To me the biggest problem SL has is PR related; it has a bad reputation.
Some of this is not SL’s or LL’s fault but something to do with lazy ‘journalists’.
And I am speaking with some experience as I get to deal with journalists in RL all the time.
Let’s look at a few examples.
Because SL has just turned 10 years old, it has received some extra media attention, I think that LL planned this very well and did a good job.
Any good reporter working on any kind of article would or should first visit a website related to the subject of the article.
In this case a good reporter would visit the Second Life website but also the Linden Lab website.
The SL website sadly has no Press section, this is maybe something LL should add there because they too know that journalists are sometimes too lazy or dim to visit the LL website as well.
With the media you should never assume that the person who picks you as their subject is one who is dedicated to their job and doesn’t mind doing a little extra work.
But once a good journalist does visit the LL website, they can easily find the press section and find the recent press releases.
And it was a very good idea to make that so called infographic and publish it there together with some snappy PR.
Journalists love this kind of stuff, it works.
And if they look a little further they can find a link to the LL flickr set with SL pictures they can use for their article.
These promotional images are not bad and also pretty recent, uploaded just a month ago.
Of course we can debate and disagree on the kind of images they have chosen and maybe we should because I can think of more interesting pictures, but at least the material is available!
This update on the Press section of LL (I don’t know if they offered images to be used by the press before last month) does seem to work.
Have a look at this article for instance; San Francisco interview with Rod Humble.
It uses one of the press package images and the journalists clearly read the press release and based his questions on it.
Some important websites also found (or were send) the press release and made good use of it.
Have a look at the Gamespot article for instance and this one on Massively.
They both pretty much copy the LL press release and use the infographic or other up to date decent screenshots.
In contrast, here is an article that came out just before LL uploaded some free to use screenshots.
It was written for PCgamesN, not a very big website, but in the world of PR, every bit of publicity counts.
You can visit the article here and you will see this horrendous illustration being used;
I’ve managed to track this picture down to 2007, but it could be even older.
Even though this article was made just a few days before LL put free to use pictures on the internet, it still shows some lazy ‘journalism’.
It may come as a shock but many reporters can’t be bothered to spend much more then a few seconds on google to do their ‘research’.
Anyway, regardless of your opinions about Second Life and Linden Lab, there is no excuse for sloppy work, so I felt I had to at least complain to that website via twitter about them using such an old screenshot.
Showing that with an article about Second Life in 2013 is unfair, wrong and it just not cricket.
But alas, it is not just a problem you can have with sloppy journalists from small websites.
The once holy BBC, broadcaster of all broadcasters, recently made this little video that does pretty much everything wrong it could do wrong and as such a big tv station, it causes lots of damage.
The title ‘Whatever happened to Second Life’, is already negative, it almost suggests that we should expect that it died years ago.
In the video we first see a backroom band that has a monthly gig in Second Life, not a bad start, but what does it have to do with the story and why does the footage of the band inworld seem to be rather old and simplistic?
40 seconds out of 2 minutes of precious airtime, we’re being told about this band, why they enjoy using it followed by more ancient footage.
Nice but what does that say about 10 years of SL?
One would almost think that the reporter used the 10th anniversary as an excuse to tell something about the band.
Then a bit of negative history about how SL had a hype that it didn’t live up to, true but not that important really because most big companies just didn’t get Second Life.
Yes this is an article in the business section so it is understandable that they look at the big companies that came and left.
But that is old news, they should have looked at LL as a company, had they bothered to visit the LL press section and found the press release they would have realised that that would be rather interesting a subject as well.
Even for people just interested in business, it is rather remarkable that LL has managed to keep SL going for over a decade, how much money it still makes, how it survived the leaving of all those big companies, how huge its virtual economy is, etc, etc.
So sometimes, it does not matter what you do as a company, there will always be reporters and journalists who are too inexperienced, lazy or dim to find their way to your press package.
They will use old screenshots and ignore your view of things.
There is very little you can do about it.
Luckily in todays world, we as users can step in now and then.
If you see a website that is writing about Second Life and being overly negative, unfair, unbalanced or even tells lies, share it with your friends and tell them to share their thoughts.
Go on, find the BBC on twitter or facebook, check out pcgamesn, trace down other websites, and tell them what they are doing wrong.
The media doesn’t have to love Second Life, they don’t have to blindly copy the story Linden Lab gives them, they can be critical or even hate it.
But they least they should do is pick up some up to date information and screenshots!
Jo Yardley's Second Life 
When one knows a subject it is easy to see how poorly journalists are doing their job. In our case we know Second Life and the community. In the Myst games and fan group, the same is true they know their game and community. So, there and with Second Life I have seen the poor and erroneous reporting by various mdeia.
But, poor reporting is not limited to just SL and Myst. Whether it is Matthews or O’Reilly, they are both covering many subjects they know nothing about. They only need to do it well enough that listeners that know even less are convinced they have it right.
