Rewarding long-term SL users

Tags

anniversary, gifts, linden lab, longtermers, second life

I’ve made this suggestion in previous posts before, come to think of it, I’ve subtly mentioned wanting a gift from Linden Lab every time my 1920s Berlin Project sim celebrated an anniversary.
But during SL’s 17th anniversary celebrations Ebbe and some of the other Lindens showed interest in this idea and hinted at that is is being discussed at Linden Lab, so I thought I’d write a blog about it, just to, subtly, try and steer Linden Lab in the right direction.
Because you know me, Fraulein Subtle.

In 1920s Berlin people who have been a tenant get rewarded every year on the birthday of their tenancy.
They get a note of thanks from me, their picture in the Long Term Tenant’s gallery at our inworld city hall, they get congratulated in our Facebook group and… they get a month of rent, for free.

The Long term tenants gallery in 1920s Berlin

Second Life has now been around for 17 years and of course much of the success of our virtual world is because of the people who have been living, working and creating parts of this world.
I think it would be nice if those of us who have been here for a while could be rewarded.
Here are a few suggestions on how Linden Lab could celebrate our rez days;

Ideas for regular SL residents rez anniversaries;

• Congratulatory message;
  It should be relatively easy for LL to program an automated IM message that gets send to a SL resident on their rezday.
  Although not very personal or original, it would be nice to once a year get a little message from Linden Lab, thanking us for being in SL.
  It could also be a nice reminder for those of us who haven’t been online for a while to check in.
• Profile badge;
  It might be fun, especially for bragging purposes, to have a badge displayed in your profile showing everyone how long you’ve been active in SL.
  Imagine one day checking your profile and seeing a little cocarde or medal there with a 5 or 10, depending on how long you’ve been inworld.
• Inworld gift;
  Always nice to receive a little gift, nothing fancy but exclusive!
  A nice cake, a picture frame with a photo of all the Lindens, a golden trophy, etc.
  Just something fun you can rez in your home.
• Real world gift;
  Yes, why not!
  Linden Lab/Second life has/had merchandise, or merch as the kids call it these days.
  Unfortunately we can’t buy it from the SL website (why not?!) but it would be really great to receive a present from your virtual world on your real world doormat.
  A t-shirt, a plastic plywood prim, a poster or even just a postcard.
  It should be only for very special anniversaries, for instance for when someone has been an active member of SL for a decade.
• Attention;
  Getting attention is always nice, well for most people anyway.
  On special anniversaries, like 5th, 10th, etc. it would be fun to be mentioned on SL’s Social media.
  What about “Congratulations Jo Yardley on her 20th anniversary as a resident of Second Life!” on Facebook/Twitter perhaps?
  Not just would this be fun for the residents, it’s also a bit of publicity for SL, I mean how many virtual online worlds can brag that people have been living there for years?
• Discount;
  Although SL is of course free to use, many of us, especially longtermers, are premium members.
  This costs you USD 11.99 a month.
  Even a small discount would be a nice gesture that would eventually add up.
  Imagine if your premium account only costs you USD 10.- a month after your 10th anniversary?
  I bet a lot of people would appreciate that.

Besides residents there are also communities, exhibits, clubs, shops, etc. that manage to survive in Second Life for several years.
This is perhaps even more remarkable as it involves keeping people happy, making publicity, managing events, paying lots of tier, creating new things, etc.
If you can keep a place going that not only keeps people from leaving SL but also lures new users in or simply creates another place of interest that makes SL worth everybody’s while, you deserve gifts!
Here’s my list of suggestions of how managers/owners/founders of these places can be rewarded;

