I avoided making a list predictions at the end of 2009. I make a few now and then, but I opted to wait and read what all the others thought. I was also waiting for another time, my rezday into Second Life, to take stock, look back and look forward. Second Life was my first experience with a Virtual World other then wild parties during my youth.
My rezday date is approaching shortly. I first entered Second life and chose a name and avatar on January 31st, 2007. Not this name, but that is another story. Over these past three years I have spent considerable time in-world, and in the fall of 2007 started this blog. It was originally just a place to capture links and images of my explorations and findings not inside Second life but on the web. My focus changed a few times, from highlighting the talent I found, to promoting the whole concept of this new medium, to looking at the technologies and influences that were changing how I could use the computer socially and professionally.
If I read something I would not make many comments, sometimes none. but just snip and clip enough to interest readers and then give them the link-back to the source. I never tied anything together. It only occurred to me recently, after 30 months and 876 posts, that I do not write much myself but I am not lazy.
Though I have hundreds of readers and followers and thousands of hits a month I wonder if anyone has followed my travels or gained anything from all this approach. So before I make any predictions or write long posts I think a little History will best set the stage for 2010.
One note before we start:
I would like to recognize in advance the major sources of information and data beyond the Second Life Blogs and Forums:
I still am fair use clipping graphs, videos, images and sections of posts, but in this post I am trying to tie them all together into a documentary that reveals it's own storyline. I am not a writer, researcher of academic so using [5] style references and links brakes the train of thought. If anyone sees a copyright issue please email me ASAP.
I have found another thing that bothers me. Unlike printed text and books, this is all digital and this data is all quickly disappearing as sites close or are redesigned. Whole history wikis, forum posts & blogs I once read are now gone & links are broken, but this way at least this story will remain intact as long as this post is accessible.
This is not a complete history. I have not looked at all the components and uses of Second Life™
, like education, nor have I noted any great builds or builders, or mentioned the world outside Second Life™
after it is born. That is covered in hundreds of previous posts here.
Background History
Setting the stage
The advent of the WWW
world wide web as exemplified by the first release of the
Mosaic web browser in 1993.
- 1990 - Tim Berners-Lee writes the first web browser, WorldWideWeb, using a NeXT computer.
- 1994 - Netscape releases the Navigator browser in October under the code name Mozilla. Pizza Hut offers pizza ordering on its Web page. The first online bank opens. Attempts to offer flower delivery and magazine subscriptions online. Netscape 1.0 is introduced in late 1994 SSL encryption that made transactions secure.
After Windows 1.0 and 2.0, in
1995 Microsoft releases Windows 95 with connectivity to the new WWW and everything explodes. This same year Philip Rosedale creates an innovative Internet video conferencing product called FreeVue, which is then acquired by RealNetworks.
- 1995 - Jeff Bezos launches Amazon.com and the first commercial-free 24 hour, internet-only radio stations, Radio HK and NetRadio start broadcasting. Dell and Cisco begin to aggressively use Internet for commercial transactions. eBay is founded by computer programmer Pierre Omidyar as AuctionWeb.
The next year in
1996 Rosedale became Vice President and
CTO of RealNetworks and VRML was all the rage. The future 3D Web is just around the corner. Here is the first of many clips and links (fair use) ~winks~.
In
1999 Rosedale leaves RealNetworks and founds Linden Lab. The peer-to-peer file sharing software
Napster launches.
In
2000 Linden Lab is funded by a group of notable investors including: Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus and an early investor in RealNetworks, and two venture capitalists, Catamount Ventures & Benchmark Capital.
image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nasdaq2.png
Around this time the "
dot-com bubble", covering roughly 1998–2000, climaxed March 10, 2000 with the
NASDAQ peaking at 5132.52
- In 2000 Cory Ondrejka joins Linden Lab becoming employee No. 4
- Work begins in 2001 at Linden Lab, settling on LindenWorld, later to be renamed Second Life.
About the author : Avi Bar-Zeev has over seventeen years professional experience in 3D entertainment and visual simulation, developing large successful software projects in the on-line, rides & games, and vis-sim domains. He is a co-founder of Keyhole, maker of Earthviewer (which later became Google Earth ), an early employee of Intrinsic Graphics and a number of other startups. He developed technologies for Second Life, including the procedural 3D object rendering code. In July 2008 avi went to work for Microsoft.
- September 11, 2001 (911) What were you doing then?
- February 11, 2002 — Linden Lab,opened the DEMO 2002 conference with an exclusive preview of its "LindenWorld" entertainment service.
- March 13th, 2002 - An Alpha version of what is now Second life under the name Linden World goes live and the first Resident (Steller Sunshine) rezzes.
Steller built some of the first resident content in SL, including the Governor's Mansion, a treehouse and a large beanstalk.
