Mark Kingdon has departed Linden Lab and Philip Rosedale has returned to take on the role of interim CEO, according to an official release by the company.
Linden Lab®, creator of 3D virtual world Second Life®, announced today that company founder Philip Rosedale has been named interim CEO, and CFO Bob Komin has assumed the additional role of COO. Linden Lab also announced that Mark Kingdon is stepping down as CEO.
“On behalf of the board, I thank Mark for all of his contributions during his tenure with Linden Lab which include growing our user base and revenue, increasing the stability of the platform, and nurturing and helping build a world class team,” said Rosedale, who will continue to serve on Linden Lab’s board of directors.
Kingdon, who joined Linden Lab following a previous post at interactive agency Organic, was charged with ending Second Life’s “frontier days” and bringing the platform to the masses. Under his watch, significant hiring and product development saw its most visible results in a new Web site, buy-out of XStreet and OnRez, orientation experience, and “viewer”, while behind the scenes work was done on stability and a host of other issues.
Still in the pipeline are projects such as mesh imports, a new Second Life Marketplace, integration with Avatars United and other projects.
But Mark’s work wasn’t enough to see the anticipated increase in new users. Predicting that the Lab would break 100,000 concurrency, Linden Lab has instead seen a new viewer that was met with resistance by the current user community while efforts to attract new users seemed to fall flat.
In announcing the retraction of the hiring of 100s of people under Mark’s watch through lay-offs, he positioned the changes as a way to focus on things that matter to both Residents and to the larger goal of bringing Second Life to a larger user base. This plan was implicitly endorsed by Philip Rosedale during a recent speech to Second Life Residents.
Update:
Philip addressed the change on the Second Life Web site with a message to Residents:
Mark Kingdon is going to step down as CEO, and I am going to return as interim CEO, working side-by-side with former CFO Bob Komin, who is being promoted to COO.
This is a big, tough change but one the board of directors and management team deeply believes in. We owe Mark great thanks for the many things we’ve accomplished in these last two years — most notably a great improvement in the stability of Second Life, and also the hiring and nurturing of a strong team of new leaders who are now ready to do some amazing work together.
Philip emphasized a product and technology focus as keys to the success going forward.
[...] Philip Rosedale: Mark Kingdon is going to step down as CEO [of Linden Lab], I am going to return; http://j.mp/aM549Z [...]
That is usually the way these things go. Let the top man do the dirty work of laying off people (his fault they needed to be let go anyway), then let him go. I hope we see Cory back soon!
[...] also Dusan Writer about the developments at Linden [...]
its sad. they dont want to run a business. they want to run a cult.
one day realtime 3d media wont “look shiny” and folks will see it as plain as paper.
until that day we’ll have emporers and tiny dictators rising and falling on mob sourcing ways.
youd think we’d learn something from 5k years of human societies and interactions.
Binary wins again… like all modern discourse, there’s no middle ground, only left or right.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Dusan Writer, Dusan Writer, rivenhomewood, Doubledown Tandino, Valery Levacher and others. Valery Levacher said: RT @Dusanwriter: Posted Mark Kingdon Leaves Linden Lab: Philip Steps in (Updated): Mark Kingdon has departed Linden… http://bit.ly/aiMp5Z [...]
Well, cube 3 has said his usual thing here, but this time uncommonly clearly and in ways that we can really understand, clear as a bell.
I think this is an AWFULLY thin post from a blogger with a business in SL who thought so much of redoing the viewer that he had a contest for it himself and paid a lot of real money to the winner to make a new one — that had features of what viewer 2 has.
Who was really enthusiastic about Viewer 2 in ways that none of us were.
I have to say even I’m shocked that the awfulness of Viewer 2 — awful in 100 ways as anti-people and stupid and wasteful — would lead to actual firings and course changes and upset at the Lab, instead of leading to what these things have always led to all these years — upset for us.
So I’d like more analysis from Mr. Writer here.
