Philip Rosedale has stepped down from his position as interim CEO of Linden Lab effective immediately, In one of the more bizarre turn of events in what has already been a bizarre year for Linden Lab.
The announcement comes with a relatively terse post to the Second Life blog:
After about four months as interim CEO, working closely with Bob Komin, the management team, and the board, we’ve decided we are ready to start the search for a new CEO. I’ll be leaving day-to-day management of the company and continuing in my role on the board, including helping in the search to find a great CEO. I will also be continuing my work with my new company, LoveMachine. Bob will lead Linden Lab while we conduct the search. It’s been an intense few months of transition, and we all feel like we are in a better place now, with a clearer sense of direction and more focus, and are ready to bring someone new into the mix as a leader.
Will we see the “new Philip” on the Grid? Or is it all about the Love Machine now? (At least the glitter crotch will work)
There is clearly a backdrop to this story. What it is we might never know. Whether board pressure, the pressure of the job, or truly feeling that he put the Lab on the right course – any one of these reasons are currently speculative.
The executive suite has been a bit of a revolving door, however, and while he did this once (leaving as CEO before a new CEO was found) it strikes me as unusual to do it a second time.
Have they ever Googled “succession planning” over at the Lab?
First, Mark Kingdon was brought in to “scale” Second Life by making it more consumer friendly, by revamping the Web site and by doing all the stuff he did, most of which was aimed at making a more friendly experience for new users.
Bringing his background in interactive advertising to the position, Kingdon moved to a more “product-oriented” way of thinking about Second Life. Releases of new software or features were heavily covered by NDAs and then launched with press releases and attendant noise only to often fall flat once the initial splash died down.
Second Life Enterprise was launched with press, a launch event, promotional materials – and then wasn’t supported with a long-term marketing campaign or back-up.
Likewise the “easier” Second Life Viewer (2.0) was developed in secrecy, launched with fanfare, and then landed with a thud in the face of Resident and market indifference.
Under Kingdon, the Lab was confidently predicting 100,000 concurrency and monthly repeat usage that never materialized. In the absence of growth, the increase in staff and overhead wasn’t sustainable and layoffs followed, with Kingdon being the last to go.
Rosedale’s return to the Lab at the helm was heralded by those with an interest in Second Life as a sort of Second Coming. He promised a whole new level of transparency and a new way of operating, based primarily on things like agile software development.
So while, under Kingdon, the Lab was starting to look a lot more like Adobe or Apple (or dreamed it was looking a lot more like them anyways, with top secret launches of new features and the rest of it), Rosedale was promising it would look more like Google, with open systems and initiative at the front lines and a technology-focused operational slant.
But his departure is sudden and sharp. After unveiling his new avatar only days ago – part of his “I’m back and I’m engaged in the world” campaign, the announcement has the mark of either immediate burn-out from the position or some background pressure in the board room.
There will be ample speculation in the coming days, and the often invisible Bob Kormin (who famously came out of silence via Twitter) will have a firmer hand on the tiller while the new CEO search begins, but the move in the meantime is bound to cause more turmoil at a time when the Lab was starting to trend back to positive with an improving Viewer, infrastructure and the successful launch of the mesh open beta.
Hearing a louder patter of avatar feet heading over to Open Sim…
I don’t even know what to think anymore. This chaos and lack of communication and lack of promised transparency has been demoralizing. Do we even have a future? Should we even waste time caring about it?
When silence speaks, speculation reigns. So many people I know are rolling up their businesses, their projects, their sims. And it’s sad.
OpenSim is not the solution for most. It’s clunky, it’s often frustrating to build and script in. Second Life’s two killer apps are our inventory and our friends list. Without those two things, there’s not a lot of incentive to retreat to a buggier reverse-engineered environment. Sure, we can build on a 35000 prim estate sim for less than half the price. But without our virtual creature comforts and most of our friends.
yadda yadda, want the truth? ask actor ERIC STOLZ…lol he seems to be playing both Phillips new/ current “ex avatar CEO” as well as the ex/new/ex CEO of the VR company in “Caprica” on SyFy.
blame the taurans?..lol
Marx, you’re right when you say community and the content are SL’s strength.
In one thing i think LL is wrong, or headed into a wrong direction a few years ago: their hardware. Servers&networks.
