Eric Krangel, formerly Eric Reuters in Second Life, seems to have extended the art of poor reporting over at Silicon Alley Insider.
Now, I have no idea what got under Eric’s skin. With the departure of Reuters from SL, Eric decided that a gracious exit wasn’t in the cards, calling part of his SL experience “about as fun as watching paint dry,” and implying that the Lab was limping along on the back of “fanatical users”.
What was odd about this was that while Reuters made for the exits, CNN was upping its investment in Second Life – and surely both can’t be right?
So there he was, at it again, claiming that IBM, with hundreds of employees IN Second Life, was retreating from virtual worlds because of the departure of ONE person, creating a spurious rumor, and using the royal “we” to try to back up the idea:
“We have calls into IBM PR and Ian himself. But we can’t say we’d really be surprised if IBM uses Ian’s departure as pretext to quietly back away from its once full-throated backing of Linden Lab’s virtual world.”
Well, Eric. WE beg to differ. The recently published case study by IBM and Linden Lab is probably the best evidence of this. And, well, IBM itself agrees, forcing Eric to publish a retraction:
“Earlier this week, we wondered if the departure of IBM’s (IBM) “Metaverse Evangelist” means the company is scaling back its interest in virtual worlds and Second Life. We haven’t heard much from the group in months, which only added to our speculation.
IBM reps finally got back to us, and they let us know they’re still in there.”
Ending the recall of the previous rumour with a snarky “Still in there, so there you go.”
Hamlet recently took up the cause of de-meming Eric’s seeming bitterness, pointing out that as far as covering the hot stories, Reuters was hardly some sort of investigative powerhouse:
“consider all the significant business/commerce/financial stories that Reuters’ bureau failed to first report on, when they were operating in SL:
* Reuters didn’t first report that fear of the CopyBot was undermining the entire SL economy. The Second Life Herald did.
* Reuters didn’t first report that SL retention rates were much smaller than widely believed. Writing for this blog, Tateru Nino did.
* Reuters didn’t first report that a film director had sold the rights to his SL machinima to HBO. This blog did.
* Reuters didn’t extensively report on the relative value of virtual items in the SL economy. The New York Times did.
* Reuters didn’t report that IBM’s corporate campus in SL was the site of a major international labor protest. This blog did.
* Reuters didn’t first report that CTO Cory Ondrejka was being fired from Linden Lab. Moo Money at Massively did.
* Reuters didn’t report that an art collector had purchased an experimental work set in Second Life for six figures. The New York Times did.
* Reuters didn’t report how contractors for the Playboy Corporation were investigating instances of copyright and trademark infringement in SL. CNN’s iReports did.
* Reuters didn’t estimate the amount of revenue Linden Lab was earning from SL. This blog did.
* Reuters didn’t report how a number of real world entrepreneurs and developers were using SL to prototype real content. BusinessWeek did.”
I don’t feel like Eric deserves the real estate, but when I get people asking whether IBM is really leaving based on – well, based on smoke really, it’s clear that where Eric really belongs is the Enquirer, and that he should be tracking down Britney or something, because it’s increasingly clear that Eric is either living out his grudges and resentments in public or never graduated from journalism school in the first place.
http://blogs.msdn.com/zainnab/archive/2008/07/22/not-rooting-for-reuters-or-how-i-learned-about-journalistic-integrity-the-hard-way.aspx we have doubled the Microsoft community since then and now are branching out to ReactionGrid. He can’t get a story right. It’s not in him….
It has been interesting watching some assumptions that my departure means IBM is pulling out of virtual worlds. If anything this should be seen as the opposite.
I want the industry that I have been part of to continue, it needs companies the size of IBM to be part of it.
I was comfortable that, regardless of any personal needs, this was mature enough in IBM that me going would not cause an implosion.
Now is the time for the industry to move and move fast. I think we will all make that happen.
As for the details of what I ended up doing and why, well thats for my book
I am however very pleased that there has been some reaffirmation of attention to virtual worlds. Its not going away now is it!
It may be the case that he is accurately reflecting HIS experiencing in SL.
