There were numerous articles, forum posts, blog entries and the like, this past week, about the major downsizing at Linden Labs. The staff was cut by 30%. Operations are being consolidated in North American. And they are focusing on a new strategic direction.
First, I would like to offer my condolences to all those people who were laid off. Losing your job is never a pleasant experience and in the current economy is it even more dire. Add to that the special status of Lindens in the Second Life world. It will be very difficult to return to being a normal person.
I suspect that many employees got caught up in the hype just as the residents did. There is no end of bitter residents who thought their Second Life careers would make them millionaires only to find their dreams dashed and their wallets a little emptier. Now I suspect that there will be no end of ex Linden Lab employees who saw themselves as the next generation of Internet start up millionaires only to find themselves unemployed. For these people there is no upside to this situation.
Nonetheless, there is a potential upside for both Linden Labs and the residents of Second Life who still see its potential value and have hung on all these years despite the problems. I say potential because, although this is a good step, it is still unclear that thinking at Linden Labs has turned in a fruitful and positive direction.
There are two elements of their new strategy as noted in several of the postings and articles that give me pause. The first is the elimination of the custom client in favor of a web browser based client. And the second is the improvement of the "In world experience". I will take these topics up in the next few posts.
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If you put all the pieces together and use some logic (and imagination) you can clearly see that by laying off a significant part of the software production staff, declaring that all software development by Linden Labs will now be domestic (US) and listening to what is not being said, that Linden Labs is really confessing to the blunder that was Viewer 2, which everybody in Secondlife seemed to understand, except LL mouthpieces.
ReplyDeleteYou see, Viewer 2 was a compartmented production of a particular part of LL. And it was largely the workproduct of a Ukrainian based subcontractor that was obviously populated by programmers who had never had much to do in Second Life. LL's Viewer 2 was like "New" Coke, something nobody liked except people who wrote corporate press releases. It is almost universally reviled by anyone who has used Emerald or even Kirsten's viewer ( my opinon is that Kirsten's Viewer 2 clone is far better than LL's version. By laying off the extraneous people and the staff who pushed Viewer 2 before it was ready, LL management is trying to make things work.
So, instead of belittling LL management for the layoff's, give them a break. Let them try a new tact and see if they can expand our neighborhood by moving to a browser based system. Better yet, they should show some imagiantion and put Second LIfe in a Cloud so that anyone could acces it , via cell phone, PDA, TV internet, game systems, etc.
They also need to go to the game developers and get them to produce game universes compatible with SL. Imagine being able to teleport from SL to WofW.
Finally, they should stop talking about being a social network , a la Facebook. SL can never compete with Facebook. Our SL avatars are imaginary, squirrely named fantasy creatures. Nobody will ever seriously consider networking is SL for any business or personnel matter which is truly relevant to Real Life. SL is, indeed, a social network, but it is one in which I am a two meter tall Amazon sex goddess with perfect features, an unlimited supply of latex clothes, 40DD boobs and the ability to fly and teleport, it is not a social network in which I want to meet a significant real world other, negotiate RL business contracts or exchange photos of my kids with ANYONE!
Painted Melody.
http://www.paintedmelody.com
Heidi makes some good points and over all I agree with what she said. I felt the new viewer was a disaster and a waste of development resources.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I would disagree on two points. First, I did not belittle LL management for the layoffs. I thought the layoffs were a good idea. I have, however, in the past, belittled them about just about everything else.
The second points I would disagree with is where Heidi sees SL as exclusively a fantasy experience. I think it has enormous potential for business applications and I don't think the fantasy market is enough to sustain it, nor an adequate utilization of this amazing technology.