LL invested lot in them to make SL fast and stable – and yes it is. But this made it also expensive.
Now OS comes and delivers what many people want: the option to own a server/sim for just a few dollars. Many don’t need a server that runs smoothly with 30-40 avatars. 10 friends to hang around with, plus the freedom to use this place for fun or even commercial.
My overall opinion: the server pricing will play a big role in the movement from SL to OS – and then the worthy community as well as the content will move.
LL’s future probably doesn’t lay in server rental, the server code or the web-protocol. I really wonder what future LL has *me looks sad*
For people who follow the current moves of LL, and for people who rely on SL as workspace to make their living it’s a tricky situation. They have not much that generates trust in SL…so they start spending time in worrying, searching alternatives or even starting to backup their stuff from SL.
Right now, Second Life is the driving force behind OpenSim. Organizations try it out, decide they like the platform, and if they need a cheaper alternative, or something they can run behind the firewall, or no age restrictions, or whatever, they can choose OpenSim.
Mesh support in particular is a God send — OpenSim developers rolled out mesh in OpenSim more than a year ago, but with little takeup, since it required a special viewer.
If Second Life forces everyone to switch to a mesh-capable viewer, then all the OpenSim grids will be able to roll out mesh. And the development of a mesh economy — mesh objects, mesh builds – will be good for enterprises as well. Sure, some OpenSim projects have million-dollars grants behind them, and can custom-design their environments, but most run on a shoestring, and having access to a robust economy of content is a wonderful thing.
– Maria
Breaking News! First new #LL CEO candidate identified! -> http://fwd4.me/iFv #InvestorLovemachineCertified #SL
I really wonder why everyone seems to be convinced that mesh imports are so GREAT. I only saw tons of ripped game models, ripped turbusquid stuff and only a few nice, but high end models (out of any hobbyist reach, of course) on the “successful” mesh beta so far. And tons of empty sandboxes. And viewer crashes.
There must have been much more trouble at the lab, some basical trouble, regarding the overall direction (if there ever was one apart from technical troubleshooting and collecting shamelssly overpriced fees from users). Or maybe Phil was only “installed” to flatten the highly profitable but not too liquid Linden seas which went pretty rough in July – and caused the Lindex to tremble in liquidity fear. Who knows?
In the end this action only proves one thing: If there is a company driven by public drama and non-transparency, then it is Linden Lab Inc.
Trustworthy? Not really. OpenSim will get another boost.
It strikes me it may be quite hard to find a CEO. Let’s see, we can offer you a board that won’t back you if the going turns rough and an ex-CEO who can step into your job at short notice.
I’m with your, Dusan, re: the new Philip w/glittering crotch. While everyone raved about the new look, which is a fine, updated version of his original avatar, it just didn’t seem to jive with me.
I was expecting a new persona to be unveiled, one that would be defining Second Life as a fresh, new brand; something completely different. However, this seems another chaotic attempt at identifying their identity: corporate w/display names, a new age technology company or the ‘back to the basics’ Second Life of 2005 (when I imagine there was a real bond between LL and the SL community).
If it can be just one tea leaf, it seems to be some bizarre motion of corporate to create a game of distraction, something they(?) thought the SL residents wanted, needed so we’d stay off their backs, perhaps? I’m going to toss you a contest so you can use SL to show us your creativity.(ack!’Let them eat cake!’)
However, if this is to serve as our connection to LL corporate,’our Philip’(if they think that’s what we need as consumers of their product) then that’s too bad. To me, Philip 2.0 looks like a fellow who just rides into town to eat at the local diner, maybe say a few words with the locals at the counter, and then gets on his bike and rides on out of town.
LL has some good cards to play: an economic environment, a transaction system based on a virtual currency, an age-verified management of virtual identities, the inventory system…
All these “core” business could be and should be their real mission, not selling lands or contents as they has so far tried to do (with some good results for them during the hypo-era, but with poorest achievements thereafter).
If they (or their new ownership) will be able to develop such skills into system standards SL will (probably) survive and (most interesting) virtual worlds as a whole will expand. Even thanks to the open community. Otherwise… well, think there is not any otherwise.