Viewer 2 is not that bad. I’d rather use it than 1.whatever. I realize I’m one of about ten people who feel that way. Nevertheless, not all the firings at LL had to do with the viewer, you don’t fire Q&A and experienced support people because someone else designed a client that no one likes. But they did have to do with everyone at LL who wasn’t onboard with the new panic button approach of SL in a browser, or they wouldn’t be deemed required by that new approach.
c3 is right about one thing, and that’s the binary thing. only it apparently applies to the citizens of SL, because I sure don’t see a lot of middle of the road attitudes in SL. Sometimes I think SL is primal therapy for people who are too old to enjoy normal computer gaming.
Ok…A lot of us got what we wished for, myself included. Let’s see if we end up with what we wanted.
I have hope.
The Messiah returns to save us all… Happy Happy Joy Joy! LOL!! same problems, same policies, same situation with tier fee manipulation(33.3% min. business advantage must be nice) in favor of oldies and large estates. Absolutely nothing has changed and never will. It’s still the same team running the same tired playbook. The personality cult that has been built up around Phil and the Lindens is really twisted. Very North Koreanish… LOL!!!
_~~~
Mark was never running the show. Neither was Philip once the VC dollars started coming in. Nor is he, now that he’s back as a temporary figurehead.
Second Guard: Who are the Puppet Masters?
http://blog.vrhacks.net/?p=229
After reading a lot of comments, feedback posts and concludes that:
The platform was following a path unclear (without much basis and not as visionary in the eyes of others) without a real focus on residents. Philip Linden back with the focus on Second Life Resident after all only and is not only a consumer market(even if the consumer market is inevitable for maintain the platform working and grow). Let’s see some small (large) things that I’m remembering now, obviously the 3D platform of Second Life is not cheap to keep, the business has to keep for itself and grow in many ways, we wouldn’t expect less than that. In fact, I don’t remember all the controversy and complaints, M Linden took a year(two?) to experience the thought LL corporations wanted but could not deliver what the focus really wanted (I guess he forgot to focus companies and residents), and this resulted in massive lay-offs and a focus back on real Today, at a huge expense. Hopefully, now he has set a new goal for LL – do resident happy again – he learned his lesson and starts to move towards implementing what “we” want (I mean LL, residents and companies as potential big costumers), not what LL thinks “we” want.
In fact everyone feel that the big change in Second Life should be done also with the contribution of the residents themselves (they do not hinder and assist and support the platform where they can give their opinions, however ridiculous it may be, after all the residents are the true creators of content as well as foreign companies are big breadwinners). This was not the original idea behind the Second Life and had a profound change when it was M. Linden CEO in the chair. Many of us feel that M. Linden was operating at self mode, having a vision, but ignoring some warning signs of residents and the actual outcome of the markets (we can´t claim we won when our troops to dies massively on the battlefield – stupid comparison but makes some sense ).
Perhaps the great wave of protest came when the grid still needs improvements, the new viewer 2.0 (#fail as you know) (needs to be redesigned and re-released as a truly innovative product that is truly easy and productive for those who use it).
Of course this last minute change of not foresee what still lies ahead with the new (?) Chair man (CEO). But in fact it is refreshing and gives up thinking that the time that Philip Linden was away from the leadership may have been a period of reflection and truly innovative new ideas. And it reappears with exciting new features, such as focus, “Attack of the problems” in several parts, new and fresh ideas, perhaps without much speculation a new way of approaching a new life to Second Life, making it even just a new attempt approaching the SL and its major competitors. Regarding the lay-off, this was just an accident that could be easily (?) Passed with a leader supported by his followers.
From everything you want is that I caught the old feelings that prevails is this, get ready, comes within the brief seven Havok physics – maybe my post was this a way to provoke the desire to achieve such massive physics http://yourmachinima.com/?p=1257 | Enhancement SL Marketplace (company helps residents spread brands?) | consolidation of LL employees (cost efficiency of the company), mesh, web access to the platform without client viewer. Solving old problems with new support system (Hey it was Mark who did, after all it was not all that bad, right?) (I’m only talking….)
Only time will tell, until then a feeling of welcome. Incidentally I hope the blogosphere does not make this task difficult for Philip a complication in the midst of speculation, let’s wait and see the “ball rolling” or maybe a “rolling restart”.
sorry the copy past from my post, but it’s to transmit the positive side of this new change of perspective.