Pay no attention to the player hours logged in September
by Jessica Holyoke
Fresh out of the Herald'sMoney office, (unfortunately located right next to Jimbo's) is the 2008 Quarter 3 Herald financial report. The compilation of this particular report was a bit harder to compile as a key piece of data was missing. Zee Linden reported how the hours logged in for October of 2008 grew 11.4% over the hours of September to a record 37 million hours. However, the number of hours logged in for September are not located on the Economic Statistics page. And the graph used to show the amount of user hours logged in shows an aggregate for the quarter, not the individual month.
But algebra helps out this time. If October's logged in hours equals September's plus 11.4% and 37 million, then September's hours would be 33.2 million hours logged in -- the fewest number of hours logged in per month for Q3 and lower than the amount logged in in June.
Looking at the Total Hours Logged Growth Chart, the total logged in from the first month of the quarter to the last month of the quarter declined by 4.37%. This follows two quarters of steady growth over the quarter. Why this is being reported is that overall for a platform that needs to grow, more people should be using the service over time and from August to September, they didn't. In comparison, at the end of June and Quarter 2, THL grew by 16%.
The PMLF Growth Chart is determined by taking the weighted PMLF in the last month of the previous quarter and comparing it to the weighted PMLF in the last month of the current quarter. The Q3 percent growth is a very low 1.46% compared to 3.56% in Quarter 2.
Average PMLF is the weighted PMLF averaged out for the entire quarter. This number continues to grow as a whole. Raw PMLF, the basic numbers that Linden Lab prints out, grew by 2.5% from the start of the quarter to the end.
QPC (Quarterly Profit per Capita) held steady at 0.18 for Quarter 3. What this means is that people are making about the same per user hour logged in. Now of course, this does not capture the land business outside of rentals and it does not capture people who get paid for in world services using off world means. The overall picture looks the same from last quarter.
Where things get interesting is that we can compare third quarter results over more years now. As a function of growth, Total hours logged in has seen the worse growth ever last quarter than any other previous Quarter 3 over the last five years of data. PMLF quarterly growth was at the lowest point in a Quarter 3 ever in three years of data. QPC is lower than any Quarter 3 result in the past three years.
Internet ad agency discontinues virtual robot closet sex platform to focus on core business, spend more time with family
by By Sigmund Leominster
Reports of Lively’s death turn out not to have been exaggerated after all. After the fanfare, hoop-la, bell and whistles of the Second Life killer’s opening, Google have just announced that Lively is dead. Well, if not death, in the terminal stages and destined to limp on flaccidly until the end of the year.
Back in September, Lively’s project director, Kevin Hanna, it was at the Austin Game Developers Conference where he announced that, “Our user-base exceeded every number that we had put down. So, in that sense, our beta is more successful than most launched products.” Tragically, the “success” was simply the ability to generate enough curiosity for people to visit the world at least once. The “New Frontier” turned out to be little more than a side road with nothing at the end of it and bugger all to look at on the way.
Hanna also pointed out that, “Google has no interest in virtual dollars. It’s never been our intent to make money that way.” Well, at least they got that one right.
Compete.com’s site analytics engine showed that Lively peaked at around 370,000 unique visitors in August 2008, but then dropped to 100,000 by September and stood at around 75,000 in October – about one night in Second Life on a busy evening. With Google’s stock price having dropped on a monthly basis since June 2008, from around 600 to under 300, it’s no surprise that projects that don’t offer any sort of return on investment would be facing the chop. Poor Lively didn’t really stand much of a chance.
So here, in full, is the official statement from Google:
“In July we launched Lively in Google Labs because we wanted users to be able to interact with their friends and express themselves online in new ways. Google has always been supportive of this kind of experimentation because we believe it's the best way to create groundbreaking products that make a difference to people's lives. But we've also always accepted that when you take these kinds of risks not every bet is going to pay off.
That's why, despite all the virtual high fives and creative rooms everyone has enjoyed in the last four and a half months, we've decided to shut Lively down at the end of the year. It has been a tough decision, but we want to ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business. Lively.com will be discontinued at the end of December, and everyone who has worked on the project will then move on to other teams.
We'd encourage all Lively users to capture your hard work by taking videos and screenshots of your rooms.”
Oh the humanity! Or avataranity. An entire world reduced to two paragraphs, one sentence, and an exhortation to take pictures before extinction. [you mean Google isn't going to cache this? - the Editrix]
The collapse of The Sims Online earlier this year lead to an influx into Second Life of refugees. Are we about to see Lively dwellers start making virtual rafts and drifting across the inter-metaversal seas to set up new immigrant communities here? Do we even want “those people” moving into our Openspaces, taking up all the camping jobs, and frightening the child avatars with their strange looks and funky haircuts?
Should anyone be planning to hold a funeral in Lively before December 31st, please send me an invite. Hey, last chance to wear those awesomely bad outfits.
The Second Life viewer dev team has been working furiously away for some time now, and you may be forgiven for wondering where the fruits of that labor are. It has, after all, been some time since we've seen a new viewer other than emergency security fixes.