I remember my parents telling me that there is no such thing as a “bored” person, only “boring” people, and if you’re having boring time (i.e. “like watching paint dry”), well, guess what?
SL allows each individual to “bring it” with them. I have found SL to be a environment of some of the most creative, interesting, funny, talented people on the planet. It also offers an international environment in which we can all communicate.
Questioning the future and validity of Virtual Environments such as Second Life is being like the people who opposed the development of trains “because if humans traveled over 35 miles an hour they would suffocate” (this is true – people were concerned about that)
or
like when Alexander Graham Bell took the invention of the telephone to Western Union and they asked him “why would our telegraph operators want to talk to each other?” (Thanks for that one, Pathfinder!)
And as far as IBM having visionary leadership, or being a bellwether of technology let’s not forget:
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
- Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943
There are many extremely intelligent and talented individuals that work at IBM who were in SL for a long time before they could convince the suits that it was a valid platform, but then IBM came rushing into SL like Al Haig ran into the hospital when Reagan was shot, claiming “ok, I’m in charge here” and everyone knew that they weren’t.
Not having success in SL is a combination of not setting expectations correctly, not understanding SL’s strengths and limitations, and LL not yet creating the “mission critical” platform that will eventually dominate the Virtual Environment worlds, by fully supporting the people trying to use it.
I’m working with an IBM person currently on, what to me is, one of the most import areas ever – helping blind people be able to successfully use SL. IBM can and will make significant contributions to virtual environment technologies as things settle in and we all get back to work on making this work, instead of taking potshots over minor setbacks, and thinking that somehow SL is a “build it and they will come” magical world. Success will come through applied understanding, not by slipshod slapping things up in a manner that no one in their right mind would do in RL.
To Linden Lab’s credit they have been doing their business out in front of everyone for years. Those of us who are sincerely interested in eventually having a stable, dependable, reliable Virtual Environment in which we can prototype objects, spaces, buildings and communities (be they for tinies or real life, fantasy builds or RL builds); and import and export files (including 3D) easily, support LL’s efforts to reach that level with their software. From what I understand about LL’s plans, 2009 could be a great leap forward for us all and the competition that is coming along will be great incentive for LL to achieve what they can.
I continue to support Linden Lab’s efforts with Second Life, and continue to work in SL. I welcome IBM’s incredible talents and resources in helping SL succeed, and after the “hype years” die down, believe that we will see virtual environment technology as world changing as the internet and the www.
To paraphrase the famous philosopher, LouieCK – “people are sitting in chairs, 30,000 feet in the air, going over 500 mph, getting from New York to San Francisco in 5 hours………complaining about the 20 minute delay in boarding the plane.” The spoiled generation. : )
Terry Beaubois in RL / Tab Scott in SL
There was nothing “reluctant” about it, Doug/Dusan. I saw:
Ian/Epredator quit IBM
David/Zha’s blog had been silent since AUGUST
http://zhaewry.wordpress.com/
and IBM has been on a manic drive to cut opex by either laying people off:
http://www.businessinsider.com/2009/1/ibm-layoff-count-at-least-2800-in-sales-and-software-ibm
or making life so miserable for people they quit
http://www.businessinsider.com/2009/2/ibm-to-north-american-employees-to-keep-your-job-move-to-india-ibm
So I made an educated guess — and clearly said it was a guess — and promised to update if I heard more. Then I heard more, and I ran it.
But let me take a moment to address some of the more ridiculous statements circulating recently:
The premise that Reuters should have “scooped” every big SL story is the most asinine thing I’ve heard in months. We were there to have an independent, skeptical, non-fanboy, informed view on all things SL and VWs, and I’m pretty proud of what we did. No one paying attention to Reuters/SL would have been suckered by Ginko and the other “banks”, an obvious fraud other “journalists” were too busy throwing “hottest male avatar” polls to pay mind.
And since we’re talking IBM specifically, let me relate an anecdote about a story we “missed”: One day 30 avs showed up on Reuters island waving anti-IBM placards and /shouting “strike!”. I clicked their profiles, and every single avatar in the scrum was less than three days old. They told me their grievances, and when I asked their RL names, they said “we can’t tell you, we’ll get in trouble for protesting!”