• Congratulatory message;
  As above, let these people know you appreciate the work they put into creating a place, community, venue in SL.
• Profile badge;
  As above, but the badge/sticker is seen on the group’s page.
  This can be quite nice to have as it would show people who are interested in perhaps visiting your Sim that they’re going to a well established place.
  If you’re going to a roleplaying community that has a 10 year anniversary badge on their profile, you know the odds of it vanishing within a few weeks like those other places you’ve visited are slim.
• Inworld gift;
  As above.
  But a nice trophy is perhaps even nicer to give an honorary spot in your club than it is to place it on your mantelpiece at home.
  “Oh honey this club has received a reward, let’s see what it says, oh my they’ve been around for a decade! This must be a swell joint!”.
• Attention;
  As above.
  Of course getting attention is extra nice for a venue as it can bring you extra traffic!
  Being mentioned on official SL social media or the website can give your place a huge boost in traffic which in turn can result in new tenants, regulars, sales, etc.
• Destination guide;
  Perhaps there could be a special category in the destination guide of all the places in SL that have been there for an X amount of years; the oldtimers.
• Discount;
  Although SL has gotten cheaper the last few years, renting a piece of land or even regions, homesteads etc. is still not cheap.
  Making sure you can pay your tier every month is a big task and for many sims tier has been the reason of their demise.
  It would be great if the communities/shops/venues/clubs/etc that do manage to keep going for several years get rewarded with a tier discount.
  Perhaps lower their tier permanently or allow them to to not pay any tier at all during the month of their anniversary.
  Having to spend a little less every month can make a real difference, having a bonus once every few years because you don’t have to pay any tier can be very welcome.

So, in short; reward those of us who stick around and those of us who (also) create and keep places & experiences going.
Have you got any ideas & suggestions on what kind of gift you’d like to receive for your rezday?

Mr. Moon & Vertiigo’s Second Life

Tags

mr. moon, vertiigo, youtube

Youtuber Mr. Moon has visited Second Life and made quite an impressive video about it with his old pal Vertiigo.
I have bumped into both of them a few times in games such as Rust, DayZ, etc, don’t ask what happened.
One of them may even have ended up in a dungeon in my castle, in a non pervy way of course, honest.
I may even have annoyed them with stories about Second Life, as I often do when playing games.
Because yes, I may be a fat old cat lady living in a farm in the middle of nowhere, I’m also a gamer and have been one since Pong.

Of all the games I’ve played and still play, of course none have gotten as much attention from me as Second Life.
It is where I hang out daily, meet my friends, spend time in the world I created in stead of some world a game developer imagined, even manage to make a little bit of a living there but above all, it just allows me to experience things I just never get to do in any of the games I play.

It is always interesting to see a relative newcomers experiences in the virtual world many of us have become so familiar with.
It is always annoying to see someone have a better computer and less lag than me though.

I’ve been trying to get LL to get more youtubers into trying SL, they can get you the kind of publicity you can’t buy!
Mr. Moon for instance has over 400K subscribers, his video has had over 60K views.

Of course they mostly hang out in dodgy clubs, ugly old sims, meet horrible rude people, there’s some hanky panky (thankfully blurry) and they do a fair bit of swearing.
Just so you know.

It’s funny though.

But underneath all that there seems to be a genuine curiosity and admiration for what they find during their exploration.
At the halfway mark the video changes, Mr. Moon chats with long term Second Life residents, asking serious questions, getting serious answers.
He starts to see some of the things that make SL great and wonderfully describes them.
He is talking to an audience of gamers, many of whom will have no interest in SL or look at it with certain preconceptions, but I reckon he got their attention.
He shows SL looking good, visiting wonderful spots with graphics settings set to high.
Anyway, it may bring some new people to SL, which is good 🙂

But I hope Verts & Moon come and spend more time in Second Life and make more videos.
If I bump into them I won’t lock them in a dungeon, again, I promise.

Enjoy;

Premium accounts and how to make them (even) more appealing

Tags

premium

I upgraded my account because as someone who ran an active community I regularly needed assistance urgently and premium accounts promised 24/7 live chat support.
Filing a ticket when some griever was running around your city making life miserable for everyone just didn’t cut it.
Back then asking for help through chat support regularly resulted in an actual Linden coming over to see what the problem was.
Ah those were the days kids, you youngsters don’t remember.

I’ve been premium ever since because you sort of have to if you own land.
Without a premium account you can’t own land on the Mainland but even when you buy a private region you still kind of need some of the premium account perks such as the chat support.

Over the last decade I’ve seen LL try all sorts of things to try and get more people to join the premium program.
It makes sense, there are at least 60.000 premium accounts in Second Life (source), which means right now Linden Lab made over 4 million Dollars a year from premium accounts ON THE MAINLAND alone and that is when everyone pays annually.
With the new price, again assuming they will have still 60.000 premium account members left and they all choose to pay annually, they’ll be making almost 6 million Dollars just with Mainland regions.
So that is not counting premium account holders who don’t own land or who private land.
In short, premium accounts are quite important to Linden Lab.
Disclaimer; I’m terrible with numbers.