“LL has some good cards to play: an economic environment, a transaction system based on a virtual currency, an age-verified management of virtual identities, the inventory system…”
Sorry, but this is not the “core” business of LL. LL “core business” is selling server space for entertainment. They make at least 80 percent of their revenue by this.
The SL “economy” is none. It lacks almost everything an “economy” must have in order to be defined this way. This charicature of an economy only serves one cause: Feeding LL with enough cheap “user created content” to make SL more attractive to potential server space tenants – without any own investment in content creation. Even the “currency” is none, but a “token”, as stated in the ToS. And “age verification” and “virtual identities”? Oh Uh. The “inventory system” is based on a genius MySQL hack, but this does not make MySQL a better solution.
Linden Lab does not really have many cards to play as soon as the competition catches up and offers valid alternatives for less customer and expenses. And this happened over the past two years and will continue to happen in the future. It is the basical problem now, and obviously no one at Linden Lab can cope with it.
Unforgettable Quote:
“I didn´t see it coming!”
Sad….friends, lovers and companies that wake up in the morning smiling and then bend over and tie their shoe laces together. Thanks for the smile Philip, the hope and the promise. Go well.
@Marx Dudek
I think the most important thing about virtual worlds is not things. What’s most important are the people and their ability to create new things.
Yes, preexisting content is important. But content is always being created anew, and nature abhors a vacuum.
I´d go further. “Things” are of minor importance. So is an “economy”. What really matters it what people create on a social and community world level. This is the real quality a VR can contribute to the “real world”, not meshes or prims or whatever. “Things” can only be supportive.
I disagree, the economy is vital, and so are all the options in that economy. Without that, you just have Open Sim
“But content is always being created anew, and nature abhors a vacuum.”
uh,, this ISNT NATURE. its mediation..and we only have oursleves to blame.
the network/web2.0 mediation is all about “transfer” not value. and until the metaevangelists mature enough to realize this, the machine that feeds on us, will just be built again.
and youll all be sinking your efforts into the next green misty mars thats not a community or communications platform, but only a single bank account attached to a c corp from a valley based on talking about “transparency” while cloaked in gag orders…
and selling a machine that IS designed to make exceptional humans, less.
almost destroyed mesh (almost cancelled it all together, fired 1/2 the team working on it, moved 1/2 of what was left on to other projects, froze progress on it for at least 2 months)
destroyed teen grid
removed educational pricing on sims
destroyed search
ruined the marketplace
fired off the most productive members of his staff
destroyed customer support (sure, letting go of some call center people made sense, but concierge and those who respond to support tickets are almost completely useless now)
I can’t think of a single productive / positive thing he did
is anyone going to miss him?
I´ll miss the Phil Linden who made his brilliant vision come true. I´ll not miss the Phil Linden who let his vision become a playground for greed and stupidity.
Hi Dusan. It is always nice to read you.
All of those changes are showing either lack of professionnalism, lack of strategy, or total despair… and suicide at the end… or something that looks like it. I have been out of the world for the past month, totally disgusted by the lately sudden backward on SLE and the troubles Linden Lab communicates to us with their inability to answer us about business matters with big established clients (just an answer is a problem…)
I always felt Philip had come back because he had no choice in some way, but not with his guts. Maybe he needed more time away from his big monster machine, more time to accomplish something new and then come back with new energy and desire. Once I heard Steve Jobs talking about the time he was away from Apple, creating Next and Pixar and explaining that was the biggest luck for him and Apple, because this time, fired from his own company, gave him a lot of opportunity to think and time to breathe ….
Anyway, Philip re-entered as a Jack in the Box. What could he tell us ? I am re-entering to stop the hemorrhage, the decrease of the community and to prepare the company for an acquisition…. Well, maybe this is what he wanted to say by giving us the image of a nice future for Second Life with mesh, mobility, light viewer and consumer focus…
Now Philip seems to send this post as if he would slam a door… You are right when you say you only sell a company when it is high. But maybe it is better to sell it when it is worth a little, than when it worth nothing at all. The rythm of the evolution of the Lab is too slow compared to what is going on outside with video games, alternative browser-based enterprise solutions, social networks, mobile communities, and IT in general.
Sure, it is a complicated challenge and that challenge needs a lot of money to move on. Second Life worth the price of its technology without its community. And its community is tired…. like Philip seems to be.
What will be will be. Let’s wait & see…