Open Life

I visited the Open Life Grid for a few hours the other evening. My understanding, thus far, is that it being developed by company called 3DX using the open source version of Second Life. This isn't much to go on, but I have just begun to look at it. Open Life has its own down loadable client which is very similar to the Second Life client. I haven't yet tried to log in using the SL Client. There are some small differences, but if you are familiar with Second Life you come up to speed very quickly. Although one cannot help but see the similarities between Second Life and Open Life, there are three glaring differences.

First, the software still needs quite a bit of work. Many of the little glitches that seem to have been fixed in Second Life are still glitches in Open Life. The search does not work well. Your avatar will experience numerous agonies from ruthing to yoga. You will experience hard crashes. And simple things like joining groups or adding friends still seems to be in development.

Second, there do not seem to be nearly so many dedicated residents. When I first went to Second Life in the Fall of 2006, there was a fully developed world with much to see, much to do and much to buy. Open Life offers a few token freebies. Some additional freebies are available from a vendor who gave it a try and is letting the lease run out. But, finding places to go and items for your avatar is a challenge.

And third, their business model does not seem to be fully thought out as yet. My avatar did not have any money and it was unclear how I might get some. On the other hand there was not a great deal to buy. I am not sure what the business model is for Open Life, and it appears as thought they do not know either.

I am glad to see some competition for Second Life as it has always been my contention that they fail to exploit their potential. And yet, this competitor makes me appreciate what Linden Labs has done. They clearly have some good technical people under girding their abundant social people. If only they would get some business people in there.

I realize that it is early in the development and don't want to be too harsh too soon. But, I have to admit that for all my complaining about Second Life, I do appreciate it a bit more now that I have seen what a not ready for prime time version looks like.

Some Competition

I have to admit that the progress of virtual world technology has fallen short of my expectations. However, there are two promising factors that cannot be ignored. First, those familiar with virtual world technology still see it as having enormous potential despite the ups and downs of the hype cycle, while those unfamiliar with it still wish it would go away. Second, we are beginning to see some competition which means that developers other than Linden Labs are willing to invest in it. I would like to focus on that competition in this post and in the next few to follow.

I have discovered three which I will explore in more detail over the next few weeks. These are OpenLife, SciSim, and Blue Mars.

I don't know a great deal about any of these competitors, although I do hope to learn much more. OpenLife and SciSim seem to be based on the open source versions of Second Life. Blue Mars seems to be based on video game technology. I think this is a promising sign and look forward to the next few weeks of checking these worlds out.

Looking Back

I started this blog a year ago next Tuesday. I have fallen into the pattern of adding entries each Tuesday so this entry represents one full year. Looking back over the past year, I have to say that I highly recommend blogging to anyone as a form of writing exercise, intellectual engagement, and self expression. When you have a blog, even a weekly blog such as this one, it forces you to think more critically about things as you attempt to formulate ideas for the next entry. It forces you to stay engaged whereas most people tend to drift quite a bit in their interests. And it forces you to stay on top of things. This is all good and good for you. In addition, if somebody actually reads your blog, you get the added advantage of having communicated your ideas. I have referred people many times to something I wrote in this blog when I just didn't have time at the moment to explain something in more detail to them.

At the same time, you have be honest in your introspection about whether the time you invest into your various activities is really worth it. And I have decided that this blog is probably not worth continuing. Part of this is my fault. I have to admit that I went a little crazy when I started blogging and started more blogs than I reasonably could handle. I have two others that seem to be making a little more progress so I really should focus on them. In addition, the focus of this blog, Second Life, seems to be pretty much in a steady state leaving little to comment upon. It is a land of great potential waiting to be exploited. I hope the old expression "it has a lot of potential and always will" does not apply. I hope the potential does get exploited. And I think it will. But, this will happen in its own time and regardless of whether or not I chronicle the action. So, with that, I am signing off.

A Parallel with AOL

In the early 1990's there was an Internet company called America Online. It is still around, but far fewer people have heard of it today because it has slipped, unceremoniously, into obscurity. America Online (or AOL for short) provided a custom Internet experience for users before web technologies became commonplace. However, when web technologies became common place, they slipped quietly into the mist of the history of the Internet. There are a number of reasons why this occurred, not the least of which was an unfortunate merger with Time Warner, Inc. However, I would like to focus on two specific elements.

First, they built their business on a propriety layer of Internet technology. When open source Internet technologies became available they were hit by a double whammy. They had to advance their proprietary layer in attempts to keep up a rapidly evolving technology rather than assuming the technology and building on top of it. I think it was Fred Brooks who said that we have to learn how to stand on each other's shoulders in this field rather than stepping on each other's toes. It was good advice then. It is good advice now. And it will probably always be good advice. The other part of the propriety whammy is that developers are generally not interested in relying on a propriety infrastructure for their applications. So, not only did the infrastructure move in a different direction, it took the applications with it.

The second element in their flawed strategy was a focus on the social aspects of the technology rather than the business aspects. AOL provided email, chat rooms, groups, and all sorts of features to enhance the social experience. At the same time, they virtually ignored the business aspects such as online transaction support, group decision support, distance education or any number of other business applications. So, when the fickle social crowd drifted off to their next thrill, AOL was left holding an empty bag.

I say this because I see strong parallels between the AOL strategy and the strategy of Linden Labs for Second Life. In the early 1990's AOL was the Internet force to be reckoned with. A decade later most had forgotten its name. In 2006, Second Life was the emerging name to be reckoned with. I wonder what its status will be in 2016.

A World Created Entirely By Its Residents

Imagine a restaurant that advertised meals cooked exclusively by its customers. Would you go there to experience fine dining? Probably not. In fact, we have a name for this sort of dining experience. We call it a pot luck dinner. Pot luck dinners are not without merit. They provide a social experience. There is usually plenty of food. And the food is generally tasty and filling (meaning high in salt and fat). And people enjoy pot luck dinners, as long as they don't go very often. The problem with pot luck dinners is that ordinary people create relatively ordinary food. If you are going to go to the trouble of getting dressed up and go out, you really would like to experience something extraordinary. You would like food created, not by your neighbor who clips coupons, but by a chef.

Consider another, parallel, example. What if a Hollywood movie studio boasted that its line of movies was entirely made up of home movies. Last year's big success was Sally's Surprise Party and this year they are betting on The Travails of the Bar Mitzvah Band. Would you expect this studio to produce classics of the caliber of The Godfather, Jaws, The Terminator, or Fargo? Probably not. There are television shows that rely entirely on home movies and they are fun to watch. They are the pot luck dinner of the movie industry. But, their cultural contributions are nil. And their enduring value is nonexistent. If you want to see a movie of enduring value, you have to see one that is produced by professionals.

Now imagine a virtual world created entirely by its residents. Oh, wait, we don't have to imagine that. It is Second Life. And while the residents of Second Life do come up with some interesting things, they are the virtual world equivalent of Aunt Betty's creamed tuna over noodles. No matter how good that creamed tuna may be, you get to a point where you can't stand it any more.

I suspect this is the reason why the retention rate is so poor. And yet LL continues to redesign the orientation islands and reorganize the volunteer groups. What is that old line about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?

The Tragic Flaw

In another two months, I will mark my third anniversary in Second Life. Reflecting on my experiences over those three years, I wonder how I could have been so far off on my expectations of this wonderful technology. In that time, Second Life has added voice which is good. It has banned gambling which was probably not good as it caused land prices to tank. It is moving adult content to a new continent which is a good idea although handled somewhat poorly. And it has open sourced the technology which is good because it takes control of the technology out of the hands of Linden Labs who do not seem to have the foggiest idea what they are doing and into the hands of people who may know how to exploit it. But, overall, this is meager progress at best.

For their part, Linden Labs has sold a lot of virtual real estate; infuriated a lot of their customers; and dashed the dreams of countless people who saw potential in the technology but failed to achieve that potential for any number of problems most of which can be traced back to poor management on the part of Linden Labs.

Also, during that time, reliability has improved only slightly; lag still persists; inventory still gets lost; and LL seems totally unequal to the task of controlling griefers. In more paranoid moments I have even considered the possibility that the griefers may actually work for Linden Labs. They seem to have free run of the place and perhaps LL sees greifing as a bonding experience for residents. Who knows?

For all my hopes, its seems like the future of Linden Labs is to keep the grid and servers running and to keep adding virtual real estate. All my expectations for future applications in education, commerce, tourism, event management and so on seem to be failing to materialize.

