’m not), but I call your talking a smoke screen. The part about the OS debacle are an attempt to nicely wrap up lies and LL’s own mistakes and messups.
The one good thing about all this is, that LL’s terribly poor business and customer relation behaviour most likely will give the development of alternatives a big push. I just had my 2nd rezzday, and while there are quite a lot older residents around, in these 2 years I witnessed many crisises, from gambling ban to VAT to discrimination attempts at SL5B. Through all of this there was and is one red line: the total lack of customer appreciation and customer care. Well, the words are there – but not the actions to show that there is more than just nice words. I sticked to LL/SL through all of this, I critisized, but also defended them. Despite all problems, I still saw SL as something great – and I hate seeing it being destroyed from the inside. SL gave me something great, it changed my life. But even the biggest credit some day runs out, and I am at this point now. I will not expand my SL business anymore (oh well, LL destroyed it anyways), I will not invest a single RL dollar anymore, and I will watch the alternatives closely. As soon as they become *real* alternatives, I will move the center of my online existence away from SL.
So, Mr Kingdon, have fun with your shiny facade. Just make sure to never scratch the surface, you might be in for a really bad surprise.
Have to agree with Daniel, judged by their actions Linden Lab are either clueless or untrustworthy and quite possibly both.
“That’s how we arrived at the pricing amendment – through great input from Residents.”
It’s statements like that which sum-up LL for me. They try to spin it as a positive “we’re listening” thing but all it really reveals is how incredibly naïve they are. They “analyzed it over and over” and yet STILL went ahead with that infamous blog-post. It’s not that I think the new prices are wrong – it’s that these should have been the prices they launched the new OS sims with in the first place. They truly seem to have no business sense AT ALL and without that SL will simply fail.
Everyone I know in SL still loves the idea of virtual worlds but is just waiting for something better than Second Life to come along so they can leave. LL have trampled all over most of the trust and loyalty they’d built up over the past few years and that’s very depressing.
Excellent interview.
You asked once before in a post to know more about what the roadmap for LL and SL was, and obviously M was focused on responding. I was pleased to see as substantive a set of responses as any CEO would give outside a closed meeting room. I am for once impressed. This is great marketing, and as we say a great capture.
Everyone knows what goes on inside any large organization is not reflected in the marketing and public sales pitch. We must remember Mark Kingdon (formerly of Organic) is foremost a marketing man with a management accounting background. That said, I do like the fact that there is at least a stated corporate vision here that goes beyond the polar statements of GeeWizz; 3D, user content and microtransactions are the future of the internet but on the other hand, this is a hard business, we will have to play hardball now to make more profit, to grow, even survive.
I would make one suggestion to M. if he expects to sell us on “The Vision”. Stop using the term “The Consumer Market”. Maybe that works great talking inside the company, to investors and outside CEOs but not to the resident community, the content and experience creators, land owners and renters, Linden Lab’s real Partners.
[...] the mean while, Linden Lab’s CEO M. Linden gave an interview to Mr. Dusan Writer (published here). The main tone of that? ‘All happy. All good.’ A quote: “80% of our business is [...]
By the way, nice interview!
Anything said about Teen Grid?, if not then it would be great if someone would interview M Linden about TSL and also what M plans to do in the near future for TG. Thanks!
Because the last time M Linden said something was back on 3rd of July 08 for the TSL Birthday celebrations: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/SL5B/MTSL.
All I’m saying is that there SHOULD be more TSL Coverage about the Teen Grid, I know teen grid residents would be really interested in the latest developments etc.
English history-writing used to be dominated by the Whig theory of history. Everything that ever happened in English history was wonderful and the only change that ever happened was that things became even more wonderful. It’s instructive to contrast M’s description of how everything in Second Life is wonderful with Eric Reuters’ experience. Neither Second Life nor Linden Lab need constant boosting followed by constant under-performance. Both they and we need a few things to be fixed.
Linden Lab’s great folly with regard to open spaces has been that they expected reasonable behavior from their residents. They put out reasonable guidelines for use of land and expected the residents to adhere to the spirit of the guidelines without any kind of policing.
What they got instead was an aggressive gaming of the system. People squeezed every last prim out of their open space sims and used temp-rezzers to make up for anything they couldn’t get otherwise. Then they packed in scripts and avatars.
Not everybody did this, obviously, but a clear enough majority to be a major problem, completely unanticipated by Linden Lab.
The great advantage that M brings to the table is that he carries both the newbie wonder at this amazing second world and a businessman’s eye and experience. He, despite his newbieness, would not be caught off guard by residents’ desperation to have a place of their own making.
I would even bet that he understands it in a visceral way–I did, six months in. I had done enough exploring, seen enough of the everything that is Second Life, that I knew that I would find whatever way I could to make my space here.
It is the “whatever way I could” that Linden Lab, with its naive, software developer sensibility, completely missed. I think M gets it.
So here is my advice for M Linden: Trust the residents, love the residents, live in their delight and their passion, but put everything in writing and enforce it.