The basis for the modern mesh-based Avatar that was introduced in Alpha was a prim based Primitar. The central slider setting of 50 on the height slider today corresponds to the Primitar's approximate height. The primitar is said to have been accidentally made a bit taller than the average human, which is why placing the sliders in the middle makes the avatar a bit taller than expected.
- October 2002 - Linden Lab Announces The name of it's new Online World 'Second Life™' and availability of a beta program
- November 2, 2002 - Second Life Closed Beta begins
- March 31, 2003 - Second Life Open Beta Released
clip from Slashdot. Posted Wed Apr 30, 2003
from the dont-have-a-first-life-yet dept.
thehossman writes "A friend of mine works for Linden Lab, and for the past few months he's been hyping their upcoming product: Second Life. I've just been nodding my head, and ignoring him, but last week he logged in and gave me a mini-tour of the VR world (and some things their alpha-testers have helped create) and I was blown away. Now they've announced their public beta, and if you've got a machine that can handle it, I highly advise you to check it out."
This is another of the lifestyle-focused massively multiplayer titles that seem to have very big (venture capital?) budgets backing them - can they succeed?
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2003
The Birth of Second Life™ is not Easy
June 23, 2003 - Second Life Version 1.00 is released as a freely downloadable service, priced at $14.95 per month by subscription, with discounted longer term memberships also available. Originally the monetary model was based on a tax on prims, not on land.See the PDF Second Life Reference with a date of 06/20/03. This 102 page PDF is a detailed documentation of Second Life in 2003.
October 2003 - A Letter from the Publisher: Our Mission at The Alphaville Herald http://foo.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2003/10/index.html
In a recent study, Edward Castronova at California State Fullerton calculated that if the MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game) Norrath were "real" place, the per capita gross domestic product of Norrath would make it the 79th richest country in the world (per capita), just behind Russia, but ahead of Bulgaria.
This remarkable conclusion was based upon the sale of currency and virtual goods of Norrath on ebay and other online locations. Other recent work has pointed not just to the development of virtual economies, but to emerging governance structures, laws, and other institutions within virtual communities. If this is right, then virtual communities in general and MMORPGs in particular are not just games, and not just chat rooms, but are also real places that are developing real social institutions and real economies.
In their first rather academic posts (see above link) The authors layout some of the foundations of how these new Virtual Worlds should be structured & managed. Only later do they get swept up in reporting the "Social Games" played like the Second Life Battles
October 2003 - Second Life 1.1 ReleasedClothing, textures, sounds and scripts now enjoy the same protections as other objects, allowing you to set permission on clothing, scripts, and textures so that other people cannot modify or copy your hard work.
There is a new permissions field for the 'next owner'. The next owner is the person who either buys the item, or receives it from you as a gift. By default, the next owner will have permission to customize the object, so if you want to sell a shirt that the buyer cannot modify, turn off Next Owner Modify. There is also a new permissions flag for transferability. If you specify in the next owner field that an object cannot be transferred, then the receiver of your content cannot sell or give away copies of the object. If you want to give away a copy of a shirt, but don’t want the recipient to be able to resell it, turn off Next Owner Transfer.
& Linden Lab gave theses statistics:
Second Life now stretches over nearly 1,000 acres of land containing more than 200,000 user-created objects, including clothing and accessories to buy, nightclubs to visit, and an amusement park owned and operated by residents with more than 30 exciting rides. Second Life residents typically spend 13,000 hours a week in-world, socializing, building and conducting over 17,000 transactions of goods and services.
- November 2003 Linden Lab, announced changes to Second Life's Terms of Service now recognize the ownership of in-world content by the subscribers who make it. The revised TOS allows subscribers to retain full intellectual property protection for the digital content they create, including characters, clothing, scripts, textures, objects and designs.
- December 2003 - The Prim Tax revolt results in rethinking the whole prim tax model and establishes the new business model for Linden Lab, based on land taxes or as is now known tier payments, scrapping the prim tax. Version 1.20 Released
Read: THE PRICE OF A NEW WORLD: AN INTERVIEW WITH PHILIP LINDEN
November 2004 - SL Forum posts give a glimpse of the early lands maket:
http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=26248"I'm a newbie and Sims Online refugee who decided to risk an adventure on the auction system because I saw a very beautiful parcel, in a new sim that was starting to get cluttered up with malls and ugly roads and buildings. I thought it would be interesting to try to develop the land with a project while trying to keep its pristine beauty."
- Eggy Lippmann proposes what later would become Open Space Sims in response to mainland landbarons & landuse abuses.
I wouldnt mind seeing LL auction land on void-like sims. You know, 4 sims per server, 1/4th the land fees? I wouldnt mind getting 16384 m2 with my free allocation of 4096. Even if it meant I could only have 1000 prims. I'm sick of all the clutter, people building their boxy houses right next to each other, deleting all the linden trees, bleh.