Right now, when you become a premium member you get the following benefits;

• Weekly L$300 stipend*
• L$1000 sign-up bonus** for first-time Premium Account subscribers
• Priority entry when regions are full of avatars
• Linden Home or 1024m² tier allotment for use towards a parcel on the Mainland
• Expanded live-chat customer support
• Premium virtual gifts
• Exclusive access to Premium areas and experiences
• Increased cap on missed IMs
• Increased group membership limits
• Voice Morphing
• Premium-only sandboxes
• The right to own mainland parcels in popular areas
• Immediate access to adult-only areas
• utilizing increased region capacity
• L$ transaction history increased from 32 days to 90 days

Some of these benefits don’t have much value to many of us, especially if you are a landowner.

Anyway, I started thinking about how the premium accounts could be made more appealing.
If LL got a lot more premium members, they’d make a lot more money and they could then decide to lower tier or even our money transfer costs that have shot up recently.
I know the Lindens are working on an ultra-premium option, so maybe some of these options will be part of that or maybe these will give LL a few ideas;

Let’s get right to the most desired thing in SL; lower tier.
I understand that LL can’t give all premium account holders a tier discount, even though many of course are not land owners so they wouldn’t even be able to use this option.
However for me and other landowners it would be extremely appealing if the grandfather option would return as part of the premium membership.
Being able to grandfather my regions made a huge impact on improving my situation in SL and if this would return I would be more tempted to rent more regions, thus putting more tier in the Linden Lab safe.

Same goes for NO setup fees for new regions.
LL has already lowered the setup free dramatically which is great but you still have to pay an entire month tier and 100$ to start a sim, this has to come out of your own pocket because you won’t be getting an income from this new region through rent, access, tips or other ways for at least one or two months.
Starting a sim still costs you hundreds of dollars till you manage to break even or make a profit, if ever.
If you wouldn’t have to pay the setup fee premium membership would earn its annual fee back for everyone who buys a region.

Another option I’d like to see added is more group-roles.
Not only would this make running a group/sim/community a LOT easier, it would also mean many groups could be deleted as the lack of roles is the only reason they exist.
We’ve just learned that groups put quite a bit of pressure on the SL resources so this would be an added bonus to both users and LL.

I’d like to see the groups being improved in general, I’ve written about this before (here; https://joyardley.wordpress.com/2012/07/01/improving-groups/ ) but I understand that changing them can be quite a hassle and will take a lot of time and effort from LL.
However if they make ‘Deluxe Groups’ TM a Premium Account only thing, it would pay for itself.
Not only would quite a few shop owners, RP communities and other people gladly go or remain premium for a group that offers more options, this too, when done well, would mean a decrease in the amount of groups in SL, again something that would also be beneficent for LL.

Another idea I have is a bit of an ego related one.
How about we make it visible in people’s profile that they’re premium members!
Lots of people like this, perhaps as a bit of a status symbol.
“Hey why do you have a gold star that says Premium on your profile?”
“Ah well dear old fellow, I’m a member of an exclusive club…” the man answered as he polished his monocle.

It would be a wonderful perk if premium members could upload textures for free or got a discount.
Right now uploading each and every single texture costs you 10L$.
This adds up if you’re a creator and need to upload many textures while building something, often uploading the same one many times just because you changed a little detail.
Another texture related perk many people would love is the return of the temporary textures.
I am not sure if these ever were an official thing or just a Firestorm feature but a long time ago you could upload temporary textures, this would mean you could upload a texture for free but it was temporary so after a few days it would just vanish again from the servers.
This was a great feature and money saver for us creators.

I would love to be able to change my tier paying date.
I have two full regions and three homestead and I have to make sure to put some money into my account several times a month, it is a hassle.
I would love to change this and just pay for all my land on the same day of the month.

One thing that has annoyed me for ever is the fact that our transaction history only goes back a short while.
Recently they changed this from 32 days to 30 and that is already quite an improvement but I don’t understand why this can’t be even longer.
Surely just storing these records can’t take up that much precious computer memory at Linden Lab, especially not compared to all our inventories and this entire virtual world?
Why can’t we look up what we spend 8 years ago?
Anyway, I think adding even more days to the transaction history would make having a premium account even nicer.