Bunch of wankers — I gave them no press.
Lastly, I just want to address the oft-quoted “watching paint dry” remark. It was a shoot-from-the-hip line and I probably would have said something different had I more than 25 minutes to write that piece. But honestly, even after 18 months immersed in people who love SL, and having gave it chance and chance again, I still think “dancing” in a virtual nightclub is deathly boring.
That’s not a slam on people who think it’s “ZOMG GREATEST TECH EVAR!!!1″ If you like it, go nuts. I just earnestly believe based on thousands of hours of first-hand observation that Second Life in its present form will never appeal to more than a small niche community of people it “clicks” with. Second Life’s recent history bears out that I’m on to something, I think. And despite the fondest of memories I retain for my time in Second Life, and despite personal hopes all my friends there (and Linden Lab too) prosper, I’m not going to lie about where I think it’s heading.
Eric was on Metanomics way back when, with reps from media giants CNN and CMP…and Prokofy Neva. You can read the whole thing here . Here are a few quotes that seem particularly relevant today (along with comments from Rhonda iReport and Prokofy):
Oops…my attempt to show when other text intervened wasn’t successful…take a look at the full transcript to make sure you aren’t misinterpreting transitions from one quote to another.
Let’s go over this in more detail, shall we?
1. Eric nee Reuters Krangel was at Columbia Journalism school when he got this Reuters SL gig. Don’t forget that it was Adam Reuters who first opened the bureau with a huge splash, but then sort of wandered away, after he got the Davos interview with Mitch Kapor in February 2007, when Mitch basically said, don’t buy any new land, as we’re looking for the “liquidity event” and planning to opensource the servers, so land will devalue. Small wonder when the Geek Chief (then CEO) says stuff like this, that there isn’t a huge swarm to buy land from consumers, but rather a huge swarm of corporations having a look-see.
SL Reuters was a huge opportunity for Eric, walking right into a wire service position before he’d even graduated, and not having to go slog it out at the Potatoe Picayune in Maine like many other J-school grads have to do to earn their spurs. He got a low salary because he was a college kid soon to graduate basically going into something like a glorified internship. Because Adam lost interest he had the space to himself.
2. So remember, then, Reuters already paid a journalist probably a lot more handsomely, but he lost interest because for him, as a tech and economics reporter, there wasn’t enough of a story in SL and not enough glory within the Reuters pantheon, so he moved on to other tech stories. Adam Pasick wasn’t a lifestyle/culture/etc. reporter or interestd in those topics.
3. In fairness to Eric — and I don’t like being fair to him and have been probably the most harshly critical of him in my blog — he reported more stories than Hamlet nee Linden Au reported or ever *will* report, and far more critically, and with far more journalistic curiousity and skill, quite frankly.
Hamlet disingenuously cites a list of Reuter misses as if Reuters didn’t break a whole bunch of others stories Hamlet wouldn’t touch because they were too critical of LL or the geek magic circle. Eric broke the story on the real identity of the character who ripped of Stroker Serpentine’s beds; he did quite a few stories on the Lindens’ island price hikes and such; he was far more probing and interviewed more people per square inch than Hamlet, like a real wire service reporter, than Hamlet will ever interview in a million years.
Hamlet runs a blog, and is lazy, and lets other people report for him live, without editing. He doesn’t go around trying to “get the story,” he just pontificates and does advertorials and informercials, “oooh this shiny gadget” “ohhh that shiny island” “ooohhh here’s an event from my sponsor Rezzable that really rocks” etc. That’s fine, but let’s not compare an inhouse organ-turned-outhouse-lapdog with *Reuters* for God’s sake.