December 2004 -
Cory Linden writes in the LL Blog:
"Much like Gaming Open Market, SLExchange does a great job of integrating into Second Life and makes it easy for users to shop when they aren’t online or don’t have a lot of time. I think that it will be very interesting to watch SLExchange’s expansion over the coming weeks and months."
One of the SLexchange owner's responds:
Thank you Corey for your enthusiasm! We are please that so many Second Life members have found SLExchange.com!
With the vast complexity of SL commerce, it seemed natural that a truly expanded marketplace was needed, and we sincerely hope people will find our eMarketplace to be of value and an important part of their SL experience.
Currently we have over 100 SL content creators listing their wares at our web site and we continue to greet new arrivals each day. Many merchants have listed free items, and we encourage everyone to log in today and see the website update we did this past weekend!
Thank you everyone for the wonderful support - we're just getting started!
Merwan Marker
CoOwner
SL Exchange
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2005
The Great Year to Build a Business
or the early bird gets the wormKermitt Quirk invented
Tringo over the Christmas holidays by combining Bingo and Tetris. He scripted it, held beta runs trials at The Barnyard owned by Omar Drago and LovesIt Langdon and once it was stable, started selling it.
March 2005 - Release 1.6.0
- Steer your avatar more smoothly while walking by left-clicking on yourself and driving with your mouse
- Video streaming – In much the same way as streaming audio, both live and on-demand video can be streamed into Second Life and played back on any textured surface in-world. The QuickTime engine is used for streaming playback, allowing support for open standards like MPEG-4. Requires that QuickTime be installed.
September 2005 — Linden Lab announces that Basic Memberships - formerly $9.95 - are now free.
"Second Life is taking off in a way that greatly resembles the early internet — and appeals to an open, creative, entrepreneurial community." said Philip Rosedale, CEO and Founder of Linden Lab. "Browsing a website doesn't cost anything, and neither should exploring Second Life. Moreover, the number of people buying land and developing content in Second Life is increasing so rapidly that we believe that not charging for Basic Memberships will actually increase our overall revenues."
"The thousands of content developers creating clothing, games, services, and other experiences within Second Life will be delighted by our transition to a free model in which tens of thousands of new residents will gain free access to the platform" said David Fleck, VP of Marketing for Linden Lab. "We expect the US$18M for goods and services transacted annually to grow rapidly with this change by stimulating more new development and economic activity.
The stage is set for Second Life to expand and become an open platform." Second Life continues to grow at an accelerating rate and will shortly reach 50,000 Residents. "For me, Second Life isn't a game — it's a job, a living, a place to do things I can't do in real life" said Munchflower Zaius, Second Life entrepreneur. "I began selling avatar skins to make extra money and it's become my sole income — and now, it's more than enough money to support me and my two kids.
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2006
The Year of Great Expectations & Media Hype
The year of the story that started the boom of media coverage and the resulting rapid population growth
March 2006 — Linden Lab®, announced it had completed a successful financing round of $11M led by Globespan Capital Partners and with participation by Jeff Bezos. Current investors Benchmark Capital, Catamount Ventures, software pioneer Mitch Kapor, and the Omidyar Network also participated in the round. The best guess is that total amount of venture capital invested now exceeds 20 million including funds provided by Rosedale.
"Second Life has grown to over 165,000 residents with an economy worth over US$60mm per year. With thousands of Second Life creators building more complex and engaging content, we are rapidly moving toward a mainstream global market," said Philip Rosedale, CEO of Linden Lab. "
April 2006 - Flexiprims introduced
May 2006 - Second Life Resident Anshe Chung is featured on the cover of the U.S. magazine BusinessWorld and reported to be the first person becoming an Real Life (RL) millionaire due to Second Life business.
May 2006 - MWN.com's GOING PRO IN SL - Aimee Weber interviewOctober 2006 - the 1,000,000th Resident joined Second Life.
I've lectured in Second Life, complete with slides, and remarked that I didn't really see the advantage of doing it in SL. Members of the audience pointed out that it enabled people from all over the world to participate and to chat with each other while listening to my voice and watching my slides; again, you don't need an immersive graphical simulation world to do that. I think the real proof of SL as an educational medium with unique affordances would come into play if an architecture class was able to hold sessions within scale models of the buildings they are studying, if a biochemistry class could manipulate realistic scale-model simulations of protein molecules, or if any kind of lesson involving 3D objects or environments could effectively simulate the behaviors of those objects or the visual-auditory experience of navigating those environments. Just as the techniques of teleoperation that emerged from the first days of VR ended up as valuable components of laparascopic surgery, we might see some surprise spinoffs in the educational arena. A problem there, of course, is that education systems suffer from a great deal more than a lack of immersive environments. I'm not ready to write off the educational potential of SL, although, as noted, the importance of that potential should be seen in context. In this regard, we're still in the early days of the medium, similar to cinema in the days when filmmakers nailed a camera tripod to a stage and filmed a play; SL needs D.W. Griffiths to come along and invent the equivalent of close-ups, montage, etc.