Ok this idea is a bit more complicated but may not be as big a hassle to make work.
How about… we create SL families!
Right now you can connect your avatar with one other avatar by making him or her your partner.
All this really does is show someone in the partner space on your profile.
That’s all.
So what if premium members could add more than one person as a partner…
Again this has no real consequences but it is a nice way to show the world you’re part of a modern relationship with two other people, are happily married to just one person but have seven kids or that you’re a member of a vampire family because Lestrade bit you.
We know how much these families, clans, gangs, groups of friends mean to people but also the huge value they can have to roleplaying communities.
Being able to officially connect more than just one person to you is quite appealing and will make a few people decide to go premium.
And of course all those divorces that will eventually follow means more cash in the Linden coffers.
Read more about this idea by clicking here.

Allow premium account holders to rent a homestead without having to own a full region.

Premium account holders get a region they buy for one month with no or reduced tier.
Starting a sim is expensive, it takes weeks, even months to get things set up and all that time you’re not getting any money from tenants or shopkeepers.
The first month tier comes out of your own pocket while you have no income.
So knowing that you don’t have to pay (full) tier that first month would be nice.

Custom SL e-mail address.

Pay for your tier and premium fees with Lindens.
No need to go through the hassle of selling L$, LL just deducts costs from your L$ balance directly.

Ok this is a mean one… how about we add ‘Allow only premium members’ to region settings…
People could start clubs and sims that only premium members would have access to.
Lindens could create Premium member only sims!

Rezzday gift!
It doesn’t have to be much, maybe just a card from Ebbe, or a cake, a kiss-o-gram, a bigger stipend, etc.
Just a little something to thank premium account holders for being in SL for another year.

So anyway, these are just a few of my ideas that would make becoming a premium member even more appealing.
What do you think?
Got other ideas and suggestions?
Share them in the comments below.

Disclaimer; some of these ideas don’t come from me but from the SL forums or drunks rambling at my bar in 1920s Berlin.

Make big textures more expensive

Linden Lab wants to move away from making the bulk of their money through tier because of course expensive land is one of the things that needs changing in SL.
But that means they need to make their money in other ways, for instance by increasing our money transfers more expensive.

Personally I think making lots of little things a little bit more expensive is better than making a few things a lot more expensive.
That way we all carry the load in stead of just the land owners and content/experience creators.

One of the ways LL is already making everybody pay a little amount is by uploading textures.
We all do this, not just creators.
And every time we do, LL gets 10L$.

Big textures demand a lot from our computers, internet connections and LL’s servers.
If you go to a sim and everything is grey and it takes for ever to see anything, that’s because of big and/or too many textures all being squeezed through your internet cable.
Unfortunately SL is full of people who don’t know or don’t care about this and they fill our virtual world with huge textures.
Not just when it is justified, like when you’re making a big building that needs to look good up close, but also for no reason whatsoever, as part of things that really don’t need such a high resolution.
I’ve found 1024×1024 pixels textures on the bottom of shoes, the back of paintings or as minuscule parts of tiny earrings.
Situations where the creator could have easily used a lot smaller texture without anyone noticing it.
Of course we do all notice the lag these textures cause.

So if Linden Lab makes more money here and there they can make other things cheaper and it is in everybody’s best interest if we use fewer big textures in SL.
Put that all together and we come to a system where you pay more to upload bigger textures AND pay less when you upload smaller textures!

And I’m not talking about huge fees, but for example, uploading a 1024×1024 example could cost you 15L$, the basic 512×512 would still cost 10L$ but the 256×256 texture would only cost 5L$.
So if you use small textures you get rewarded and content creators who know that they can use smaller textures in many places will actually spend less money on uploading fees in many cases.

As I said before, everybody uploads textures in SL, not just builders.
We make snapshots, upload wallpaper for our home, RL photos to show friends, etc.
So this is something that will not only mean everybody gets to pay, it also, hopefully, encourage people to think more about the size o the textures they upload into SL.