4. Eric, who is a geek and originally educated as a geek and went to j-school as a second career so to speak, although still young, rapidly realized that among his peers, SL wasn’t cool. Geeks in New York in particular just don’t like SL. They think it’s for losers. It meant suffering constant embarassment at parties and such. And the Reuters top dude, who I happened to bump into at a dinner and mention SL, also didn’t appear to be very thrilled with SL. The virtual bureau was something that happened once when two enthusiastic execs, Philip and a Reuters exec, met at one of those fancy tekkie conferences and yakked it up at the spur of the moment on a high of irrational exhuberence and likely other intoxicants, and then the staff had to follow through on the next day..and the day after…and then management got disinterested and they all wound it down. Happens all the time with management enthusiasms that staff don’t like.
4. Eric could have nevertheless turned this low-paying first-job-after-J-school into something more than he did. He was the most visible journalist in SL during the height of its hype season when everybody from CBS to Wired to CNN was covering it and in it. And all he could do was get a job at Silicon Alley? Well, I suppose any journalist these days, especially “print,” is facing very tough times.
5. Great job or no, Eric could have left gracefully, even though he didn’t leverage his position, but instead, he decided to try to buy himself more street cred with his snarky peers in the Gawker type set by being a douche. I am still trying to understand the animosity involved as nobody really did anything to harm Eric and he only thrived through SL and built his resume. What’s especially offensive of his critique is to make *us* seem like we are uncritical fanatic Kool-Aid drinking loons, when we are even more critical than Eric of LL and SL. In fact, Eric, as ultimately a Reuters suit, would wipe all our comments off the Reuters blog out of a sense of “corporate niceness” and solidarity with fellow corporate Linden Lab at some level.
6. Ian leaving IBM strikes me as in fact INDEED a signal from IBM that they are winding down all this virtual world sillyness and you have to expect that people like Eric will read that obvious signal even as IBM denies it. I think there are different factions at IBM. But it sounds like Eric simply didn’t research this story at all to cover his ass, i.e. by calling various insiders within…gasp…Second Life that he might have logged on to talk to.
I think for a time, IBM, like some goofy old dude of 78 marrying a 20-something to relive his youth and make sure he didn’t miss out on everything before he died, was chasing after SL because they thought it might be something like the PC they missed. They fooled around for a few years and then realized, oh, it’s not. Or at least, oh, it will take a lot more time and won’t be a mass market thing. So they began moving on. They are said to be more in opensim, where they can sandbox around and fool around with the software more than they can in SL. Zha’s interoperability experiment is going nowhere. Even the very big boosters of it in LL were given the brake while the entire thing underwent a very severe review by new management. New management is not interested in opensourcing the server code and interoperability is something they’ve only pursued with IBM…and it hasn’t happened for more than a year and…they’ve just outsourced the entire thing to MMOX where it will languish or bog down in committee. In part, it’s hard. It part they should NOT move to interoperability so casually as they will flush out all the content in SL to pirates. This is a huge battle and I think in part LL’s new alphabet suits pay attention to these concerns more than they did when Cory Linden decided it.
IBM may have some stake in *appearing* to look like they still support SL and still use it for meetings but they have definitely ratcheted down the enthusiasm. You will not see Zha racing on here to say the blog wasn’t updated because…because…”I had to go shopping!”
7. A story that I thought was utterly fake and concocted was the IBM “strike” which was merely the publicity stunt of some union in Italy or something deciding that they could really chafe IBM’s butt by going inside SL, which seemed to be an IBM darling at the time, and using it to strike — it was a stunt, a 3-day wonder that was not something “indigenous” to SL. Eric was right to give that story a pass — although if it had been me, I would have traced the entire fakeness to its roots — the one faction in Italy, the 3-day-olds, etc. and more to the point, I’d have interviewed some of those 200 IBMers we know are in SL who were *not* on strike and *didn’t even know about it*. Yeah, IBM’s a big place, but please…It was just some leftist fake people’s uprising shtick of the sort you see all the time and wasn’t something germane to SL per se other than that parcels were exploited in a publicity stunt.
I also want to set the record straight for both of these macho gonzo journos Hamlet and Eric.