The one difficult to surmount obstacle is the learning curve. One figure I'd like to see is the number of people who create objects and environments in SL. That population is where the innovations are likely to emerge.
I think the SL hype deserves debunking, but let's not set that debunking up as an eternal straw man. Who, exactly, is predicting that any percentage of the population will really live in SL? (Someone who has lost a loved one to WOW?) To me, the point has long since ceased to be whether or not this is going to be as popular as solitaire, but whether some truly useful innovation is going to emerge.
November 2006 -
Copybot developed. LL Makes a statement Use of CopyBot and Similar Tools a ToS ViolationCopyBot was originally created as a debugging tool by the
libsecondlife development team.
December 2006 - The Penises attack http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CopyBotDecember 2006 - Newsmaker: Virtual magnate shares secrets of success
CNET news.com: December 20, 2006
Last month, Ailin Graef issued a press release announcing that the company's total holdings, comprised mainly of virtual land in Second Life, were worth more than a million real-life dollars. For those who aren't familiar with the complex economies of virtual worlds, such a claim may seem incomprehensible.
But for anyone who has spent significant time in Second Life, the number seems all too possible, given Chung's dominance of the land market there.
On Monday, Graef visited CNET's Second Life bureau for a discussion about her business, how best to set up businesses in Second Life and the nature of competition there.
Unfortunately, as the interview was commencing, the event was attacked by a "griefer," someone intent on disrupting the proceedings. The griefer managed to assault the CNET theater for 15 minutes with--well, there's no way to say this delicately--animated flying penises.
It's not clear why the griefer attacked, but Anshe Chung is controversial to some Second Life residents for reasons such as inflexibility on land pricing, the signs she has placed in many areas of the virtual world that are visible to anyone flying overhead, and her ability to get many residents to sell their land to her.
Chung refused to continue the interview in the CNET theater but agreed to go on in her own space.
Once restarted, the interview was attacked again, and the protester even managed to crash the entire server on which Chung's theater is held.
December 2006 - Growth of Second Life Community and Economy
Highlights:
Premium Residents. Premium Residents has grown from 5,000 at the start of 2005 to over 36,000 at the end of November 2006. Since its inception more than 90,000 unique Residents have bought currency on the exchange. Basic Residents account for significant economic activity.
Regions of Land Owned by Residents. The Second Life world is made up of over 3,500 regions of land. I expect that 70% of Linden Lab’s revenue will come from land sales and maintenance fees.
User Hours. In November of 2006, Residents spent more than 6.4 million hours in-word – that’s more than 10 times the number of user hours in January 2005. Similarly, the monthly peak number of Residents in-world at the same time, concurrent users as seen on the Second Life home page, has grown dramatically, reaching over 18,000 in the past couple of weeks.
LindeX Volume and Cash Payouts. The LindeX is a virtual user-to-user currency market in which Residents can buy and sell Linden Dollars (L$) – the virtual currency of Second Life. Residents use L$ to buy and sell virtual or real goods and services in Second Life. We first launched the LindeX in October of 2005. Since then more than $15 million dollars worth of Lindens has been bought and sold on the exchange – with $2.6 million traded in November alone. Many Residents operate businesses in Second Life where they sell virtual or real world goods or services in exchange for L$. They can then sell their L$ on the exchange and use their resulting US dollar balances to pay the maintenance fees on their land in Second Life, or they can get real cash. Since October of 2005 our Residents have cashed out almost $8 million with about $1.1 million of that in November. The larger shaded area on this graph shows the number of US dollars traded for L$ on the LindeX exchange. The smaller shaded area shows the number of US dollars Linden Lab has paid Residents who have sold Linden dollars on the exchange. Many Residents make enough money that Second Life is their sole income.
Economic Activity. This chart is for the economists in the community. The dark blue chart shows the total supply of Linden dollars in-world at the end of each month since January 2006. The light blue chart shows the total Linden dollar volume exchanged between Residents. The orange line is simply the light blue chart divided by the dark blue chart – the total in-world Linden dollar transactions divided by the supply of Linden dollars. In a real economy this is called the velocity of money. Basically, this means that Linden dollars are cycling through the economy about 2.2 times each month. In November of 2006, there were about a trillion Linden dollars in circulation and about 2.4 trillion L$ passed between Residents, implying an economic velocity of 2.4. The economic velocity has been surprisingly steady as the economy has grown. The average monthly economic velocity in 2006 was about 2.2x with a standard deviation of 0.16x and a median of 2.3x. The stability of this monthly number is interesting given that the daily exchange of Linden dollars has been inflated at times by individual users performing tests on some of their scripts.