Ignoring the myriad of little problems and attempting to get to the heart of the matter, I realized that the fatal flaw in the Second Life strategy lies in the claim that Second Life is a virtual world created by the residents. This was the BIG mistake. And lest I ramble on too long in this post, I will pick of this thread next time.

Are They Neurotic?

Many years back I saw a show on television about pet store practices and how animal were mistreated. One of the specialists being interviewed said that you could tell how adverse the circumstances were for the animals becasue they developed neurotic behaviors. How can you tell an animal is neurotic? - I wondered. And they answered the question as soon as it popped into my mind. Pointless, repetitive, ritualized behaviors that do not produce a desried result are, according to this show, neurotic behaviors. Well, I thought, then who is not neurotic?

This seems to apply a lot more often than it should to people in corporate settings who attend meetings, fill out status sheets, and have ritualized discussions with their peers, but who do not actually achieve any desirable results. It also occured to me that it was a good description of Linden Lab's product strategy.

LL seems to be stuck in a rut of neurotic behaviors. They revise the website. They redesign the orientation islands. They reoroganize the volunteers. Nothing changes. So, they revise the website. They redesign the orientation islands. And they reorganize the volunteers. Once again, nothign changes. So, I have to ask - Are They Neurotic?

This is Going to Take Longer Than I Thought

In another couple of months, I will reach my third anniversary of working with Second Life. My 'rez day' as they call it, was November 3, 2006. I have to say that I thought a whole lot more would have happened by now. I am, at once, still optimistic and disappointed. I am optimistic because I think this technology has enormous potential that has yet to be exploited but will be. I am disappointed because I think that a major reason why this has not gone further is a complete lack of vision on the part of Linden Labs. Despite the endless complaints about lag, reliability, griefers, and such, I think they do a reasonably good job at the operation level. I think that any operational deficiencies could easily be cured if they were to charge a small fee for membership and use that money to shore up operations.

However, at the tactical and strategic levels they seem to be completely unequal to the task of launching this technology. They have a gold mine here and they are sending people in to mine the gold with plastic spoons. They hire people who know how to use plastic spoons and their research agenda is consumed with finding better quality plastic spoons.

I still plan to use Second Life in the classroom as I think it has a great deal to offer in helping students to envision the new world of computer applications that is slowly coming about. I also plan to continue promoting the use of Second Life in educational applications as I think its potential has only just begun to be exploited.

However, as the academic year begins and I have to decide where to invest my limited time (especially my limited writing time), it does not seem worth it to try to write a weekly blog on Second Life. Consequently, I will step back a bit and write only when I feel I have something important to say. This is going to take a while and if I am going to be in it for the duration, I will have to pace myself.

Retention and the Learning Curve

Two recurring problems that Linden Labs faces with users of Second Life are retention and the learning curve. And, of course, these two problems are not unrelated.

I don't have up to the minute figures handy, but the last time I did the analysis, the percentage of accounts that logged in during the last 30 days was in the single digits. This is not good news for Second Life. It means, on the face of it, that of the millions of people who have tried it, only a few hundred thousand have found it worth while to continue on a regular basis.

There are some mitigating factors to consider, although they don't mitigate much. First, a lot of people create an account just so they can say that they checked out Second Life even though they may have had no intention of staying. Second, most die hard Second Life residents have multiple accounts, called alts. Some will create an alt, use it for a while, and then create a new one to have a fresh start. So, the number of accounts does not reflect the number of real and active users.

The number batted around for Second Life accounts which is in the 15 million range is not a hard number for active users. If I had to guess, (and this is only a guess), I would put the number of warm bodies at the keyboard closer to 3 million with only a few hundred thousand warm bodies logging in on a regular basis. At some point I will analyze the numbers again and try to provide some better data. However, I don't think these guesses are too far off.

Why is this amazing technology so under utilized? And why is the retention rate so poor? Well, there are a number of answers to those question but the one I started this post with is the learning curve. Others include the lack of structure and the failure of most people to realize the potential of this technology. But, I can only take on a piece of this at a time.

Linden Labs has tried several attempts to address the learning curve problem by developing multiple varieties of Orientation Island. However, these efforts are all misguided. It is like saying "People don't seem to like my mulligan stew. So, I tried mulligan stew with oregano. Then I tried mulligan stew with cumin. Then I tried mulligan stew with curry. Nothing seems to work." Maybe the problem is that you don't know how to make mulligan stew.

As I have said before, I think Linden Labs should take a page from the playbook of video game designers and develop quests. I think quest based learning is one possible solution to both the learning curve and retention problems. I am beginning to develop some learning quests at Cosmos Academy and I will explain it further in the next post.

Time Out to Bitch

I get very frustrated at times because I see so much potential in this technology and Linden Labs seems so unequal to the task of exploiting it. Recently, it appears, they have begun a new policy regarding adult content. I say 'it appears' because I've had to piece this together from conversations that I've had with various people and note cards I've collected from unhappy vendors. I'm sure they would say, "well the policy was stated in..." some unclear statement on some obscure page on some obscured blog or forum. If I wanted to get clarification of the policy the chances of talking to a live human are so infinitesimally small that it would not be worth the bother. So, I have to go with what I have garnered.

Apparently, adult content is being moved to a separate area. This is a good idea. I wrote earlier about the need for zoning and this seems to be a step in that direction. And they are requiring age verification for people to visit those areas. This also seems like a good idea on the face of it. It will help ensure that minors are not exposed to adult content. But, when you think about it, the logic quickly begins to unravel.

First of all, minors have access to adult content all over the web already. So, the notion that protecting minors from exposure to these things is a red herring. Second, people who have fantasies involving adult content are the most likely to want to protect their anonymity. So, a lot of these people will be scared away by age verification. The claim is that age verification is anonymous and it may well be. But, people who are doing odd things anonymously in Second Life are not going to want to take the chance. So, this move will have a chilling effect on the red light districts of Second Life.

Some may feel this is a good thing and others may feel differently. I am not here to judge the morality of it. I am only commenting on the business strategy. A while back they banned gambling which seemed to have a serious impact on land prices. I suspect that age verification will have a similar negatvie economic impact.

I have also written in previous posts about the problem of anonymity. People who are in Second Life to conduct real business want to know who they are dealing with. This was part of the zoning discussion. So, I support user authentication.

However, the current policy, as I understand it, will require a measure of authentication from those most likely to desire anonymity and require no authentication whatsoever from those who would most likely benefit from it. So, the current policy seems to achieve exactly the opposite of what they would want to achieve.

I am reminded of a comment once made by ex president Lyndon Johnson. I believe he was talking about the UN when he said "these guys couldn't pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel." This quote comes back with a special resonnance every time I hear about another business decision from Linden Labs.

Trying on clothes, Virtually

One of the problems with niche marketing of clothing is knowing what measurements to produce clothes for. The standard sizes that we currently have represent averages that fit some people better than others. If you wanted your clothes to fit perfectly, you would have to have them custom made which would be very expensive. Or would it.

Imagine that you have an avatar that actually corresponds to your measurements. This may not be ideal for a fantasy life but it is ideal for clothes shopping in a virtual world. Let's push this just a bit and say that you have multiple avatar that reflect your usual weight gains and losses throughout the year.

So you decide to go clothes shopping in a virtual world. First, you step on the scale to get your current weight. And then you select the avatar developed for that weight. As you look at items in the store, you select ones that you like and have them put on your avatar. This provides several benefits over our current ways of shopping.

First, you cans see how this particular items looks on you. Not every item will look as good on each body type. Second, you can try the item in different colors and fabrics to see which one works best for you. Third, you can look at yourself from all angles without having to crane your neck as you would in a store with those full length mirrors. Fourth, you can see how this new items goes with things you already have. Say it is a new jacket and you wonder if it will go with some slacks you already have. Well, just put the virtual copy of those slacks on your avatar and you can easily see. Fifth, you can get the opinion of friends. Have a friend teleport to the store and have a look. Maybe you thought that lime green jacket went pretty well with the slate blue pants but your friend might have a different opinion. Sixth, you could consult an expert (software) fashion adviser who could tell you if certain colors, textures, and styles work together and what they are appropriate for.

Finally, when you are done, the specifications for the items of clothing can be sent directly to the clothing manufacturer, fed into the tailoring machine, and your items will be sent to you with a few days. Stretching the imagination, one can see a day when these tailoring machines may be located locally, so you can just go pick up your clothes in a couple hours like you might pick up your dry cleaning.

Of course, the specifications would then be added to your inventory and the next time you go shopping, or it you were trying to figure out what to wear to a particular event, all of these items would be available to try on.

Some of the elements of this scenario can be accomplished today. Some require a little imagination and some advances in technology. However, we can't consider the possible uses of a new technology in a world frozen in the present. We have to consider it in a world that has been changed by the technology.