The serious tragedy in this is revealed by University of Michigan studies done in 2005 & 6 that shows people do not change their belief even when shown information they think they know, is wrong. The study is sold for US$35, but you can find extracts in many places that cover the gist of the study. Google for: Misinformation: Psychological Science Shows Why It Sticks and How to Fix It. A summary of the study is here: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/misinformation-psychological-science-shows-why-it-sticks-and-how-to-fix-it.html
We see the points of the study at work even within the SL community. Many have mistaken beliefs the Lab is totally incompetent and unable to fix any problem. The ridiculous to common sense thinking is the belief common among many that bugs are never fixed. But, the facts are otherwise.
The study’s title is: Misinformation and its Correction: Continued Influence and Successful Debiasing. Get it here: http://psi.sagepub.com/content/13/3/106.full
To fix the perception of SL one needs to use the steps suggested in the study. They are also the steps politicians and activists use to promote their agendas, the basic steps of propaganda.
• Provide people with a narrative that replaces the gap left by false information.
• Focus on the facts you want to highlight, rather than the myths.
• Make sure that the information you want people to take away is simple and brief.
• Consider your audience and the beliefs they are likely to hold.
• Strengthen your message through repetition.
You cannot trust the media in general. Mark Twain (1835-1910): “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re mis-informed.”
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“Then a bit of negative history about how SL had a hype that it didn’t live up to, true but not that important really because most big companies just didn’t get Second Life.”
No, Linden Lab didn’t get Second Life and still doesn’t. It is not some amazing testament to longevity that Second Life is still around… so is ActiveWorlds, and that doesn’t make it any more impressive. If you want to see where Second Life is going, just look at how it worked out for AW, because they’re following the same curve.
Those companies that came in and left showed up at a time when Linden Lab didn’t have a built in marketplace and instead rested their laurels on selling all of those companies simulators to build elaborate and asinine in-world presences with. They offered no support for building or representing that brand in-world and left it nearly entirely up to third parties who greatly capitalized on the hype and were more than eager to oversell the promise and vastly under deliver the ROI like a bunch of sharks smelling the blood in the water of naive companies who didn’t know the media format or how to engage but (gee whiz!) all that hype, we can’t look like we’re all behind the times on the next big thing!
Even the marketplace at the time was a third party invention, which by all means should have catered to those companies wanting to introduce their brands to the virtual world with little or no overhead.
But instead, those companies got sold multiple regions to build tacky monuments to their egos, and left shaking their head wondering why (boo hoo) nobody paid attention to them. It was marketing failure from the get-go and Linden Lab didn’t have anything to actually offer them in order to address it, the third parties fleecing the companies to build and consult for it had no idea either, pretty much everyone was clueless and talking a big game and unable to deliver.
They still don’t deliver, and they now own and control marketplace.
The bottom line is, Linden Lab doesn’t get Second Life, the countless third parties that were running free to mis-represent Second Life and how to engage didn’t get it, and Linden Lab didn’t make a single attempt then or now to mitigate that mis-representation or offer something to address it properly in order to handle corporate client needs in order that those corporate brands could engage in a more productive and compelling way without throwing them under the bus, just like LL threw the educational involvements under the bus, and collaboration with both TPVs and the OpenSource side under the bus as well.
No, Linden Lab just enjoyed all the hype and praise it was getting, and all the money being thrown at it while they were essentially selling snake-oil disguised as the next big thing. They were more than happy to sell somebody on a region, but nowhere did they tell them that their best interest wouldn’t be to have such a large in-world presence but instead say “Here, we have a marketplace… why not treat this like marketing and introduce your brands with lower overhead as virtual products in cooperation with the community?”
If they had any common sense at the time they would have had that marketplace integrated from the beginning for just that very purpose.
When I see the headline “Whatever happened to Second Life?” I immediately answer “Victim of it’s own success”, like so many child actors that make it big early on and quick, only to be found ten years later in a rehab trying to clean up its image.
Can it turn that negative image around? Absolutely… if Robert Downey Jr can go from Rehab to Iron Man, then Second Life (and Linden Lab) should take a hint and actually start doing something awesome again.
Something that truly innovates and changes the game, instead of just getting by in post-hype rehab. It’s no wonder journalists are either apathetic, negative or essentially copy and pasting the Press Releases. You burn enough bridges and in the end, you can’t just change a CEO and paint the roses red.
You gotta work for that trust again and actually earn it.
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I think that in the beginning practically nobody understood SL, including LL AND the big companies.
And I agree with most of what you say but to me the change to make it better has already begun.
I do think that recently things have started to get a lot better and I also think that Rod is actually getting things, I have more trust in him then the previous CEOs.
But yes, still a long way to go though!
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That title and video feels a lot like how the media has gone on for years now about how PC is dead… which anyone with a bit of sense know ain’t true. I was also surprised in the old footage they used.
A bit more info on that video. The band is Redzone http://redzone.phasechange.info/ and the video of the band is from 2008 that I filmed for them: http://youtu.be/tSDoUYZE8lI
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Thanks for that!
It is odd that they used old footage, its cool but doesn’t show what SL can do today.
Also, one of the singers having the ultimate noob avatar doesn’t help 😉
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