But economic velocity is one of the many underlying metrics of Second Life that show a high level of consistency over time. It’s that consistency that makes forecasting Second Life growth surprisingly accurate and exciting to contemplate.
I hope this additional transparency into the underlying statistics of Second Life is helpful to you. I’m sure there are many statistics that people would love to see and we’ll be releasing more information over time. I think the community would agree with everyone at Linden Lab that being involved with the growth of Second Life is a lot of fun!
(Since 2006 the statistics provided by Linden Lab have become much more opaque. See the End of this post, Dec 2009 for the latest and compare a few numbers)
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2007
The Year of Ups and Downs
In 2007 the hype goes negative & continued growth causes server problems and instability as concurrent users approach 30,000. Scalability is questioned. Corporate marketeers flounder, businesses suffer and the boom ends.January 2007 - The SL client is open sourced
I rez an avatar on Jan 31st 2007 in this time of explosive growth.January 2007 - OpenSimulator was founded as an
open source simulator project.
Feb 2007 - Linden Lab launches voice in Second Life
May 2007 -
Child Sex Scandal in Second LifeMay 2007 - Sculpted prims are made available on the
Main Grid as of version 1.16.0(5).
By May I have finished building my first house all from freebies and prims. A short time later JeanRicard was first rezzed.July 2007 - TechCrunch reports. Will The Last Corporation Leaving Second Life Please Turn Off The Light& The New York Times reports
- Virtual marketers have second thoughts about Second Life. On its website, Second Life says the number of total residents is more than 8 million. But that counts people who signed in once and never returned, as well as multiple avatars for individual residents. Even at peak times, only about 30,000 to 40,000 users are logged on, said Brian Haven, an analyst with Forrester Research."You're talking about a much smaller audience than advertisers are used to reaching," Haven said.
Some in the audience don't want to be reached. After marketers began entering Second Life, an avatar named Urizenus Sklar -- in the real world, University of Toronto philosophy professor Peter Ludlow -- wrote in the public-relations blog Strumpette that the community was "being invaded by an army of old world meat-space corporations."
He and other residents accused companies of lacking creativity by setting up traditional-looking stores that didn't fit in. His column was reproduced in the Second Life Herald.
Nissan Motor Co., a subject of such protests, has since transformed its presence in Second Life from a car vending machine to an "automotive amusement park," where avatars can test gravity-defying vehicles and ride hamster balls. Sun Micro has made its participation more interactive and fanciful, Chief Gaming Officer Chris Melissinos said.
Ludlow isn't impressed. He said most firms were more interested in the publicity they received from their ties with Second Life than in the digital world itself. "It was a way to brand themselves as being leading-edge," he said.
Angry avatars have taken virtual action. Reebok weathered a nuclear bomb attack and customers were shot outside the American Apparel store. Avatars are creating fantasy knockoffs of brand-name products too.
Some buying and selling does go on in Second Life. An avatar can acquire currency -- called Linden dollars -- by earning it or buying it with U.S. dollars. (The exchange rate is 268 Lindens to $1.) With a stack of Linden dollars, an avatar can spice up his or her look or while away the time in a casino.
July 2007 - Second Life Gambling Ban shortly followed by
August 2007 - Collapse of Ginko Financial
September 2007 - I start this blogSeptember 2007 -
Surprise! European VAT Tax Surcharge in SL September 2007 - Controversy erupts over
Anshe Chung and ACS's 10 Linden Collection & involvement in SLEXchange (nowXstreet SL)
I have cut all the old SLX forum post here since it may son be gone.
Sep 11, 2007 Post subject: Recent concerns in the forums
In reading through these forums I see there is quite a bit of speculation and misconception about SL Exchange's relationship to Anshe Chung and ACS. I want to take a few moments to address some of the fears and concerns expressed over the past week as well as hopefully key you all in on the reasons and motives behind some of what's happened.
Anshe's role at SL Exchange
It's best to start at the beginning. Anshe has had partial ownership of SL Exchange since 2005. Although Anshe has been a partner for over two years, I have always had and continue to have controlling shares in the company and complete autonomy in all things relating to management and operation of SL Exchange. Anshe gets a vote if she desires, but I have the final say in everything.
I feel it's necessary to mention that the company does not distribute dividends to its owners. The only people getting paid here are the ones who work for the company. I draw a salary along with the rest of the staff, but Anshe doesn't get paid as she doesn't work for us. We're a small company with a tight budget that leaves no room for dividends, and any excess funds we do end up with go straight into improvement and expansion.