Clothing Sales in Second Life

Mass marketing became very popular in the middle of the last century. There were, as far as I can see, two reasons for this. First, the mass production of goods brought down the price making them affordable by a much larger number of people. And, second, mass appeal advertising (possibly due to advances in media technology) created the demand needed to justify mass production. However, before the end of the century, pundits were predicting the end of mass marketing. Alvin Toffler was one of those pundits, if I recall correctly. And stepping up to provide an excellent example of a new way of marketing, Dell Computer started allowing customers to go to their website and customize their personal computers.

Now, lets think about what this means for a moment. The marketing paradigm shifted substantially. In the mass marketing paradigm, product designers created products that can be manufactured in great quantity with little variety. Then they endeavored to convince consumers that these products are what they needed. In the niche marketing paradigm, consumers design products that will be produced in small quantity with much more variety. And nobody has to convince them to buy as they have specified exactly what they want.

But, some problems arise with extreme niche marketing. First, how to do you make custom products at an affordable price? And, second, how do you get the specifications for the custom product from the customer to the producer. As to the first, I can only say that making more flexible automated production lines seems to be the answer. That is not my area of expertise. So, I will leave that to the process control people. However, the answer to the second is virtual worlds and that is something I know a little about.

Next time, I will describe the process of buying clothing in a virtual world that dovetails very nicely with this concept of niche marketing.

Second Life for Retail Sales

My last few posts were addressing the use of Second Life for virtual meetings. I chose that because it was a fairly mundane but important and easy to implement application of virtual world technology. Next I want to turn to the use of virtual world technology for retail sales. Several companies such as Dell Computers and a couple book sellers have attempted to come into Second Life to sell their products. These attempts have ended up as abysmal failures casting a lot of doubt on the viability of Second Life, or virtual world technology, for retail. Personally, I believe that this technology has enormous potential for retail sales and will provide some examples over the next few posts. However, in this post, I would like to offer some basic principles for achieving a successful retail presence in a virtual world.

First, don't try to replace the web! The web is very, very good at what it does. It is a big interactive document which allows you to get information about products and then purchase them. Hence, any retail application in a virtual world should link back to the retailer's web site to complete the sale. Web technology is cheaper, faster and better at this and it should be used in conjunction with virtual world technology. Virtual world applications should never attempt to replace web applications. They should, instead, augment them.

Second, use the virtual world for what it does best. I will provide several examples of this over the next few posts. However, for now, suffice it to say that there are things you can do in virtual worlds that you cannot do on web sites and that should be the focus of retail applications in the virtual world. What are some of these things? We, you can try on clothing in a virtual world. You cannot try it on at a web site. You can test drive a car in a virtual world. You cannot drive it at a website. You can demonstrate how to use a product or have a speak explain it in a virtual world. You cannot do that easily at a website.

Third, take advantage of the social interaction available in a virtual world. When you are on a web site looking at a product, you may be there with hundreds of other shoppers. But you cannot turn to them and ask what they think. Nor can you turn to a representative of the retail company and ask questions. Both of these are achievable through awkward means on web sites. For examples, many websites have product reviews. And often you can IM somebody for technical support. However, nothing beats just turning to another person and asking a question. And that you can do in a virtual world.

Finally, and this is critical, decouple your sales from the In World economy. If you buy a shirt for your avatar in Second Life, you will pay around 250 Linden dollars for it or the equivalent of one US dollar. If you are using Second Life to buy are real shirt, you will pay around $20 US which is around 5000 Linden dollars. Talk about sticker shock!! The disparity between the In World and Real World economies makes it very difficult to sell real products in-world. And, the solution is to decouple real world sales from the virtual world. In other words, provide all the pre-sale support through the virtual world. Then, when it is time to make the sale, go to the website and let it does what it does best.

Over the next few posts, I will explore specific retail applications and how they can take advantage of virtual world technology.

Third, Marketing

Second Life received a lot of press in the Fall of 2006 and the following Spring. There were stories about fortunes being made, political candidates offering speeches, real world vendors setting up islands to sell their products, large companies like IBM making major investments, television shows like CSI NY using Second Life as an extension of their shows, and so on.

But the publicity often cut both ways. There were stories about a lurid sex trade, pedophilia, and infidelity. Following he 'get rich quick' stories there were 'get poor quick' stories about falling land prices and vendors pulling out.

The upshot is that Second Life has a major image problem from a business perspective. And marketing a product as a Second Life capability would be a real uphill battle. So, this capability to hold meetings in Second Life could not be marketed as such. In fact there should be no mention of Second Life what so ever.

Second Life meetings would conjure up images of griefer attacks, naked avatars parading around, people sneaking off to meet with escorts, and all manner of antisocial behavior. People wishing to hold business meetings would not find this an attractive prospect at all.

Instead it should be marketed simply as "Virtual Meetings". The benefits of Virtual Meetings should be emphasized which include cost savings, functionality and ease of use. People don't have to drive and park, or sit in airports and hotel rooms. Instead of loosing three days for an out of town meetings, only one day is lost.

Unfortunately, Second Life today is like a pristine wilderness inhabited sparsely by eco-friendly artists. It has potential, but in order to exploit that potential, some of the pristine quality of the wilderness must be loss. It is a 'hand in the cookie jar' problem. If you do not exploit the technology nobody will ever appreciate it. If you do exploit it, it will loose a lot of its original appeal.

Perhaps another analogy might be to say it is like having a priceless painting locked in a closet. Putting the painting on display could damage it. Restoration could alter it. And yet, leaving it in the closet is not an option because its value is derived from viewing.

The exploitation of Second Life will alter it forever. However,not exploiting it will leave it unappreciated forever. Personally, I would go with the exploitation and see where it takes us.

Second, Functionality

Last week I discussed performance issues and placed them first because no matter how great the functionality is that Second Life provides for meetings, if users log in and are bogged down by lag, they will not want to return. So, this week I am going to discuss some of the functionality required.This is not intended to be an exhaustive list. Instead, it is examples of the kind of customizations that would make the SL environment conducive to business meetings.

First, there needs to be some sort of an external meeting planner. This planner could invite people to meetings and remind them when meetings are approaching. When they log in, the meeting planner could give them the option of being teleported directly to their meeting. If they are on already and a meeting time approaches they could be notified and given a tp option.

Second there need to be default accounts set up for people holding meetings so that a person can attend a meeting using a default account. Some people may wish to attend a meeting and may not wish to have a Second Life account and all that entails. So, default accounts will allow greater accessibility.

Third, there needs to be greater support for the display and distribution of media. As it currently stands, you can get a PowerPoint presentation into Second Life and display it, but it is a royal pain. There should be an object in Second Life that will take a Power Point presentation from your hard drive, convert it, up load it and display it in Second Life. Further, there should be an easy way to distribute the presentation to others at the meeting and place the presentation in some sort of archive for people who missed the meeting. Similar capabilities should be available for the display and distribution of documents and other media.

Fourth, protocols need to be developed to prescribe proper meeting behavior. How does one ask a question? How do you take turns? Do virtual meetings follow the protocols of real world meetings or are there some differences.

These are major areas in which capabilities need to be developed if Second Life is going to be used successfully for meeting. Next are some minor 'nice but not necessary' features.

When an avatar shows up at a meeting they should have some clothing options to choose from. This may include a range of business attire or a collection of outfits that would be appropriate to the theme of the meeting. Avatars should be able to select an outfit with a click, and have it placed automatically on their avatar. If they don't like it, they should be restored to the original with another click. This business of paying nothing for a box, dragging it to the ground, etc, has got to go.

There should be a collection of meeting gestures readily available to the meeting attendees. For example, an avatar should be able to raise its hand while sitting to ask a question. Text gestures like "Joe Smith has a question" or "Bill Brown nods off" should be available and possibly even accessible through a HUD.

There should be some audience management capabilities so a speaker or a person running a meeting can queue up questions and get to them in turn. And finally, there should be an easily accessible meeting aid so that people who are attending a meeting can easily contact a person whose primary responsibility is to help people with questions about the environment.

As I said at the beginning, this is not intended to be an exhaustive list of functionality. It is intended to be examples. These are features that would be useful for meetings and not much else. Currently, Second Life focuses on generic functionality which makes it good for a lot of things while not particularly good for any specific thing. If it is going to catch on for business applications, that is going to have to change.

