The efforts of Linden Lab to review their newcomers policy + the new viewer + the new affiliation program should give fruits and we can hope to be passing the 100 000 accounts online simultaneously on a regular basis…. (is 25% increasing too optimistic or too pessimistic …)

Second point I would add is the improvement of the image of SL in Europe, – the new change of PR agency and the presence of Linden Lab in Amsterdam should start to operate as a positive effect here…

Predictions or wishes, depends on how you take it

dont expect most tech geeks to pay for much art beyond a “pop” painting of Darth Vader. unlicensed of course.:)

Im speaking as the scifi con goes on in SL…. who pays? who sponsored? Linden’s a sponsor —- so we all sell our 2 dollar galactica costumes….make unlicensed pennies, and Linden cashes in 10 percent of it all….

this too shall pass… but google warehouse is NOT the answer…only a new overlord who will make blilions to Lindens Millions…

why?

ill be suprised if Creation inc. dosent make a move in a year…

anyhow.

So there is a certain inevitability in this: content creators will, at some point, have to stop selling their content online, since it’s pointless to ‘protect’ it. They might just offer some of it for free as a way to grab attention to the quality of their work and hope against hope to get hired to do some real work for people willing to pay them for their extraordinary services — just like, say, photographers do (and musicians slowly do the same, of course).

Or, well, they’ll stick to Second Life — where at least Linden Lab promises to guarantee that content creators will always have their rights protected, even though the actual enforcement is lagging behind their goodwill in doing so.

Mo, you might actually find it interesting that a lot of predictions around the 2D world (as opposed to 3D) were centred around “premium content on the Web”. The idea is that some people at least are willing to pay — very little, e.g. micropayments — for content that is guaranteed to be of high quality and delivered flawlessly to your computer. Apple’s iTunes and all the competing websites (including Magnatunes, eMusic, and their ilk) certainly pushed very strongly into that direction. The idea that quality content is worth a few US$ at the least, and that you can leverage on the Long Tail to make a living of it, is coming back.

And why shouldn’t it? Special talent is required to be a good content creator, as well as years of experience, most of them struggling to learn complex tools. If there is no way of actually make a living out of that knowledge, talent, and experience, and all you can hope for is having a lot of page views on the website where you put it for sale (eventually being allowed to place a few ads there — until someone just moves your content to an ad-free content archive, of course), why should people take up digital content creation as a career?

Even artists need to pay for their food Unless, of course, we set up a different model, where artists are sponsored by patrons, like during the Renaissance… the question is just if there are enough patrons to support the sheer amount of very creative and talented artists out there

Is there anyone interested in setting up a Foundation for Free Digital Content so that digital content artists could get a grant to be able to buy food and pay their bills while we enjoy their content for free? We might ask Gates if he’s willing to sponsor that Well… perhaps Paul Allen would be easier to approach…

This decade will certainly be interesting to watch.

i suggest this read when it ships next week or so.

nothing SL offered was new… it was just new for you.;)

lessons learned for 2 decades…and this is the message FROM a content maker, not a “platform” services mouthpiece.:)

http://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Not-Gadget-Manifesto/dp/0307269647/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261538182&sr=8-1

“…more and more of the economy of 3D content that is bought and sold in-world in SecondLife will ultimately move to the real-world economy…”

Still all this IP concern is really going to slow that down. People really care about 3D content IP, more than they ever did about web stuff. Perhaps this is because the 3D internet is emerging from Second Life where paying for content was promoted from the start, unlike the dawn of the web.

Still you just can’t easily secure 3D content for multiple-platform usage in a single format. To the chagrin and alarm of a lot of content developers, my bet is that 3D will go the way of web resource (HTML, XML, JPG, MP3, FLASH, MOV, PDF) files now. 3D files formats (like COLLADA) will get thrown around just like any other internet files. It is just a matter of time, network computing power, and overcoming (or bulldozing) IP concerns.

And this isn’t interopability ~ far from it.

This is exclusivity, recognised and dealt with in a manner that suits both content creators and consumers.

It’s also a huge shot in the arm for anyone else wanting to design a platform. Stick to standards, respect IP, have modern graphics, don’t compete with your customers ~ do the things a platform *should* do ~ and customers will flock to your shores, bringing their favourite stuff in with them.

To be strictly fair, platform independent markets for assets have existed for years already. Only now, however, are online virtual worlds really beginning to take significant advantage of it.

Example:

http://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/c4d-victorian-house/332685

Now, that won’t be an ideal drop~in to most worlds, but it’s not far off the mark, either.

This general market, and the virtual worlds market, are going to collide hard and fast in 2010.

SL will give the option to import mesh (for a fee of course, as a sort of counter-balance to the in-world economy), and once in the SL domain I’d hope that their content protection road map will keep getting further along in reinforcing C/M/T and killing copybots. If a content creator wants to then bring that same content into other IP regimes, on OpenSim say or Blue Mars, then they can, and that’s great for them, and we can stop hearing whines about lack of interoperability or back-up facilities which people use to justify copybot as if it’s some kind of GIFT to content creation.

I’m not arguing for interoperability here – maybe Desmond is, but I’m not. But I do see the possibility that NEW content creators will want to give SL a try because they can pull in stuff they made as a fun project in Blender, only to realize that once they’re in SL there’s a community here, and a different way of thinking about how stuff gets created in a collaborative space.

I think the notion that there will be people creating one set of files to be downloadable into any world is a geek affectation, and of course, accompanied by a lot of zealous greed at the idea that it will make money. But it will remain very much a boutique niche. Most people don’t want to trek to all kinds of worlds. They get rooted in one or two. These other worlds appearing are so free of comfort levels and normalcy still that the idea of paying more for a table just so it can download into two worlds at much is a long shot.

Dusan, geeks always rave and rhapsodize about Google Sketch-up and the 3D warehouse. But…have you actually ever sat in a world with its categories and tried to upload stuff into your world? I did with Metaplace, and as I can’t say enough: it looked like ass. Not because MP was 2.D, but because stuff that is just randomly taken from wherever just never fits. It’s not integrated. It isn’t designed in a context.

Try to realize that the pretty scenes on Deviant art then have to be lived in, put with other furniture and prefabs, etc. and it just doesn’t mesh.

Even if you are seeing some duplicate item going to OpenSim somehow, it’s a niche.

And mind you, I’m not saying this due to FUD, curmudgeon status or ignorance. I’m an avid supporter of capitalism, which doesn’t do well with protectionism and which likes the free flow of goods, people, ideas, money across frontiers with as little friction as possible — globalization, remember?

BUT, those things work when there is INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS AND PRIVATE PROPERTY PROTECTION. Nobody is going to invest time and money in development in the current ripping climate. Economies and property law have to be wired down first.

This topic of the open metaverse market is going to animate the geeks and some creators endlessly, but the reality is, until you can get better world integrity, and an interoperability that respects economies and property rights, you will not have these freedoms that the technocommunisms dream of by expropriating from the expropriators.