The ACS 10Linden Link
Anshe asked me if I would create a category for some items that she was bringing over from IMVU. I wasn't thrilled with the idea of a new category just for these items, but I wanted to assist her because we, as a company, hadn't done much for her in all the time she's been a partner.
Because I'm a coder at heart, my focus was on making something that would give her what she wanted without compromising the infrastructure of the Marketplace. I completely missed the boat on how a link like this would be perceived by our Merchants. I expected some rumblings about Anshe being a part of SL Exchange, just like there always are whenever someone brings her relationship to SLX to light, but I had no inkling that this would be perceived as a blow to our other Merchants.
You expressed your outrage and you were heard. That link was changed to a L$10 link for all L$10 items within a day. Then after further consideration and further reflection, I decided to remove it completely and as of Sunday, September 9, 2007 it was no longer on SL Exchange.
It was never my intention to undermine our Merchants. I sincerely apologize for my misjudgment; my actions appeared to be an attempt to do exactly that and I will give serious thought to this effect for changes we make to the service in the future.
Anshe's "comeback"
Unbeknownst to me, yesterday Anshe came back to the forums to try to promote her concept again. I was livid.
I personally removed that thread. I did so because the initial post and subsequent replies by Anshe contained multiple violations of SL Exchange's company policy. And although she is not on staff here at SLX, as an investor in the company she needs to abide by that policy. She blatently overstepped her bounds and when she did so, her posts were removed as they were totally unacceptable.
Anshe's Status on SLX
Thank you to those who mentioned Anshe's Admin status on these forums. That was a forum mis-label and has been corrected. She did not and still does not have any special Forum privileges.
I hope this helps to clear up some of the misunderstandings about Anshe and her position here at SL Exchange. I have and will continue to have full authority and final say in all decisions relating to the operation of SL Exchange. I've learned a valuable lesson from the events of the past week and I assure you SL Exchange will not make the same mistakes in the future.
I want to thank every one of you for taking the time and energy to express your fears and concerns. You made your views known and you've been heard. I hope now we can all put this behind us and move forward, working together to make this place we call Second Life the best it can be.
October 2007 - The CBS - CSI:NY episode launched by the Electric Sheep Company using the new OnRez Second Life client ( the first major independent Second Life client launched since Linden Lab)
fails. (Later the Electric Sheep layoff most of there staff and abandons SL totally)
On October 9th, 2007 in San Jose, California, the Virtual Worlds Interoperability Community Summit was held.
This featured a gathering of 58 people from 23 different companies and organizations that participated in a wide ranging discussion of the issues and challenges to enable interoperable Virtual Worlds. The day's agenda was crafted to touch on a wide ranging set of issues to foster a discussion of the challenges to interoperability and the standards that would be required to support them. In addition, there was discussion about the next steps we could take to further our goals and vision.
At the end of the meeting a few common themes emerged:
- The desire for interoperability of Virtual Worlds
- The need for standards to support this
- The desire to form an alliance based on this initial meeting to move this forward
We are now taking steps to form an alliance to further this discussion. This alliance will be open to everyone, however the details of the alliance are not yet established. The alliance will not be a standards body, but a group that will determine the necessary technology and standards to enable virtual world interoperability. Once the standards are determined, the alliance will then work with existing standards organizations like W3C, Khronos, IETF, Oasis, ISO, etc to get existing standards changed or new ones ratified.
December 2007 - Linden Lab CTO, is fired by Philip. Critics & residents speculate that something is a af oot, Is this the beginning of the end? a purge of management? a sale or is it preparations for an IPO?
Zee Linden - Second Life economy posts solid growth in Q4
Economic Growth. Many of our economic metrics showed much slower growth from Q2 to Q3 as can be seen in the charts below. We believe the slower growth was primarily due to the impact of stricter security on credit card processing, shutting down gambling in July and beginning to charge VAT September. With those things behind us in the fourth quarter, the Second Life economy demonstrated its resiliency. The LindeX - the purest measure of economic activity in Second Life - grew 13.2% to nearly $7.6 million USD for December and $22 million USD for the full quarter.
Concurrency. Peak concurrent users, shown in the red line on the chart below, grew 12.5% in the fourth quarter to more then 58,000 - up more than 210% for the full year. We’ve seen a growth in concurrency almost every week since the beginning of September. Growth continued last weekend when concurrency grew another 5.3% to 61,500.
User hours. In December, approximately 893,000 residents logged more than 25.6 million user hours (shown in pink in the chart above) or more than 30 hours a month per user. Of that just 519,000 Active residents, spent 25.5 million hours - averaging more than 49 hours per month. (”Active” is defined as users who spent over an hour inworld during the month.)
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2008
January 22, 2008 - Banking Prohibitions - Following the Ginko collapse in 2007 Linden Lab announces it is prohibited to offer interest or any direct return on an investment unless your a RL regulated bank. This Killed the already damaged stock markets & banking sector of the SL economy. RealEstate prices hold up 30 days then fall from $6L/m down to $2L/m.
