Comments on: Second Life is All Growed Up and Doing Business

By: Melissa Yeuxdoux

Melissa Yeuxdoux — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 09:25:36 +0000

Ah… I see what you mean, and agree. Thanks.

By: MixedRealities :: Chris Abraham: ‘Twitter and Second Life are like boxes versus toys’

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 20:24:14 +0000

[...] The New World Notes (Wagner James Au) reported recently: Only a few months ago, marketing executive Chris Abraham dismissed Second Life for not being like Internet darling Twitter, “light, cheap, and open” — and I enjoyed pointing out that Twitter was not like Second Life: Unique, sticky, profitable. In an interesting post-script, thanks to a hands-on tour organized by Dusan Writer, Abraham has a highly revised appraisal. [...]

By: Chris Abraham

Chris Abraham — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 12:08:20 +0000

I call it a walled garden and not a closed garden — you get my terminology wrong… it is walled because you can’t stumble in. Facebook is a walled-garden — conversation. Content that is hidden behind a login and password, unable to be indexed by Google, for example, or found in search. Here’s an example I like, “Content that is designed specifically to be available to some subset of users, and not generally available on the world wide web.” (http://etvcookbook.org/glossary/#W) and what I mean is that people can’t “stumble” into SecondLife, using StumbleUpon if you will, and so Second Life is generally considered insular and not part of the mediasphere. Nobody can easily search-and-discover content on SecondLife if it isn’t already ON Second Life — and even so, even in Second Life, the system is set up in such a way that Second Life can and is an insider’s club even when and if you sort out the guide and the maps and all sorts of other things. Do you see what I mean? It may NOT be a technical Walled Garden but it is a Socially Walled Garden. I hope I made myself clear.

By: Melissa Yeuxdoux

Melissa Yeuxdoux — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 02:20:10 +0000

I am a little confused about why you call Second Life a “walled garden”; the client software is open source and several variants exist. The protocol for the interface with the server is known well enough that OpenSim could be created. There is an issue about whether one’s inventory in SL can be carried over to other realms–alas, as it is, the answer is “no”–sort of as if in RL, when you fly across a national boundary, you had to strip naked and buy all new clothing that you can wear only in the country you’re entering.

Compare that with Twitter, Facebook, et al. If there’s any way that they interact, I’m not aware of it.

By: Chris Abraham

Chris Abraham — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 23:09:21 +0000

This article has been edited down and will be on http://adage.com/digitalnext on Monday — please check it out there, too!

By: TheDiva Rockin

TheDiva Rockin — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 02:29:07 +0000

Yep! Many.

By: Loquacia Loon

Loquacia Loon — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 02:16:45 +0000

My initial experiences were really bad too, and I felt very lonely and lost and almost gave up too.

Now I realise that the best thing to do is to join groups which offer friendship and support to newbies, and enhance their experience. I joined the New Citizens Incorporated (NCI) group (http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/New_Citizens_Incorporated) rather later than I should have, but am playing catch up with the great (free classes) and the group chat helps you find support and ask questions. I first realised that SL is utterly gobsmackingly wondrous when I joined the Not Possible in Real Life Group (just take a look at Bettina Tizzy’s blog http://npirl.blogspot.com/) and went on some of the “field trips”. The Second Life Things to Do group (http://www.slthingstodo.com/main/) also has plenty of activities and the blog links to some of the best places in SL.

Reading books about the history and culture of Second Life also made me appreciate my experiences more – I recommend James Wagner Au’s “The Making of Second Life” and Tim Guest’s “Second Lives”.

Now I have interesting friends from around the world, love exploring new sims, am passionate about virtual fashion, work on a SL magazine, am learning photography, and am planning to bring my real world creative writing class into SL. Really I’m having a blast.

If you (or any other lost soul reading this) needs a friend or a guide I’d be most happy to chat to you and lend a hand.

By: Chris Abraham

Chris Abraham — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 01:08:30 +0000

Are there any official Linden Lab facilitators or Online Community Managers? I mean paid and not volunteer?

By: Gwyneth Llewelyn

Gwyneth Llewelyn — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 22:32:55 +0000

Wow! I’m glad you’re back; and even happier that you not only gave Second Life a second chance (pun intended!) but were given a grand tour by SL’s most avid blogger, and an interview with The Boss. :) More important than all that is the huge amount of excellent examples of the good use of Second Life on all sorts of use cases. I’m sure that at the very least some of the die-hard SL detractors will have the opportunity to read your article, and, even if they continue to disagree that the roadmap to the Internet’s future is paved in 3D, they will at least have to grudgingly accept that some exciting things are being done now in SL that have simply no way to exist elsewhere.

I’m also glad that despite your newly-found enthusiasm you have pin-pointed one of SL’s major problems, and criticised it as it deserved: objectively. I’m talking to the dreadful “first hour experience”. If all new users could get a grand tour like you did, they would immediately understand the benefits of Second Life. It completely changes the expectations — instead of struggling with the klunky, unfriendly interface, hitting at walls, and finding empty spaces all over the grid, and logging off in despair because they couldn’t find anything worth seeing, they might also give Second Life a second chance like you did. It’s incredible that every month close to half a million of new users register for Second Life. Almost none stay; I think that the retention rate is at its lowest right now, even though the number of new sign-ons has remained constant since 2006, and SL grows (even if not exponentially!) in all areas: economy, landmass, usage [stickiness], VoIP minutes, and so on. The users that remain are more active than ever before. But the new users… give up too quickly.

LL’s CEO is quite aware of these issues, as you said. He worries about it since the very first day in office. Ultimately the challenge for Second Life will be how to give everybody a great first-hour-experience so that its effective population grows again as it did back in 2006. If not, SL will continue to grow, of course, just immensely slowly, and it will attract new users by word-of-mouth and a lot of hand-holding.

In my not-so-humble opinion, I think that dealing with the first-hour-experience will come less from Linden Lab and much more from their partners and the thousands upon thousands of companies, organisations, and universities, who know how to bring their own clients/colleagues/partners/students/fellows into SL and give them a pleasant experience right from the start.

The good news is that this is already happening.

By: Brenda

Brenda — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 18:02:06 +0000

Chris, if you need any help building an office, I’m there!