First, Performance Issues

Second Life is a dynamic environment. If you have the right permissions, you can change the environment on the fly. You can create new objects, change the location and shape of objects. Or apply new textures to objects to give them a new look. In Second Life parlance this is referred to as 'building'. It is the act of creating the 3D environment. You can also change the behavior of objects. If a river is flowing east to west, you can change it to flow west to east. If a door opens on the right, you can change it to open on the left. In Second Life parlance this is referred to as 'scripting'. Both building and scripting make make the Second Life environment extremely dynamic which is why I said earlier that you can think of it as an extension of the imagination. However, there is a cost to all this dynamism. And that cost is performance.

When a simulator is slow to produce the 3D environment or when objects in the 3D environment do not perform their actions quickly enough it is referred to, again in Second Life parlance, as 'lag'. Here are some examples of lag. You might show up at a location and not see the location for a few minutes. You might appear in a crowd of people and not see the people for a few minutes. You might be walking across a room and your avatar looks like it is walking through molasses. You may raise your hand to ask a question and yet your hand does not go up. Or you may type a question into chat but not see the question until several lines later.

Lag is caused by a number of factors including the number of prims to be rezzed, the number of scripts running, and, yes, the number of avatars on the sim. This places a limit on the number of avatars that can be at one location. That number varies depending on how much lag you are willing to accept. However, a ball park figure for a maximum number of avatars in one location is 30. This creates problems if you want to have a meeting or a class or a conference with more than 30 people in attendance. When I teach my class in Second Life, I tell students not to follow me immediately to each location as having that many avatars show up at one location may crash the sim.

The solution here is to trade dynamism for performance. Unless you are having a meeting in which you are demonstrating or teaching building or scripting, you don't need that level of dynamism. Once the Second Life environment is created, it should be compiled down to a static environment and optimized for performance. Not only is it costly to have a sim for each 30 people, it is extremely inconvenience. Further, individual applications, such as meetings, can be optimized for different kinds of performance. For example, meetings should be optimized for gestures and chat, possibly also for displaying images such as PowerPoint slides or other media. A different application, say an amusement park, may be optimized for avatar movement and script performance.

The dynamic quality of the Second Life environment is wonderful for stimulating the imagination. And with imagination you can do almost anything. Unfortunately, with such a dynamic environment you cannot do anything particularly well.

Advantages of Meeting in Second Life

Before elaborating on the functional requirements of meeting support software in Second Life, it is useful to articulate the advantages of meeting in Second Life. With the advantages in mind, it is easier to define the capabilities necessary to support those advantages.

First, and foremost, the advantage of meeting is Second Life is logistical. Getting people to show up for a meeting in a conference room half a hallway away from their office can be a challenge. If people work on different floors, in different buildings, in different cities or different parts of the globe, this challenge becomes even greater. So, just the fact that you don't have to get up from your desk, whether at home or at your office, is an enormous benefit of meeting in Second Life.

The second advantage, convenience, is related to the first but distinct. When attending a meeting in Second Life you don't have to worry about transportation, parking, lodging or any of the usual hassles associated with traveling to a meeting. Further, you don't even have to get out of your pajamas. You don't have to shave or fix your hair. You don't even have to bathe. You can dress your avatar as you see fit and what you actually look like is irrelevant.

Third is the ability to multi-task. Normally, it would be considered to be rude to bring work into a meeting and then work on it while the meeting was going on. And yet, we all know how deadly boring meetings can be. However, while your avatar is respectfully sitting there appearing to pay attention, you can be working on something more interesting keeping an ear tuned to whatever might come up in the meeting. In addition, you can have side conversations with other people in IM, another feature that would be awkward in a typical meeting. Your confederate can even alert you if the topic of discussion turns to something you care about.

And, fourth, is the ability to record the meeting. Nobody likes to take minutes so meetings are often convened and dismissed with nary a note taken. Open chat and IM are easy to log. However, you could also record the meeting as a Quicktime movie for anyone who missed it or for later reference. If somebody does actually take minutes they can be used later to search for comments on a specific topic.

At the same time, there are three drawbacks of having meetings in Second Life. First, is the learning curve. Second is lag and the limitation on the number of avatars in a sim. And third is observation that in Second Life you don't get to see the faces of the people in the meeting. However, none of these drawbacks are hard to fix. And the benefits so far outweigh them that even if they couldn't be fixed they wouldn't be major detriments.

Next time I will address these drawbacks and begin talking about the functionality required to make Second Life meetings successful.

Virtual Meetings in Second Life

I have been talking about the creative and artistic potential of Second Life in recent posts. Now, to talk about using Second Life for meetings, I seem to be going from the sublime to the profane. And I apologize for that. But, if this technology is going to see its potential, it has to begin with some basic but important applications. Don't forget that the earlier adopters of the web did not see it as a commercial environment. And it wasn't until all the dot coms started showing up that the web started becoming a technological force to be reckoned with.

We can safely and fairly divide people into two groups with regard to virtual meetings. Group One feels that you can have virtual meetings in Second Life today so there is no need to consider meetings as a special application. Group Two is unwilling to log into Second Life because they find it bewildering. And there in lies the problem. The functionality needed to attract Group Two is considered too trivial to think about by Group One. But we are going to think about it nonetheless.

What kinds of thing would you have to do in order have a successful meeting in Second Life? Well, first of all you would need to get people to the meeting. One way to do this would be to have default accounts for people to log into that would automatically place them at the meeting. Another way is to have a feature that would automatically offer a teleport to the meeting to an avatar when it logs in. A third possibility would be to set the avatar's home to the meeting location. And a forth possibility would be to develop a meeting object, say a lapel button for the avatar to wear, that would automatically teleport it to the meeting when touched. Now, let's stop and think about this for a minute. People from Group One might say that this functionality could easily be developed. And that may very well be true. But somebody who wants to hold a meeting in Second Life does not want to have to develop it just to have a meeting. They want it to be available already and they want it to be easy to use. So, Group One already has a lot of work to do in order to attract Group Two.

Assume that a Group Two person managed to get their avatar to the meeting location. What next? Well, depending on the person they may want to go directly to the meeting. They may want to look around and get used to the virtual environment. They may want to pick up meeting materials. Or they may wish to pick out some clothes for their avatar. Again, Group Two people would probably say that everybody already knows how to do those things. But that is not true. The Group One people, who make up the vast, vast majority of potential Second Life users, have no idea.

Let's just consider the problem of finding new clothes for one's avatar in preparation for the meeting. In order to find clothes, one has to search for clothing places; they have to teleport to a store; and they have to buy a set of clothes. In order to buy the clothes they have to have money. When they buy the clothes, they usually get an object that needs to be dragged to the ground and opened. Frequently, they cannot do that at the store and need to go to a sandbox. Once they drag the container to the ground and have it rezz, they need to it and copy the items to inventory. Then they drag the items to their avatar. If dressing in real life where this difficult, most people would just walk around naked.

Instead, imagine a room with a row of pictures on the wall showing various outfits. A person can click on an outfit and have it immediately put on their avatar. If they don't like it, they can press a reset button or try on another one. If they like it, they can give it a name and put it on again later by simply typing in a command like "/wear gray suit" in open chat. The point here is to make the Second Life environment easy enough for a normal person to use. Normal people are not excited by the possibilities of Second Life. They just want to go to their meeting as painlessly as possible. And it is the snorts of derision from Group One people that are keeping the Group Two people out and keeping Second Life from fulfilling its potential. If the computer were kept in the hands of Group One people, it would still be computing missile trajectories and I would not be writing this blog.

Next time we will consider functionality to make the meeting go more smoothly and after than we will consider some fundamental changes that would need to take place in the base technology to support these kinds of applications.

Video in Primative Cultures

I think I have an analogy that can provide some perspective on the problems that Second Life is having in getting traction. First consider all the ways in which we use video. It is hard to get your arms around all the uses. We use video for entertainment. We sell products via commercials. We inform people through news programs. We educate people through educational programs and train them with training programs. We use video to document events and to explore possibilities. In fact, the uses of video in today's culture are virtually endless.

Next imagine showing up at a village in the Amazon rain forest with video equipment trying to introduce the villagers to video technology. You give them cameras and take some video of villagers. They are all impress and every body wants to be in front of the camera. However, when it is their turn to do something, they are not quite as enthusiastic. They like it when you shoot the video but when it is their turn they cannot think of what to shoot. They are not really sure what they can shoot. They are not really sure what this technology is good for. "Everything," you say, "it is good for everything. The possibilities are endless." They might even agree that the possibilities are endless but still cannot come up with anything that they may want to do. So, you leave the village frustrated.