Of course… Linden Lab could at the same time start offering people FREE uploads as a premium account perk…
I reckon that would be one of the most popular perks ever!
But even if the perk would be cheaper uploads or the the option to upload temporary textures for free, it would be very welcomed by many.

So what do you think?
Silly complicated idea or a brilliant one?
And can you think of other small fees LL could charge that would allow them to not charge so much when it comes to tier or money transfers?
Let me know in the comments.

Second Life’s new 15th birthday video

Tags

anniversary, birthday, sl15b

Linden Lab has just released a special 15th birthday video that, very cleverly, isn’t just meant for us long term users and residents, but also a great little advertisement and sort of teaser to everyone who hasn’t been in SL yet.

Besides Ebbe looking very relaxed with an unbuttoned shirt somewhere in Amsterdam (not my house, I swear, stop looking at me like that, I deny everything!) we see some avatars holding up signs with a few very interesting facts & figures that should impress the outsiders.

In the video Ebbe talks about and shows a few users, what they do in SL, we get to see a bunch of nice places and even Philip pops in to say hello.

Enjoy;

Second Life’s new infographic & the old one

Tags

"second life", anniversary, birthday, infographic, linden lab

I love these, the media loves these, everybody loves these.
The infographic quickly gives you some interesting information packaged with pretty pictures.

Linden Lab just published this fresh new one as part of the 15th anniversary of the biggest user build virtual online world Second Life.

I’ve decided to dig up the infographic Linden Lab made for the 10th anniversary and compare the two.

Up to today 57 million accounts were created, that is impressive but doesn’t say very much about how well SL is doing or how many people actually use it because we all know that many of these people who sign up don’t use SL anymore ands some are alt accounts, I for instance have roughly 2 hundred thousand alts myself 😉
5 years ago there were 36 million accounts created, so that is another 21 million in 5 years!

Today the total time spend in SL is 482.000, now that is a lot.
It would be nice to know how many people actually are responsible for these hours though.
On the other hand, I really do not want to know how many hours I’ve spend in SL!
Five years ago this number was 217.000 years, so in the last 5 years we’ve spend more time in SL than people have in the first 10 years!
Now that is interesting.
SL may have stopped growing and is in slow decline but it is being used more intensely than ever before.

On average 350.000 people register for SL every month, even if many of these are alts and even if lots of new users only stay for a short time and don’t become “lifers”, it is still quite a high number of people who are still interested in checking out and trying a 15 year old product.
However, 5 years ago this number was 400.000, so this number has gone down.

$68 million has been paid to creators in 2017, I wish I was paid a million.
This number was not mentioned 5 years ago but in 2015 Ebbe said that users cashed out $60 million, so it looks like SL’s economy has gotten better the last 2 years.

 

5 million virtual goods created for the marketplace, back in 2013 this was 2.1 million, so this too seems to have grown rather a lot.
In the last 5 years we’ve been creating and/or selling more items on marketplace than in the 10 years before!
Mind you, with this number you have to ask yourself if everything that is being sold is actually created by users for sale or sold one, the cacha market is huge and consists of people selling stuff they did not create.

The top 3 categories most popular in the destination guide are games, editors picks and photogenic spots.
I had not spotted the photogenic spots category yet, all my sims should be in there of course!
It is interesting to see that 5 years ago the most popular categories were games, events and adventure & fantasy.

50 million chat messages sent daily, that doesn’t surprise me, I reckon I get at least half of all those messages!
Or at least it feels like it sometimes.
Unfortunately this number was not shared 5 years ago, but I think it has gone up because those who chat the most are the people who spend a lot of time in SL and it looks like we’ve been spending more and more time in this virtual world of ours.
I wonder if the real world becoming less and less pleasant might have had something to do with that…

Most popular shopping categories; avatar apparel, avatar accessories, home & garden.
In 2013 this was not shared but we did learn that women’s hairstyles were the most purchased items.

I’d like to have seen how many users visit monthly these days and how large SL’s landmass is.

I wonder if my analysis of these two infographics makes sense.
The most important things I notices are that although SL is in decline, those of us who do make it our home spend more time and money.
Which I reckon is pretty good news.
Of course we have to keep fighting to make sure more people join and stay once they’ve joined, but the locals, the regulars, the oldtimers, are doing a great job of keeping the world alive, active, fresh and interesting.
I reckon we deserve some nice gifts during the anniversary… subtle hint….

