Tom Hale Presents at Web 2.0
Tom Hale, or T Linden in Second Life, recently presented at the Web 2.0 conference at which he proclaimed that while the hype cycle came and went, the world stayed, survived, and thrived. And it did so because of its ‘hardcore’ users who were there not for sex but for because they could connect and socialize with each other.
Now, I’ve seen Hale present a few times, including a keynote at the Second Life Community Convention at which he previewed the new SL client (which by all accounts is a game changer when it comes to advancing the interface for the world), mesh imports and other assorted goodies. Tom also talked about virtual goods during a Metanomics mixed reality event from the San Jose Virtual Goods conference where he spoke about the strength of the SL economy and his commitment to content protection (further steps about which have been taken with the coming crack-down on third-party viewers with their illegal copying tools).
And Tom strikes me as….well, as a grown-up. And as much as I love the Lindens, a lot of them seem like kids – which is either a sign of their enthusiasm for their work, their age, or most likely my own age as I continue my climb up into the anachronism of being an elder.
Tom has this sort of Silicon Valley-meets-Microsoft vibe about him, although his background is with Adobe which in many ways is far more masterful at packaging stuff up than our friendly pals who gave us Vista and Bing – but the Microsoft vibe has something to do with certainty verging on arrogance – a “Listen to me, I’ve been in the trenches, I know what I’m talking about, and I’m older and wiser than you” kind of thing.
So Tom took center stage at Web 2.0 and his presentation was picked up in running commentary at places like CNet which described him as scoffing (buahaha evil laugh) at critics:
“Tom Hale, chief product officer at “Second Life” manufacturer Linden Lab, essentially laughed in the face of critics by pulling out the numbers: the virtual world, which many in the mainstream press have long since written off as a haven for bizarro-world subcultures, expects to chalk up $500 million in user-to-user transactions this year and its membership recently reached 1 billion hours collectively spent “in-world.”"
Tom’s presentation seems to be part of a broader effort to redefine Second Life. The story arch seems to go something like this:
- Yeah, we know – there was tons of hype, and the hype was crazy, and the hype left, but we’re still here
- In fact, we’re still here in a significant way, and you should pay attention, because we’re doing millions in user transactions and billions in voice minutes and we have a massive user-generated platform
- And we’re here in a big way because, really, we’re social media. So if you love Facebook and Twitter, don’t forget to lump us in with those guys as well, because we’re not just social media, we’re PROFITABLE social media
Tom’s speech is probably the best I’ve yet seen from the Lab that puts its user statistics in a context that makes sense to the broader world. He doesn’t deny the fact that Second Life is populated primarily by hardcore users. He puts its ‘geek factor’ in context as well, reminding the audience that while the geeks make the world go around with their scripts and apps and content, the platform is 50% female, there are casual users, and those casual users buy things, socialize, and spend 25 of their 40 monthly hours talking and speaking (a billion hours of voice per month).
“So what’s the lesson there? You need a broad appeal. And how did WE get our broad appeal? Well, it turns out, we outsourced that. It was our content creators and our developers who built the broad appeal because there’s something in Second Life for everyone whether it’s one of the 250,000 items created each day or something from the existing corpus – 270 TERRABYTES of 3D objects, of textures, of scripts. The breadth and scale of this corpus means that if you want something whether it’s a car, or a blimp, or a parachute, or a dress, or a 747 (so you can pretend you’re a Google founder) it’s probably in Second Life. And that is a very sticky application.”
Now, as a resident, Tom doesn’t shed tons of new light on the world. But listening to him reminds me that the vision that the Lab has for the world is evolving: it’s less chaotic and messy and the story about it is more organized and contextual, less organic, less evolutionary. They are creating a storyline for how SL has changed, and they’re pitching that story to a much wider world: first the virtual good folks, and now the techy social media/Web 2.0 crowd, and next the enterprise crew with Nebraska.
But my question is: where’s the storyline headed? And Tom doesn’t have an answer:
“So where does it go? Well, I don’t have time for that, and we probably couldn’t even say for sure. Our communities, our developers, our content creators, our entrepreneurs – they will lead us there. But we do know that virtual worlds and Second Life are here to stay and that we’re laying the foundation for the future and the growth of the next wave of innovation when it hits.”
And there’s the rub, really: because until we hear that rallying cry – that map of possibilities, then Linden Lab’s storyline is only half done.
Glad he’s so hyped on all that content, because if his enthusiasm for religiously protecting IP rights persists, a lot of it will be gone.
That 747 he mentioned, for example, is now in violation of the XStreet branding policy…
Um. Maggie. They have no choice but to enforce copyrights and trademarks. You can’t just copy someone’s trademark in SL and think it’s ok. How hard is that to figure out?
The real issue is not that, the real issue is whether or not LL can keep original content created in-world from being stolen seven ways to Christmas so that it’s worth people trying to sell stuff, and so that the economy keeps going.
You go to OpenLife right now and you can see stolen stuff all over the grid. Stuff that was created in SL by someone other than whoever created it in OpenLife.
I think SL as “social media” is stretching the definition a bit far. If we *do* stretch it that far, then almost everything is technically social media within the compass.
Tateru – agreed…and I don’t think he actually said that, I was sort of putting words in his mouth, slightly sarcastically.
One thing that kind of bothers me is the geek vs. female thing…not sure why it didn’t occur to me before but he sort of implies “you may think we’re all geeks, but 50% of us are actually female” which implies that females are never geeks.
Ah well, I guess he made his larger point.
Yes. That’s just (sadly) insulting, and would earn a face-slap or mass walk-out in most company I know.
If you look up the Wikipedia article on “Social media,” you will get a definition, the history of the phrase, and a list of examples. Guess what? Second Life is in the list (and no, I didn’t put it there).
You shouldn’t be surprised. In SL, one can create media, share media with others, discuss it, create groups, and debate the merits of waffles while dancing in a forest.
Much like a loft, a warehouse, a public park or a coffee shop.
The whole notion of “social media” largely revolves around a misunderstanding about the nature of what is “social” as well as of what is “media”
Another aspect of social media is that it’s created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques, such as Internet-based tools. Most warehouses aren’t accessible or scalable in the way Second Life is.
Accessible: To access a warehouse, you have to go to the physical location of the warehouse, which is a lot less accessible than “you have to go anywhere with a power supply and a fast enough Internet connection (to access SL).”
Scalable: To expand a physical warehouse, you have to get materials, use time, energy, money and labor to build the new addition. You may also have to buy more real estate. To expand a similar SL-based project (e.g. a simulated art-exhibition warehouse), the costs are lower.
He forgot to tell the part about how virtual versions of things makes for a better world, beyond consumerism. I’m all for consumerism. I don’t turn up my nose at low culture and bling. But our Lindens have always been idealists who would say that they were, oh, helping the blind or “collaboration” or “innovation” or…something…when they talked about the virtual object stuff.
Not quite there yet.
What LL needs to solve is not the availability of user generated content, but the ability to rez and make use of it.
Ask anyone who has tried to decorate the house on their 1024m parcel how fast they run out of prims. Imagine how often they’ve seen the perfect dining room set, but realize that it won’t do because although it’s reasonably priced, they can’t even rez it. They lose, and the person selling it loses. LL loves to trot out those positive numbers, but 117 prims per 512m parcel is a pretty pathetic one.
I know Tom Hale was doing his job to win over some critics here, and it sounds like he did it well. But as a daily customer of SL, those numbers do little to cheer me up in light of the limitations that have have been in place for years, and have few if any resolutions on the horizon.
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