February 2008 -
Linden lab cracks down of Ad FarmsMar 8, 2008 - $75/m
OpenSpace Product (Sim) announcedOpenspaces will no longer have to be purchased in sets of four at a time, as they have been so far. They can be bought singly, for a setup fee of USD$415 followed by a fee of USD$75 per month.
All other island services are therefore available for single Openspace regions, at the usual region rates, and Openspaces will no longer have to be placed together on the grid, they can be placed apart.
To purchase an Openspace region you will still need to own a normal island already, however you will not have to anchor your Openspace to that region, it can be placed wherever you would normally be able to place an island.
Finally, we are going to increase the prim count for Openspaces. They will become exactly a quarter of the normal 15000 prim limit for a region, so they will be set at 3750 (to date they have been limited to 1875 prims).
The response is generally:
This is fantastic news.
Thank you Linden Lab.
April 2008 - Windlight rendering became part of the regular release in client version 1.19.1
Mainland prices fall as the Lindens add more mainland and new Open Space islands. Full regions are hit hard by the move of rental residents to the new Openspace sims. Mainland parclels and whole Island sims lose resale value, it is now recognized your just a renter really. The "realestate market is in upheaval.
May 2009 - The lindens start adding new "Designer Mainland" Bay City.
June 2009 - Mainland supply on hold until July
The average price per meter is the key metric we observe to decide levels of mainland supply. It takes account of all resident-to-resident sales per day, but excludes a number of data items such as zero value sales (when friends swap land around), Governor Linden sales (including Auctions themselves) and all private estate sales.
We also measure sales by groups and those by individuals separately although at the moment the average price for both is similar (group sales being as much as L$1 per meter lower on average).
It will be no secret to those that have bought or sold land recently, that the average price of mainland has been falling. In 2007 we managed the price down slowly from a high figure of L$12 per meter to a more reasonable L$6 to L$8. It then rose a little as we reached March of this year before falling consistently since then. In recent days we have seen it dip below L$6 per meter which we feel is a little low.
There are a number of factors behind this recent drop, not least the large number of Openspace regions sold through the new Land Store and the changes in island pricing. Of course the supply of new Mainland at auction is another factor.
At Linden Lab, we respect the investments you make in Second Life land and are sensitive to price fluctuations related to our auctions of new land. To allow the market to absorb the land recently added to the grid, we will be suspending whole region auctions for the next four weeks after which we will review the situation again (on or around the 11th July).
June 2008 - Philip Rosedale turns over the CEO position to a new Mark D. Kingdon (M Linden). Rosedale replaces Kapor as chairman of the board.
July 2008 - IBM and Linden Lab Interoperability Announcement
IBM and Linden Lab have announced that research teams from the two companies successfully teleported avatars from the Second Life Preview Grid into a virtual world running on an OpenSim server, marking the first time an avatar has moved from one virtual world to another. It’s an important first step toward enabling avatars to pass freely between virtual worlds, something we’ve been working toward publicly since the formation of the Architecture Working Group in September 2007.
Q: How will Linden Lab prevent property from being copied into other virtual worlds?
We’re paying extremely close attention to that question. We will be designing this with the Second Life community to ensure their needs are met. We want to stress that when it does become possible to move avatars between worlds, we will take the utmost care to protect the rights of Second Life property owners and creators. Linden Lab will not design a system that lets people openly violate the permissions of SL goods and take them to other worlds. We recognize that intellectual property is the engine that drives Second Life, and we are completely committed to preserving the qualities that make Second Life the unique, innovative and dynamic place that it is today.
August 2008 - Mono was launched in as part of the 1.24 Server deploy
September 2008 -
Linden lab cracks down of Ad Farms again
The good news therefore, is that Network advertising (Ad Farming) will no longer be permitted on the Linden Mainland unless you have a written agreement with Linden Lab (essentially meaning a license to advertise). Anyone currently operating such a business inworld will need to remove their adverts by the 1st October 2008.
"Linden Lab does not provide any advertising capabilities other than our Search listings in Second Life. In general, it's important to understand that Linden Lab views Second Life as a platform and focuses its efforts on development and improvements of the platform. We do not create content or services within Second Life"
October 2008 - OpenSpace Price Change - ALL Land/Server GROWTH STOPS
October 2008 - The Lindens restart adding Mainland Nautilus Lacuna and more.
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2009
New Management, Re-factoring and ReorganizationJanuary 2009 - Linden Lab acquires OnRez & SLeXchange in order to merge and integrate them in the SL service.