Second Life record breakers

Tags

biggest, first, longest, oldest, record breakers, records

Second Life is 14 years old, that is very old.

Running around the excellent 14th anniversary community celebrations and having just celebrated the 8th anniversary of my 1920s Berlin sim and the 6th anniversary of Berlin’s Eldorado Cabaret, I started thinking about the facts and figures, the numbers and records of our old virtual world.

And to this purpose I thought I’d try and collect a few records.
But I’ll need your help gathering all the data.

What kind of records do we want to collect?
As many as we can.
The oldest still active avatar, longest running club, private region owned by the same person, oldest roleplay sim, oldest shop, best selling item on marketplace ever, oldest item still for sale on marketplace, longest partnered couple, oldest blog, etc, etc.

You name it!
If you think you know of something in Second Life that is breaking some sort of a record, share it in the comments and I’ll make a list out of it.

Just for fun and to give some of these oldtimers something to brag about!

According to Wikipedia, the first and thus oldest avatar in Second Life was Steller Sunshine, it looks like she was last online just a few days ago, so I guess we’ve found the oldest and the oldest still active avatar!

The first region was called “Da Boom”.
It too still exists, if of course this is the same one as the original.

So I guess we have 3 entries on our list already;

• Oldest avatar; Steller Sunshine
• Oldest still active avatar; Steller Sunshine
• Oldest still active region; Da Boom

Let’s see what else we can collect!

And… happy birthday Second Life!

If someone vanishes in Second Life

Tags

contact, death, email, emergency, leaving, left, personal, private, profile, social media, stay in touch, vanished, vanishing

If you’ve been in Second Life for a while, sooner or later someone you know and/or care about will vanish from your virtual life.
They don’t say goodbye, they don’t leave a note, they don’t cancel their rent, they don’t clear their land, they simply never log on again.

There can be many different reasons for someone to just vanish like that, it could be something as innocent as being stuck somewhere during a holiday without internet and losing their rental and deciding they don’t want to return, maybe their computer breaks and they cant afford a new one or maybe they have gotten themselves into some drama in SL and decide that simply staying away is the best solution.
But it could also be something rather serious, they may be very unwell or even have died.

People sometimes don’t realise how much they mean to their virtual friends and community and have no idea how worried the people they leave behind may be.
And besides friends who will miss them dearly, there are also landowners, sims, shop managers, club managers etc, who are waiting for them to renew their rent or don’t know what to do with their stuff, upcoming events, etc.

So, after yet another person in SL simply vanished, I decided to write this blog with some tips, hoping it may avoid a few of these painful and confusing situations.

Please make sure there are is more than one way for people in SL to get in touch with you.
Get a facebook/twitter/other social media account and share your email address with a few of your friends, this can be an avatar only email address of course.
But also, if you can, find someone in SL you trust enough with some RL information.
Even if it is just one friend.
Having someone in SL who knows how to get in touch with you in RL can avoid so many problems.
And the more this one person knows, the better.
If you trust them enough, befriend them with your RL social media accounts or even agree with a close RL family member or friend that this SL friend can email them as well or befriend them on Facebook, just in case of emergency.
If something bad happens to you, your RL friends will probably leave messages on your RL facebook wall, telling you to get better or writing how sad they are you died.
If a SL friend sees this, they know enough.
If this is not the case, your RL friend or family member will still know what is going on.

And finally put all this in a tab in your profile.
Yes it will take up one of your very few Picks (let us have more Linden Lab!), but it could be worth it.
It would be even better if Linden Lab gave us an extra tab in our profile that you could use to fill in this information.
Of course you can also choose to use the ‘1st life’ tab for this, but most people like using that space to tell a little bit about themselves in RL.

Here is the tab in my profile, as an example.
At the moment it only has one name in it, my friend who also is connected with me via my RL Facebook account, who knows my RL email address, has my RL sister’s information, etc, etc.
I’ll add a few more friends, but I want to check with them first if they are ok with it.
If anything serious would happen to me, or something stupid like dropping my computer in the sea while sailing, my sister would know about it.
And once my SL friends got worried and contacted my sister, they’ know what had happened.
And if things were really serious, my sister also knows what I want to happen to my sims if I have died in a freak sword fighting tin opener accident during one of my RL time travel adventures.