Nice post. It seems that LL have their “favorites” to talk to – after two attempts to get interviews for “SLentrepreneur Magazine” it seems we aren’t big enough. But that’s not your fault, Dusan, just a comment on how information is distributed from LL and to whom
At least you got the information!
As to the Eric Reuters article, I am stunningly unimpressed. It simple expresses the views of one person who, by his own admission, became disaffected and saw things as being “as exciting as watching paint dry.” Sadly, the article was disappointing because the title was “Why Reuters Left Second Life,” and he didn’t give any reasons! All I saw were some suggestions for improvement, which have been made before a number of times by many residents who post to the LL blog.
It sounds more like Eric got tired of writing about Second Life and wanted a new job – which he got. What would be more interesting is to know WHY Reuters decided not to have someone else cover things – again, maybe they saw no point in it. We still don’t know WHY they left.
Eris said >LL have trampled all over most of the trust and loyalty they’d built up over the past few years and that’s very depressing.<
Agree with that. Although depressing is a “bit” of an understatement when you loose about 20000USD investment because of their decisions concerning regions in 2008.
But hey, it’s just a small loss against their earnings. So what? We are all happy still…right? We trust LL on their decisions.
You don’t? Shame on you!!
Excellent interview, Dusan, as always!
One thing I’m noticing in recent public communications from the Lab is more use of emotive words. “Delight” seems to be a big one lately, and a focus on “intuitive” design. I like that shift in verbiage and hope it’s got the ring of sincerity and not just market-speak.
Thanks again for all the terrific work you do keeping us informed about what’s happening behind the scenes, I’m really a huge fan.
[...] will be growing rapidly. We will comfortably acclimating people to the virtual world“; http://is.gd/8Vcv [...]
I enjoyed reading this article very much / thank you :_)
as far as my position and thoughts / I have been here in SL 3 years + / my annual subscription is due in December which I will renew for 1 more year / however at this point and with recent and past developments and disappointments / the next year I will spend in a complete holding pattern / i will not lift one more finger of help to LL / and I will continue to keep an eye on emerging alternative Virtual Reality Grids coming on-line / when the right one pops up / I will gradually migrate from SL and re-establish myself somewhere else
there is an old saying M. Linden / To Little~To Late / you folks at LL blew it. And as far as your shiny new technical Network Wizard formally from AOL *coughs* well…….
We all know what happened to them!
thanks for the great article and interview Dusan / byeee
JayR Cela :_)
M Linden’s explanation of the OS price rise simply makes no sense. A number of estate owners found that Jack Linden’s explanations, offered in private, were equally unpersuasive.
I suspect LL needs an entirely new revenue model that spreads the burden more evenly among users, perhaps through a conventional subscription model like EVE Online or WoW, but that’s another debate. Let’s accept, arguendo, that the the official explanation makes no sense because it is not the real explanation and that LL actually found itself needing new revenues because of the financial crisis.
The question then would be why did they choose to hit one segment (OS owners) with the whole of that burden, entirely exempting Mainland owners and others. I don’t have an answer yet, but it’s an interesting question.
A good interview all in all. However, it re-enforces my opinon that Mr. Kingdom is an optimist looking at Second Life through rose-colored glasses. When we compare Second Life to other computer enterprises we find it sorely lacking both financially, growth-wise, in customer satisfaction and in reputation. The system has some serious problems, yet we see virtually no mention of such in this interview– or in his other public presentations.
The line about them “carefully considering” the Open Space price hike is corporate propaganda, pure and simple. Their move has been analyzed by professionals over and over and it comes down to one thing: Linden Lab wanted more kaching out of a very viable situation. Every time I read him trying to justify that action just convinces me more of the wisdom of hunting out viable alternatives to the Linden Lab price-gouging monopoly.
A great article. M. Linden’s corporate-line responses were expected. End result: nothing all that informative. Company man, no doubt about it.
Good interview Dusan.
I’m sorry but the way he glazes over the openspace issue impresses me not. There is no high point to this, residents are getting shafted. There was absolutely no creativity in their policy or the so called changes, it was all shaft the resident. This won’t be forgotten in a hurry.
Actions speak louder than words, Linden Lab have a hell of a lot of actions to engage in. Trust has been eroded and it’s a deep erosion.
[...] Lab is in communication over-drive it seems. Mark Kingdon’s recent interview, Ginsu talking about where the technology is headed, and Tom Hale asking Second Life residents to [...]
[...] is from Dusan Writers’ Interview with M Linden, a comment on the Open Space hiking debate; On 11.23.08 Doreen Garrigus [...]
[...] said in an interview by Dusan Writer some days ago: 80% of our business is focused on the consumer market — which of course includes [...]
[...] the ante further with his promise to focus on the “consumer experience” noting as he did recently that “80% of our investment and focus is on our core platform and our core consumer user. We [...]
Mr. Kingdon is a world class BS artist and a relentless spouter of the party line of the moment. He should be in politics rather than technology. Don’t hold your breaths.
[...] Read Dusan Writer’s interview with Mark Kingdon here. [...]
[...] Read Dusan Writer’s interview with Mark Kingdon here. [...]
[...] [...]