I think this analogy is apt because introducing virtual world technology in the early part of the 21th century is a lot like introducing video equipment to primitive villagers. There are a lot of Ooo's and Ahh's but few really grasp what can be done. And moreover, by thinking this analogy through a little further, I think we can see what needs to be done in virtual worlds to overcome this problem.

Let's say our visitor to the Amazon village had to get them to adopt video technology. Let's say they were working on a UN technology transfer grant or for some eccentric philanthropist just to make it believable. How would they get the villagers to accept video technology? Well, doing demos and talking about endless possibilities is probably not the way. This is way too ethereal and way to difficult to grasp.

What would make sense would be to select a single very concrete application to demonstrate the value of video. You might record the chief's speeches to the villages for historical value. You might record wedding ceremonies for their social value. You might record young hunters learning how to hunt for its educational value. It would probably be difficult to select one thing, but that is what you would have to do. Pick one thing and show how video is useful in that one case. Once people became more familiar with video they could see other uses. But, initially they would need a very concrete example.

I think the same could be said for virtual world technology in general and Second Life in particular. There are way too many possibilities and people need a concrete example. I think the uses that I discussed in the previous post for using Second Life for personal development are still not concrete enough. They are very compelling but probably not the place to start. I think the place to begin is with a very mundane, very concrete application. Perhaps something like using Second Life for virtual meetings. This application is as promising as it is boring. And I will take it up next.

Second Life for Personal Growth

In this post I want to explore three ways in which Second Life can contribute to your personal growth. These include enriching experiences, role switching, and overcoming social anxieties. This is not to say that these are the only three ways in which Second Life can contribute to your personal growth. It is merely to say that these are the ways that come to mind at the moment.

There are some fairly standard ways in which we enrich ourselves in real life. Most people would say that travel is enriching. Many would say that visiting art galleries and museums is enriching. Some would say that taking classes or doing volunteer work helping people is enriching. All of these things are possible in Second Life and you don't even have to leave your desk to do them. I visited an island recently called Suffugium. It is a cyberpunk rendering of a future world. I have actually been there many times and I am always astonished at the effort that was put into the place to provide an interesting and artistic experience for the visitors. You can walk around this wonderful location and experience the art and the political message. It simulates your thought and your creativity. And, there are hundreds of other similar locations, each one unique, which provide enriching and thought provoking messages and experiences.

The second way in which Second Life can provide you with personal growth is through role switching. We are who we are and we tend to see life from our very own perspective. But, how does the world appear differently to people of the other gender? Do younger or older people see things differently? Are life experiences different for people of a different social class or ethnicity? Do people of a different sexual orientation get treated differently? How can you know the answers to these questions without changing who you are and going out into the world as somebody else? The answer, of course, is that in Second Life you can do just that. And if you do, you will be astonished at how different life presents itself to you. Seeing the world through the eyes of others is good for you. It broadens your perspectives, and helps you become more compassionate, understanding and tolerant. All good stuff.

Finally, many people suffer from social anxieties such as shyness, fear of crowds, or fear of speaking in front people. It is possible to limit the impact of these anxieties through systematic desensitization. For example, you may speak in front of one person, then two, then three and so on. However, this systematic desensitization in real life can still be difficult. Just setting up the scenarios can present logistical problems. And you may still be afraid of blushing or shaking. In a virtual world you can take baby steps to overcoming these anxieties. People do not actually see you, they only see your avatar. So you get a bit of protection. But, even more importantly, people in a virtual world are much more supportive and much less judgmental than they are in the real world. So the barriers are lower.

These are just a few of the ways in which Second Life can help enrich and improve you. Unfortunately, this capability exists today largely as a possibility. And one of the most frustrating things about Second Life is that all these possibilities exist simultaneously with none of them being fully exploited.

Avatar Identity Construction

When you create an avatar to represent you in Second Life, you do more than just select a little character. You select a vehicle for self expression. You begin by selecting a default avatar and then evolve it over time. This process of avatar evolution is critical in the construction of your avatar's identity. And, to the credit of Linden Labs, they have provided, sometimes in an indirect way, incredible tools to help you in this process of constructing your avatar's identity. You can modify the shape or other characteristics of your avatar. You can create your own shapes off line and import them. You can buy shapes from designers. You can be tall or short, frumpy or proud. You can be sexy or conservative. And, if you don't like what you have chosen you can change, again and again and again.

You can buy accouterments such as hair, jewelry and clothing. You can get tattoos or piercings. In short, you can try all the things in Second Life that you wanted to try in real life but did not have the nerve. This is a wonderful and safe way to explore self expression.

Beyond your looks, you can define your avatar identity through the groups you join or the people you hang out with. You can define yourself by the ways in which you talk to other people. You can write things in your profile to further define yourself. You can leave notes that only you can see in the profiles of other avatars so that you can remember your friends, how you met them and what you think about them.

You can try on differnt roles and identities. Many people have one avatar that serves as a mentor, there to help, and another alt to just hang out and chat. In real life we are often trapped in a role. Perhaps you are a teacher, a manager, or a public servant. You may feel you have an image to protect. Wouldn't you just love to be an annoying pain in the ass some times. Yes, who wouldn't. But, alas, in real life that isn't so easy.

Choosing different avatar identities provides you with two important benefits. First, you can explore who you are. You can 'try on' different identities to see how they feel. You might find that you are really not who you think you are. Second, you can see how other people experience the world. Try creating avatars of a different race, gender or social class. You will be surprised at how different the experience is.

In this way, you can think of Second Life as a 'self editor'. And, as a 'self editor' Second Life is par excellence. If you can imagine a self you can create it. And if you can create it, you can experience life through it. Yes, people become very attached to their avatars and they do begin to experience life through them. Not only does a person create and evolve the avatar. Over time, through the experiences of the avatar, the person begins to create and evolve who they really are. And it is the potential that Second Life offers for personal growth and development that is one of its most impressive capabilities. Next time we will look at Second Life as a vehicle for personal growth.

Three Reasons Why Imagination is Important

In this post, I am going to offer three reasons why imagination is important: coherency, anticipation, and improvement. First, coherency. The world is a very messy place. There is randomness, uncertainty, inconsistency and endless things that we just do not understand. If we had to interact directly with the real world we would have a very difficult time. However, we reconstruct a much more coherent view of the real world in our imaginations and interact with that model instead. If it weren't for our imaginations, we would not be able to make sense out of the world.

Second, not only to we interact with the real world through a model that exists in our imaginations, we use that model to predict what might happen in the future. So, imagination is important for planing, forecasting, even just anticipating. Not only do we interact with the world through a model that exists in our imaginations, we interact with the future as well. Even simple things like planning errands occurs in the model of the world in our imaginations. But, it doesn't stop there. The most profound moral decisions we make, are made through the models of the world that we maintain in our imaginations. As we debate a moral issues we anticipate what the world would be like if we follow position A as a opposed to position B. And that brings us to the third reason why the imagination is important.

Without imagination it would not be possible to bring about a better world. Better worlds are only possible when someone can imagine a world that does not have things that we take for given in the real world of today. Not only does the imagination help us to envision a better world, it allows us to envision multiple better worlds and choose between them. So, life would never get any better without the benefit of our ability to imagine.

Our imaginations are critical in our ability to understand the world, anticipate and plan, and attempt to make the world a better place. Since the imagination is so important, a technology that provides a technological extension of the imagination must be critically important was well. So, in the next few posts, we will come off of our lofty perch where we examine the role of the imagination in constructing reality and come down to some very concrete business applications of a technology that can extend the imagination.

What is the Imagination

John Locke once claimed that there is nothing in the mind that was not first derived from experience. The mind, according to Locke, is a blank slate upon which experience is written. Like most philosophical observations, this may be true or untrue depending upon how you interpret it. I can picture a unicorn in my mind even though I have never actually experienced one. So, it seems this claim might not be true. On the other hand, one might argue that the elements from which I construct a unicorn in my mind are derived from experience. I have seen horses and I have seen horns. So, the unicorn is merely a reassembly of things I have experienced. And in that case, the claim might be true.

The problem is that the unicorn is a product of my imagination and we do not fully understand, nor appreciate the role or importance of the imagination. But, before we go any further, I should probably define what I mean by 'imagination'. Imagination is the capability to form images in your mind that are not directly received from experience. It is, as far as I know, a uniquely human capability. We cannot know this for sure because we cannot experience the consciousness of other species. But, it seems a pretty safe bet for reasons we will discuss later.

One might argue that the unicorn, as a product of the imagination, is 'not real'; thus relegating the products of the imagination to some inferior status. This is comforting because it makes products of the imagination seem less important some how and, in doing so, makes the problem of understanding the imagination a little less important. However, I would offer the following challenge. Picture anything in your mind - a friend, a pet, your car, the house across the street, anything. Now is that picture in your mind 100% faithful to the thing you are picturing? If it is not, then it is, to some degree, a product of the imagination.