Of course it is completely up to you how much you explain about why you can’t be online in SL, sometimes it is nobodies business.
But I think you owe it to your virtual friends and landlords to at least know you’re not dead and if you’re planning on returning.

So folks, please remember that even though you may not realise it or underestimate it, there are people in SL who very likely are desperately trying to figure out why you’ve vanished.
Be a pal, give them a way to find out!

Three years of Ebbe Linden

Tags

anniversary, ebbe altberg, ebbe linden, linden lab, rezday

Three days ago Ebbe Linden was ‘born’, his avatar was activated shortly after his RL counterpart Ebbe Altberg was appointed the new CEO of Linden Lab after the unexpected news of former CEO Rod Humble leaving just a few weeks earlier after having been the CEO for 3 years.

And not much later he stumbled into my bar in 1920s Berlin to be entertained with 1920s Swedish music, the best Schnaps in VR and pretty frauleins (und herren) making eyes at him.
He looked much younger then.

A lot has happened in the last 3 years, Second Life has improved significantly, tier (per prim) has gone down, the tech has improved, we’ve experimented with headsets with mixed results, the hamsters in the wheels that keep the LL servers running have been given fresh straw, Lindens have been released back into the wild and we learned about the brand new world they have been building.

Of course some of these things were set in motion before Ebbe joined the club but a lot changed under his watch and an interesting and exciting future awaits us.

Generally it seems that most people in SL are quite happy with our current captain on the bridge and personally I must admit I think he is doing a cracking job and I’m happy it is him in charge at this, I think, very important time for VR.

One thing Ebbe completely messed up… is his profile.
Really Mr. Linden, after 3 years your profile is still empty, you should fill it up with nonsense quotes, ridiculous disclaimers, an up to date profile picture and your favourite picks, you know, like that 1920s Berlin sim….

Seriously though, what do you think, has Ebbe done a good job?
Are you happy or unhappy with him as CEO?
Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

New SL feature; Place Pages

Tags

"second life", improvements, places pages

Linden Lab just announced that they are rolling out yet another feature for Second Life, one I’m very excited about and have been, in parts, suggesting for a while; Place Pages.

They basically give every region and parcel in Second Life a page on the Second Life website where you can find out more information about them.

It is a bit like the information page you see when you use search inworld before you teleport to that sim, but bigger & better.
And all you have to do to visit these pages is click ‘visit this location’ and the teleport window in SL opens.
No more visiting the, if I may say so, confusing map first.

To make such a page your parcel and/or region needs to have “Show in search” activated in the land setting.
Go to https://places.secondlife.com/places to see a list of all these pages and click “my places” to see a list of your sims that you can make a page for.
The rest is self-explanatory.

And rather exciting; you can use 360 degrees photos and even stream LIVE via youtube from inworld!

But it gets better.
Place pages right now is still in the Beta testing phase, so it will get better and how we are going to use these could influence what will happen next with them.
Linden Lab promises future improvements and features, such as an event calendar!

I’ve written before (click here to read) about making more use of ‘my-sl’ profiles and perhaps creating pages for groups in SL.
Finding a way to allow us to stop using Social Media for all these things and start using the official SL website more for this.
Giving us online events calendars for our sims is a huge step towards this.

I hope that in the future the Place Pages for communities will include perhaps also a forum or place where people can chat with each other, an online photo album (or widget that allows us to show our Flickr pictures there),  contact options that allow you to chat directly with admins and managers or at least send them a message, etc.

But above all; an events calendar.
Right now we have to send reminders, have a Facebook calendar, google calendar, etc.
I’d love to have a calendar for a sim that shows you right away ALL the events in that sim, region, all parcels in that region or just selected parcels in that region but that also gives you the option to subscribe to this calendar so you get IM’s when these events are about to begin.
And please, also the option for us to create recurring events so we don’t have to create a new calendar event for those daily or weekly events.

Can you think of more improvements and additions?
Let Linden Lab know, you can follow their forum post by clicking here and file a Jira about bugs or for your ideas and suggestions.

Either way, I’m getting busy making pages for all my parcels and sims!
Starting with this one for 1920s Berlin.