A. I’m the one who broke the story about Copybot for the Herald. Hamlet hates me so much because of my valid and persistent criticism of him that he couldn’t even to my article that broke this story — linking instead to a later story by Pixeleen Mistral. I went on to cover many important stories about Copybot facing profound pressure from the Sheep and other vested parties of the sort Eric or Hamlet have never had to face because they never challenged the powers that be to the extent I have.
B. The Herald also broke the original story about Ginkos *years* before Eric got all exercised about it when Duranske put a bee in his bonnet, and massively.com/Tatero Nino also ran many stories on Ginkos before there even *was* a Reuters. At least he reserves his barb about coverage of “only hot men” for Hamlet — the rest of us were assiduously covering Ginko’s. I got some of the best live reporting from the floor of some of the “stock exchanges” and it was later picked up and used by mainstream media.
Eric could never understand my critique of Duranske as someone getting the story wrong for motivations that seemed to have everything to do with trying to make SL appear as a haven for crime and corruption that only his tribe of lawyers could protect the deluge of corporations from. As soon as Duranske figured out there were not going to be any big corporations requiring his services for these things and that the Lindens themselves dealt with crime and some of the corporations eased out, he went and got a real job.
Ultimately, Eric suffers from geek class warfare syndrome. He can’t seem to affirm the identity of his own tribe of geeks and elite cultural workers without putting down people of mass culture. Lots of people love dancing and cybersex in SL. It’s not for the urbane sophisticates of gawker.com So what? Leave them alone? I find it boring to dance most of the time too, but given how many other interesting things there are to do in SL, so what?
The snarky elitist geeky metrosexual sort of culture that Erik imbibed in school and regurgitates in his online tech gossip sheet now once seemed impervious and unstoppable. But with the Recession, they, too have gotten a slap in the face. Valleywag.com is going under. Even wire reporters are getting fired, along with print reporters. Journalists are going into government or non-profits where perhaps they always belonged.
Dusan, thank you for setting the record straight. So many misguided writings about our industry that are thrown out there into the mix so willy-nilly. You sir, are a God send.
Eric Krangel is well-known to spread misinformation about Second Life.
Also – since when protesters that don’t give their name to journalists are ‘wankers’? This is shameful, Krangel.
I really don’t understand why Eric has to be burned down here. He raises some valid points, though somewhat bitterly perhaps, but as observations & news they are worth mentioning and talking about, but you and Hamlet seem to be out to get ‘him’.
For example, IBM’s evangelists have become a lot more quiet everywhere. The ‘case study’ is far from conclusive ‘evidence’ IBM is still in SL at the same level they were 3/4 years ago. (The case study is shallow and quite frankly, a little bit of a joke – not unlike most things I’ve seen from IBM in the public space on virtual worlds: PPT’s on immersive presentation, the horrible presentation spaces in ActiveWorlds and the hilarious Lotus integration video just to name a few).
You don’t have to agree, but these are his observations, and they make a lot of sense to a lot of people (as well as SL being a niche product and ‘SL dancing is not for everyone’).
Maybe I read a lot of Erics findings and ‘frustrations’ in my own, which is why I am a little surprised to see the pitchforks here
[...] and he does himself no favours with credibility. After taking snipes at New World Notes in the comments of Dusan’s blog, I’m certainly left with no doubt at his lack of [...]
[...] and he does himself no favours with credibility. After taking snipes at New World Notes in the comments of Dusan’s blog, I’m certainly left with no doubt at his lack of [...]
[...] Britain, Journalism as Impressionism The UK Telegraph has picked up on the Eric Krangel “drying paint meme” and has declared Second Life “virtually over” in an article that is so weak and [...]
gee…sorry I missed this piece and related spew awhile back when all the venom was fresh. Sure seems like a lot to do about vested interests across all parties and very little about journalism. Meanwhile LL collects the monthly fees.
i remember reading Eric’s piece right after leaving SL, i even commented on his post because it was very unlike his previous reporting
he was venomous and recalcitrant in that post and seemed to have been clearly wronged in some fashion (in my opinion, he seemed to be responding like a hurt person)
well whatever put Eric off, i simply hope he finds balance and happiness, and that’s up to him =)