Pushing this idea a little further, anything we experience in our minds is a product of our imagination. Since our concepts of reality are largely in our minds, this means that reality is a product of our imaginations. Well, clearly we are going to get into big trouble if we simply try to dismiss the imagination as unimportant. So, let us accept, for the sake of argument, that the imagination is important and that it plays a crucial role, of some kind, in human cognition. Next time we will look at some of the reasons why the imagination is important and why knowledge and rationality would not be possible without it.

Second Life as the Technological Extension of the Imagination

Philosophers of technology have often pointed out that most technologies can be understood, to some degree, as extensions of the person. Obvious examples include transportation as an extension of the feet or legs, weapons as an extension of the fists or arms, radio and television as an extension of the ears and eyes.

Less obvious examples would include medical technology as an extension of the immune system or computer technology as an extension of the mind. Just how well each of these claims actually fits can be debated. However, one can certainly see that this perspective does give us a quick handle on understanding a technology. So, the question is, with a new technology, what human capability does it extend.

Some technologies actually cover a wide range of human capabilities. The computer, for example, can be seen in applications that extend almost every human capacity that there is. However, understanding the computer as an extension of the mind is the most important and puts all of the others into perspective.

In the case of Second Life, we can ask - what human capacity does it extend? Like the computer, Second Life extends a wide variety of human capacities. However, like the computer, there is one central capacity - the human capacity for imagination. Second Life is a technological extension of the imagination. While there are many others things that Second Life can do this is the biggie. This is the home run out of the park.

So, as I turn to more positive commentary, I am going to focus on Second Life as an extension of the imagination. I will address what is imagination, why is it important, how does Second Life extend the imagination, and what does this mean for potential future uses for this technology.

The Paradox of Creativity

Many people have drawn parallels between Linden Labs, the creators of Second Life and Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, the creators of the graphical user interface. For those of you who have not heard this story, I will summarize it. The now very familiar mouse input device and the omnipresent graphical user interface that we have become accustomed to on our computers was originally invented, as the story goes, at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. Unfortunately, after inventing this wonderful technology, Xerox PARC was unable to exploit it. That is they failed to employ the technology in useful applications. It wasn't until the Macintosh computer employed the technology that the public became aware of it. Why is it that Xerox PARC was creative enough to develop this landmark technology and yet failed to be creative enough to see applications for it? I am calling this the paradox of creativity simply for lack of a better term. It seems to occur when one has abundant creativity in one area but creative blind spots in other areas that are necessary to fully exploit the first creative leap.

Linden Labs seems to be suffering from the same paradox of creativity. The creation of Second Life required an enormous leap in creativity. Granted many of the pieces were around in video games and other virtual worlds. But, the way these piece came together in Second is truly a leap of creativity of astonishing proportions. And yet, as with the people at PARC they seem unable to envision applications for it.

I think I have had my fill of bashing Linden Labs. Perhaps I have gotten it all out of my system now. So, as I turn this in a more positive direction, I am going to suggest four quite distinct but not necessarily mutually exclusive application areas for Second Life. I call these 1) Creative Second Life, 2) Social Second Life, 3) Business Second Life, and 4) Educational Second Life. Over the next few posts, I will sketch out these very different application area and, hopefully, it will become obvious why Second Life cannot work as long as Linden Labs continues to pursue these possibilities simultaneously.

The Law of Requisite Variety

There is a principle in cybernetics, called the law of requisite variety, which states that for one system to control another, the controlling system must be able to generate at least as much variety as the system being controlled. A simple example can illustrate this. Your automobile has a control system that allows you to go forward or backward, left or right. Since this is all the motion that an automobile typically has, the steering wheel and gas pedal/brake pedal are adequate for controlling it. However, the controlling mechanisms for an automobile would not do in an airplane which has movement in an up/down dimension as well. A simple thermostat may control the temperature in your house. But, if you wish to control humidity as well, the typical thermostat would not be adequate.

This wonderfully useful principle has applications far beyond the control of physical systems. For example, in management, there is a principle called span of control. A typical manager can only effectively manage nine subordinates if their works is very similar and fairly routine. If their work is dissimilar and not routine that number drops to around five. Why is this? It is just another instance of the law of requisite variety. If a supervisor has too many employees or if their work is very different, they will generate more variety than the supervisor can handle and the supervisor will be unable to control the employees.

So, what does this all have to do with the abysmal customer service at Linden Labs? Well, the problem that Linden Labs is facing in their attempts to provide quality customer service is just another instance of the law of requisite variety. The customers simply generate more variety than the customer service representatives can handle. And by analyzing this principle in the context of customer service for Second Life we can see why it is simply not possible for Linden Labs to deliver good customer service. It is also possible to see what they would need to do to change that. And that is what we will get to next.

Linden Labs and the Failure of CRM

A concept that has become increasingly popular in business circles over the past decade is customer relationship management, or CRM. The idea is that it is cheaper to maintain an existing customer than it is to recruit a new one. In order to maintain existing customers you have to understand who your customers are, and how to keep them happy. In an earlier post, I ranted on about how Linden Labs does not seem to know who their customers are. So I won't go into that again. But, clearly, if you don't know who your customers are, it can't possibly know how to keep them happy. And yet, Linden Labs still attempts to do that through two misguided efforts which I will refer to simply as customer service and volunteer management.

Customer service in Second Life is abysmal at best. Polite follow up responses to emails in place of positive actions and good answers do not make good customer service. Solving customers problems does. I, personally, have had several completely frustrating interactions with their customer service. But, my stories pale compared to the one's I've heard from others. I have contacted customer service on some issues that should have been fairly routine. For example, I deleted an account that I wished to recover. The website, at the time, said you can recover deleted accounts for $9.95. I was willing to pay the amount for the specified service so it should have been fairly straightforward. But, after several email exchanges I gave up in frustration. Another time, I was interested in setting up a collection of accounts to use for workshops. Since the policy that was espoused on the website limited the number of accounts, I thought I should contact them and get permission. You would think that it would be in their interests to have people teach workshops in how to use SL. But, I received no response. When I asked in-world mentors (and even an in-world Linden), I was referred back to the website. Eventually, I just gave up. These are relatively minor instances but reflect the inadequacy of customer service. These were opportunities to engage with a customer and develop loyalty. Instead they managed to turn it around and develop alienation. So much for customer relationship management.

Volunteer management is an attempt to engage customers in-world. A team of Linden's called the Vteam manages a group of volunteers called Mentors. The idea is that by engaging volunteers you kill two birds with one stone. The volunteers have something useful to do while in world which increases their enjoyment. And they, in turn, help other, newer, users, which makes it easier for the newer users to become acculturated. In concept this is a great idea. In implementation it is sorely wanting. Over the next couple posts, I will continue ranting about customer service and volunteer management. And, then, I will turn it around and start making some suggestions on how they could do things better.

Linden Labs and the Failure to Understand Basic Business Principles

Most successful businesses operate according to a business model of some kind. The model reveals such fundamental components of the business such as where the revenues come from and the nature of the expenses required to produce those revenues. In the early days of the web, one of the much debated questions was - what business models are appropriate for web based businesses. At the risk of being overly simplistic, we can sort most websites in one of three business models or, perhaps, some combination of those models. First, is the website used to produce sales. The revenue generated from a sales website is a percentage of the sales. Second, is the website that draws traffic somehow and exposes that traffic to advertising. The revenue generated by that traffic draw supports the website. Third, is a website used as public relations vehicle to provide information about a company or agency. The revenue for this website comes internally from that company. The point here is not to catalog websites, however. The point is to say that in order to be successful a website must operate according to a business model and the designers of the website must understand that model.

Unfortunately, the business model for Second Life is entirely unclear. And they attempt to attract businesses into Second Life who are equally as unclear regarding their business models which creates confusion on two levels. According to published accounts, Linden Labs has wrestled with the idea of business models. They have made several decisions that reflect this. They decided to allow content creators to maintain the copyright to the things they produce in world. They decided to obtain revenue from the sale of land rather than charging for accounts or taxing sales. These are all business model decisions. Unfortunately (again) these decisions were made in the absence of a cohesive and workable business model and, consequently, appear as random, often confused, decisions.