March 2009 - Linden Lab started a project to create a new continent ( Zindra) especially designed for adult content which came online in October 2009. Land swaps follow and a migration starts, leaving whole sections of the old mainland vacant. In April a Linden Lab press release spins it all this way: Linden Lab Ushers in New Era of Second Life with Initiative to Customize The Experience for Each User
August 2009 - Tom Hale gave a tour of the new Second Life 2.0 viewer due to be launched sometime in 2010.
September 15, 2009 - The Adult policy goes live and the viewer restricts access to Adult SIMs unless your verified as over 18+.
November 2009 - Second Life Enterprise™ Beta Released - Linden Lab Adds Behind-the-Firewall Product and Apps Marketplace to Second Life Enterprise Offering
November 2009 - Linden Lab announces a new Resident Help Network (RHN) Portal and closes the Mentor Program December 11, 2009, saying it does not "scale": Groupname: Second Life Mentor (3639 members) comments in the form include:
- I can't deny the feeling anymore...
...
... the average linden labs decision maker does more damage to the grid in 5 minutes than 10000 griefer kids could do in a week!
- It's D Day. The day LL closes the best free resource they ever had.
All I can say is for all those I knew it has been a pleasure working with you.
For all those I never got to meet, it was a pleasure being in the same group as you.
I will always do everything in my power to assist those that are lost or can't figure things out.
May LL one day realise how much they have lost by letting this resource go.
A very sad ending to 2009 for many.
Though The Lindens issued a Press Release of 65% Growth for 2009 and the media and bloggers just blindly republished it, looking at the figures one sees a more modest growth of less then 7% for the year.
Trading Activity on the LindeX – The volume of exchange on the LindeX, the marketplace for Linden dollars (L$), the Second Life virtual currency, reached US$29 million in Q4 2009, representing 1% growth compared to the previous quarter and 10% growth over the same quarter a year ago. A portion of the trade in Linden dollars has migrated to the Xstreet SL exchange as well as third-party exchanges, which we believe is a contributor to the flat trend in LindeX volume.
User hours reached 113 million in Q4 2009 – User hours declined in Q4 when compared to Q3 2009. This decline is attributed overwhelmingly to a decline in user hours from accounts that spent more than 300 hours logged in to Second Life each month. See the chart below (User Hours by Usage Band) and the SPOTLIGHT of the Q2 2009 Economy Blog post for an explanation of this dynamic.
The Q4 figures show a 5% decline when compared to Q2 2009, and a 1% increase when compared to Q3 2008.
The Impact of Scripted Agents, a.k.a. Bots Scripted Agents, commonly known as Bots, can be helpful tools in Second Life. When used appropriately, they can improve the Second Life experience. However, some Bot usage is in violation of our Terms of Service. In 2009, we started taking action to mitigate the usage of Scripted Agents that are in violation of our policies, in particular Bots used for the purpose of improving the results generated by the Second Life search algorithms. Since September 2009, we've been gradually increasing enforcement of our policies, and as a result, have been seeing declines in total user hours.
Oh Yes Land, lets not forget land ~LOL~
Source: http://www.tycheshepherd.com/images/gridsize_2009.png
Tyche Shepherd reports at the start of 2010 that 6 Estates have been detected as holding more than 1% of all Private Estates The largest being Dreamland ACS @ 5.6% of all Islands in Second Life. Anshe Chung hustled to adapt in 2008
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2010
The Future - Coming SoonAfter two years of "New Management" and "Community Relations Management Nightmares" will "Coming Soon" be the theme of 2010?
January 2010 - The RHN Portal - as of Jan 26th all it says is Coming Soon
From the new RHN Forum:
- Jan 26, 2010 - the RHN Application is outdated, "Applications will reopen in mid January 2010"
January 2010 -
from Mashable: What’s Up With Virtual Worlds? [ANALYSIS]The State of Virtual Worlds
Dedicated virtual worlds platforms haven’t become mainstream despite all the press attention and investor enthusiasm. Maybe most users find them too abstract, or maybe the sort of extreme anonymity they provide only appeals to a few subsets of people.
The greatest virtual world success story to date for grown-up users (it’s a whole different story for kids) is arguably the online roleplaying game World of Warcraft. Maybe the lesson to be learned here is that socialization alone isn’t enough to keep people interested in a virtual reality. If socializing is the sole objective, people usually prefer to be themselves on Facebook or Twitter (Twitter).
Also consider Foursquare (Foursquare) and Gowalla (Gowalla), which make virtual worlds out of the real one. Like virtual worlds, socialization on its own appears not to be enough to sustain location based services. Foursquare and Gowalla found success where previous entrants in the space had struggled by incorporating gaming elements to keep things interesting.
And while location based services and massively multiplayer video games are not the virtual reality science fiction that geeks hoped for, if you think about it, social networking and location gaming are concepts so out there that even most sci-fi authors didn’t see them coming.
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