A business model would help address some burning questions with regard to Second Life. Should users pay for their accounts? Should sales be taxed? Is open sourcing good or bad for Second Life? Should users remain anonymous? If development funds are invested, should they go into better development tools, improving ease of use, specialized infrastructure for education or commerce, and so on. But, since Linden Labs does not seem to understand the basics of business they do not appear to have a workable business model. And since they do not have a workable business model the above questions as well as many others simply cannot be answered.

Linden Labs and the Failure to Understand Their Customers

Sometimes it is difficult to figure out who your customers really are. Universities, for example, will often have vigorous debates over whether their customers are their students, their donors, the employers who hire their students, or the society in which they function that needs educated citizens; just to name a few possibilities. Consider the following two perspectives: 1) Our students are our customers. They pay tuition and receive education in return; or 2) Our students are a raw material that goes into our final product which is an educated person. Our customer is society. Just how different would universities operate under those two scenarios. As it turns out, most universities do not resolve the customer issue. Diversity and richness are far more important to universities than efficiency and effectiveness. And education is so fundamentally important to society that we cannot walk away from these institutions no matter how unfocused or inefficient they may be. But a business such as Linden Labs with a product such as Second Life cannot afford the unfocused approach that a university takes. Their product is not fundamentally important to society. People can walk away. And they do.

Just who is the customer for Second Life? Let's lay out a few possibilities and see how each possibility would have different needs and demand different responses from Linden Labs. Consider the following possibilities: 1) The customer in Second Life is the Basic Account holder; 2) The customer in Second Life is the land owner or business owner; 3) The customer in Second Life is the real life business who wishes to sell their product or service through a virtual world; or 4) The customer in Second Life is the corporate research and development group who is using Second Life to develop new ideas and new products. This list is not intended to be exhaustive. It is only intended to show how these stakeholders have very different needs. Let's consider each in turn.

1) The customer in Second Life is the Basic Account holder: We can dismiss this one from the start. Basic accounts are free accounts which do not yield any direct revenue to Linden Labs. They may yield indirect revenue if advertisers are will to pay based on traffic or if Second Life businesses make money off of them. But, in those cases, the customer is the advertiser or the Second Life business. So free basic accounts are, at best, a means to some other end, although that other end is not entirely clear.

2) The customer in Second Life is the land owner or business owner: This is a possibility. Linden Labs earns revenue by selling and taxing virtual land. If this is the customer then LL would want to provide services to support Second Life businesses and would want to attract high quality residents who are likely to spend money at these virtual businesses. Neither of these goals is met particularly well. While Second Life businesses can down load spreadsheets of their business transactions, that is pretty much it for customer support. Issues like security, performance and reliability, all of which are critical to Second Life business is wanting. Further, the basic account policy in conjunction with anonymity tends to attract low quality traffic thus limiting the revenue potential of the businesses. The basic account policy is like going to a homeless shelter to generate traffic for your shopping mall.

3) The customer in Second Life is the real life business who wishes to sell their product or service through a virtual world: In the previous scenario the customer was a Second Life business. In this scenario the customer is a real life business looking to sell products through a virtual world presence. You can think of this as having an island as an alternative to a web site. While this scenario has promise there are three major flaws. First, as sited above, the basic account policy tends to generate low quality traffic. So revenue potentials are limited. Second, the learning curve for Second Life is very high and customers who are used to the ease of using the web are not going to switch very readily if shopping in Second Life requires a big investment of time in learning how to get around. Third, the Linden economy works well for a fantasy environment; but only for a fantasy environment. Paying L$250 ($1 real money) for an item of clothing encourages one to dress up their avatar and enjoy the fantasy. However, an inexpensive book in a Second Life store would cost L$5000 while a computer would cost L$250,000 and a car would cost L$5,000,000. This scale benefits inexpensive products like virtual clothing but prohibits sales of more expensive real world items.

4) The customer in Second Life is the corporate research and development group who is using Second Life to develop new ideas and new products: This is another, and very different, possibility. These developers would be attempting to use Second Life technology for distance education, business meetings, virtual conferences, virtual tourism, and so on. These are all very promising ideas. However, if this were the customer, then LL would be investing a great deal more in infrastructure, development tools, performance, reliability, training, consulting and so on. And perhaps they are. But, if they are, it is a well kept secret.

The point here is that you cannot be all things to all people. Different potential customer groups have different needs which are often at odds with each other. If you try to satisfy all of them, you land up not satisfying any of them. In order for a business like Second Life to be successful in the long term, they have to figure out who their customers are and make sure that they are keeping those customer happy.

Linden Labs and the Lack of Strategic Focus

If Linden Labs has a strategic focus for it Second Life technology then it is the best kept secret since the Allied plans for D-Day. What are they trying to with Second Life? Where are they trying to go? How do they want people to think about this technology? Five years from now, what will have had to be accomplished in order to call it a success. They appear to be on operational cruise control, with a few tactical initatives, and no strategic direction. This would be like driving your car at a steady 55 mph, stopping periodically for maintenance, while having no idea where you might be going.

At the operational level they generate a snowstorm of statistics. They measure the number of accounts, the number of premium accounts, the amount of land sold, the number of dollars spent, and so forth. Unfortunately, there is no way to tell from these numbers if they are making progress or not. For a while they seemed to be motivated by the 'bigger is better' view and produced graphs showing their amazing growth. But, is this growth good? This is like giving away money and reporting each month on how much money you have given away. You can produce some dramatic growth statistics. But are you getting any where that you want to get? Since they do not seem to know who their customers are, for example, (a topic to be taken up in a future post), they cannot tell if the growth in basic accounts is positive growth or a growing burden.

At the tactical level they have shown a few promising initiatves such as voice chat and open sourcing. But, again, without a strategic direction, these initiative cannot be seen as good or bad. For example, if Second Life is supposed to be a stage upon which people explore their fantacies and self expression, then voice chat is not a good idea as it interfers with the anonymity of the person at the keyboard. If, on the other hand, Second Life is seen as a vehicle for distance education then voice chat is the greatest thing since sliced bread. People have strong feelings about issues like voice chat in Second Life reflecting the lack of cohesion in the strategic focus.

So, what is Second Life supposed to be? A chat room? A social interaction technology? A technological extension of the imagination? The 3D Web? A platform for education and business applications? Who knows? And until somebody figures out some answers to these questions, it is not going any where.

Where Did They Go Wrong?

Looking back on the meteoric rise of Second Life and its almost total failure to meet expectations, I think we can point to four areas of weakness on the part of Linden Labs: 1) a lack of strategic focus; 2) a failure to understand their core customers; 3) a failure to understand basic business principles; and 4)a failure to understand products and marketing. Each will be expanded, in turn, in this post, and further in subsequent posts.

Lack of Strategic Focus - What is Linden Labs trying to do with Second Life? Are they creating a big chat room? Is it a vehicle for self expression? Is it a harbinger of the 3D web? Is it a social interaction technology? Is it the latest thing in distance learning technology? Is is a workflow, meeting, or conferencing technolog? Is it destined to be an open source technology? Nobody seens to know the answer to any of these questions. While it may have the potential to be any of these things, it cannot be all things to all people all at once.

A Failure to Understand Their Core Customers - Who are the customers of Second Life? Is it the large companies like IBM, or CSI NY who buy up large chunks of virtual real estate? Is it the thousands of individual sim owners who own one or more islands? Is it the business people who rent or buy land in order to create a business in Second Life? Is it the premium account holders who pay $6-$9 per month for their Second Life accounts? Is it the basic account holders who pay nothing but populate the world and hopefully spend a little money in support of Second Life businesses?

A Failure to Understand Basic Business Principles - In order to run a sucessful business you have to have a product or service that people want to buy. You have to understand your customers and what they want. You have to know what factors are critical to your succcess. You have to know where you are trying to go over the long term. That is to say, you have to have a business model. Linden Labs fails in this area at two levels. The business model for Second Life is entirely unclear. And they attempt to attract businesses into Second Life who are equally as unclear regarding their business models.

A Failure to Understand Products and Marketing - Linden Labs created a huge amount of hype in the Fall of 2006 with the explosive growth in basic accounts and the news stories about virtual world millionaires. Many very hopeful and now bitter people came to the virtual world attempting to make money and lost money instead. One of the biggest fiascos was speculating in virtual real estate. People who bought land for $L5000 per plot and sold it at the peak for $L10,000 per plot did OK. But people who bought land for $L10,000 were left hold the bag. In order for this scheme to continue working, it would require that there is always a bigger sucker further down the line. And this comes dangerously close to a Ponzi scheme. You have to have a product with inherent value. Selling a product whose value relies on finding a bigger sucker is not a viable marketing strategy.

Over the next few posts, I will elaborate further on these ideas.

Creating Your Second Life - Part 2

In the last post, I discussed the capabilities that Second Life provides for creating objects in the 3D world through a processes called building. This is by far the most impressive feature of Second Life. You can create interesting things for others to see and you can see the interesting things that they have created. It is a public and synergistic sharing of creative imagination; sort of like a global 3D art show.

However, not far behind that is the ability to create your own persona in Second Life. Instead of being all that you can be, in Second Life you can be MORE than you can be. You can be better looking and more interesting. You can dress better and be more adept at business and technology that you ever could be in real life.

If you are short and fat in real life, then you can be tall and slim in Second Life. If you are unpopular and socially inept in real life, then you can have a long friends list and belong to lots of groups in Second Life. If nobody takes you seriously in real life, you can teach a class or start a philosophy discussion group in Second Life. If you can't hang on to a job in real life, you can start your own business in Second Life.

This ability to create you own persona has many significant implications. It builds confidence. It helps you explore the possibilities in your own personality. It can help you over come a variety of social anxieties. It can allow you to see the world from the perspective who are not like you in real life. Whereas the building capability in Second Life allows you to imagine and then create a new world, the various means of altering your persona in Second Life allow you to imagine and then create a new self. Once you have created a new world in Second Life, you can live in it. Once you have created a new self in Second Life you can experience that new world through that new self. It is no wonder that people get so addicted.

So, to sum up what Linden Labs got right with Second Life, it is the ability it provides for its users to create possible worlds and then experience those possible worlds. This is stimulating to the imagination and satisfying to the emotions. The question is - how can this amazing capability be put to best use? And that is where Linden Labs starts dropping the ball. In the next post we will begin to look at what Linden Labs did not get right.

Creating Your Second Life - Part I

The single most impressive feature of Second Life is the capabilities that it provides the user to create their own content within the virtual world. Philosophers of technology claim that technology can always be viewed, in some way, as an extension of the person. In the case of Second Life technology, it can be viewed as a technological extension of the imagination. This is no small claim and the thing that Linden Labs did get right was the power that they put in the hands of their users to create their own worlds in Second Life.

This power to create is referred to as 'building' in Second Life. The user begins by creating a primitive object, called a 'prim' and then by modifying the shape, location of the prim and the images displayed on that prim, all of the content that you see in Second Life is created. There are some minor exceptions to this rather sweeping statement. For example, land is modified through a different editor in a process known as terraforming. And avatar looks are modified in an 'Appearance Editor' which will be discussed in the next post. But, for the most part, the vast majority of what you see in Second Life was created through building.

Building in Second Life is far from perfect. Its major drawback is that it is difficult to learn. All of the in-world tutorials are basically the same. The few available books are basically color glossy repeats of the in-world tutorials. And the in-world classes focus on how to achieve a specific result rather than on understanding building so that you can figure out how to achieve that result on your own. However, my experience with out-of-world graphics editors isn't a great deal better. So, I will give them a pass on that. If you want to learn how to build; you can. It may not be as easy as it could or should be. But any person of moderate intelligence and persistence can learn. And once you learn, what you can do is astonishing. So let's focus on that instead.

People with active imaginations are always picturing things in their minds. In fact, the definition of imagination is to be able to picture something in your mind that was not directly derived from experience. You can picture a unicorn in your mind, for example, even though you have never actually seen a unicorn. The beauty of building in Second Life is that if you can imagine it, you can probably build it. So instead of relying on those fuzzy pictures in your head, you can actually see what your ideas look like when represented in a virtual world. The net result of this is that your imagination and creativity come alive. In the classic movie - The Wizard of Oz - the film switches from black and white to technicolor when Dorothy leaves Kansas and enters the Land of Oz. The analogy is apt. Entering Second Life is like entering the magical World of Oz. It is a realm of the imagination, a place where all things are possible. If you can see it in your head, you can see it on the screen. And, if this were all that building in Second Life allowed you to do, it would be impressive enough. But it is not all.

When you create something in Second Life it is out there for everyone to see. So instead of those pictures being in your head, they are out there in a shared virtual world. You can display the products of your imagination and see the products of other people's imaginations. It reminds me of an old Bob Dylan song called Talkin' World War III Blues in which he says "I'll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours." This is the essence of Second Life - "I'll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours." The ability of users to get the content of their imaginations into the virtual world for others to see and the ability to see the content of the imaginations of others is truly the strength and most impressive accomplishment of Second Life. And the importance of this capability cannot be overstated.

That bears repeating. The importance of this capability cannot be overstated. And if I say anymore, I will only diminish it. So, I will end with that remark.

Animating Your Second Life

In the last post, I mentioned that what Second Life does give you is the ability to modify the virtual world as opposed to playing in a virtual world that some else (usually a game designer) created. This is not an entirely new idea. Perhaps one of the most notable earlier examples would be the various versions and varieties of Sims. Nonetheless, one of the ways in which Second Life allows you to modify the virtual world is through the use of scripts. Scripts are little programs written in a C-like language called Linden Scripting Language. And here we see a great example of a good idea poorly executed.

Linden Scripting Language, for those who are unfamiliar with it, allows you to animate objects in Second Life. This includes simple examples such as doors that open, visitor counters, and teleporters. It also includes more complex objects such as guns, vehicles, and security systems. Most 'activity' in Second Life other than that cause by keyboard directed avatars is driven, in some way, by Linden Scripting Language.

Thinking of LSL purely as a program language, it is about as bad of an example as one can find. If there is a theoretical model behind the language design it has been successfully disguised. The functions are named in such a way that nobody would ever guess what a function they need might be called. And, if you wish to learn the language, your only option is to learn it one tedious function at a time and hope you remember it for next time.

Thinking of LSL as a development tool, it is, once again, about as bad of an example as one can find. Their is virtually no support for developers. You write the LSL script in a notepad like editor and compile it by hitting the "Save" button. Who would ever guess that? If there is an error, it will tell you the line on which the error occurred and give you message that no normal person could possibly understand.

Unlike Visual Basic that provides extensive help to the non programmer, LSL leaves you to your own resources to sweat through script development. And unlike Java or C# that reward your effort by teaching you how a properly constructed language might look, LSL rewards you with nothing but frustration.

This language is not targeted at the casual user. It is not targeted at the advanced programmer. It is not really targeted at anyone. It is a horrible hodgepodge of scripting functions developed in what appears to be a laundry list fashion and all it shares with other languages is that it seem to incorporate almost every bad idea found in any other language.

The problem here, and this will become a repeating theme with LL, is that LL does not seem to know what they are trying to do. If LSL were developed for the casual programmer it should have been done entirely differently. If it were done for the advanced programmer, it should have been done entirely differently. Once cannot say that LSL fails to meet its design goals because there do not appear to be any design goals. And thus the user is left with a very difficult to learn and very difficult use programming language that deters nearly everyone who is not in SL on a mission.
It was a terrific idea gone horribly wrong due to a total lack of vision and direction. And that statement may well sum up Second Life as well.

Customizing Your Second Life

There are basically three things you can do in Second Life. You can socialize. You can modify your avatar or the environment. And you can see how others have modified their avatars or their environments. If it were nothing more than socializing then Second Life would be little more than a 3D chat room. But there is a complex interplay between these three capabilities that produces an impressive synergistic result.

If it weren't for the social aspects of Second Life there would be no one to appreciate what you have done modifying your avatar and your environment. It would be like the old catch phrase "all dressed up and no place to go". But, there is something about having others appreciate your work that can be incredibly motivating. At the same time, seeing what others have done can be creatively stimulating. So, although I am going to focus on these mod capabilities, I don't want to downplay the importance of the socializing for giving significance to these mod capabilities. And, for the sake of brevity, I am not going to distinguish between modifications to your avatar and modifications to the environment. I will just refer to these generically as mod capabilities.

There are two kinds of mod capabilities in Second Life, those created outside of SL and ported in, and those achieved in-world. Mods created outside of SL and ported in include some avatar shapes and skins, clothing, animations, gestures, music, and textures (images). If this were all that Second Life had to offer, it would not be distinguished from other virtual worlds that allow mods created outside of the world to be ported in. It is the in-world mods that really distinguish it.

Mods created in world include 3D building and Linden Scripting Language (LSL) scripting. While these in-world mod capabilities are not completely unique to Second Life; they are what give Second Life its unique flavor, unique capabilities and unique possibilities. Between these two, it is the 3D building capability that Linden Labs got mostly right. Not completely right. But certainly in the right direction. LSL has promise but falls short of building in its potential. Since I have taken this long to get down to these two mod capabilities, I will save further discussion for the next post.