There are lots of little things in this viewer, mostly bug-fixes. What is particularly peculiar is that whispering seems to be back. Whisper was a short-range chat option that was discarded from the Second Life viewer back in 2005 due to it being confusing both conceptually and in the user-interface. Whispering has a 10 metre range and while it has been a deprecated script function for years is still available to scripted objects.
Among the people President-elect Barack Obama has appointed to his FCC agency review transition team are Net Neutrality advocates Kevin Werbach, assistant professor of legal studies and business ethics at Wharton, and Susan Crawford from the University of Michigan, who teaches communications and internet law. Werbach, as it turns out, is a World of Warcraft player, according to Wagner James Au at GigaOM.
Werbach has written about MMOs on his blog (back in 2006), that games "provide an incentive for people to develop new software and ideas for collaborative production. Many of those ideas will translate to other group activities, including those within the business world. I think MMOGs will be, at minimum, a significant testbed for these new technologies, because users see a direct benefit and are willing to experiment with new things." Werbach plays in two WoW guilds, one started by a friend, and the other is comprised of academics whose interests or work focus on virtual worlds.
While Werbach is more of a traditional MMO gamer, Crawford is a fan of Second Life, judging by what she's written on the virtual world in the past on her blog. At the very least, it's a positive sign that individuals connected with the FCC and its policies really understand how people are using technology to socialize, collaborate, and play.
October metrics for Linden Lab's virtual environment, Second Life are not yet formally available, but Lab CFO John Zdanowski wound up giving out a link to the information in advance, so we have the figures to work with. September was not a good month by these metrics, and we were interested to see how October panned out.
Your key takeaways for October are a continuing plunge in premium accounts, and a reduction in overall economic activity. User hours, however were up. A more detailed summary follows after the jump.
[Nightflower - a girl and her dream. The Night Flower sim hosts some of SL's finest photo art by some of SL's most creative artists. The paint on the walls was still fresh, meaning some of the prims were still untextured when I met Nightflower there for our photo shoot. Is there any better place to take pictures than a gallery? This woman is spontaneous, chaotic, loveable and a wonderful and eloquent writer whose blog www.nightflowerblossoming.typepad.com I have been following for quite some time. Her friends dropping snotty remarks while she was dropping her clothes were no big help but they are as much part of her life as creativity and open-mindedness. – Bunny Brickworks]
They stared out at me from the pages of the crumpled in-flight magazine: a digital Ken and Barbie, swirling across an otherworldly dance floor awash in firefly lights. The article told of a fantastical alternate reality, populated by personalities both magical and garish, a world willed into existence through the creativity of its citizens.
This wasn't just a computer game, the story continued, but a place where you could do and be whatever you could imagine, giving birth to a totally new you in a safely anonymous place of limitless options. Even the name left me breathless with promise – Second Life.
Three hours later, dream smashed headlong against reality. I couldn't seem to fly in a straight line, couldn't figure out how to drive the damn car, and somehow managed to attach the torch to my head. I walked like a duck, stood like a man at a urinal, and couldn't stop jerking my head around like someone tracking the flight path of a troublesome insect. I remember standing there in those stonewashed blue jeans and that ubiquitous purple long-sleeved tee, feeling like I'd really been sold a bill of goods.
But somehow, I managed to make my way to a place with the inviting name of Help Island. It's worth noting that I received no help there – well, at least none of the instructional variety. But it was there that I first saw them.
There was a dazzling fairy trailing pixie dust, a little clown made of dancing lights, a delicate child who appeared to be half machine. A massive, tentacled orb hung over the landing zone, and a sensual catwoman writhed nimbly against a leather-clad vampire.
And that was all I needed to see, all I needed to know. Not even the griefer who at that moment nuked me with fart gas could dampen the thrill that was surging through me, as my consciousness stretched to consider a world made not of limits, but only of possibilities. I knew in an instant that creativity was the very fabric of this world, and here, I would be reborn.
Now I am a citizen of the virtual world. I play the game of paper dolls for a grown up little girl, but that's just one of many delightful diversions. I dance and party like a wanton sorority babe, but that's just a festive novelty. At the deepest level, I am here to create.
I'm here to forge a life for myself that is a pure expression of my spirit and character – a life somehow truer than the one I live in the flesh. I'm here to create an existence that, though completely imaginary, is indelibly stamped by the reality of who I am in a way that my real life will never be. Freed from the implacable circumstances and restrictions of my bodily life, I'm here to create the fullest version of who I want to be.
Here in this make believe world, this powerful reality, Nightflower is blossoming.
The unprecedented decline of Second Life land area appears to be accelerating according to data from virtual world operator, Linden Lab. The net loss of simulators which totalled nearly 9,000 acres as of midnight on 10 November, has escalated to a net loss of 12,874 acres (52.1 million square metres, or 795 simulators) by midnight of 16 November. At present this represents an accelerating decline, with no sign of it bottoming out.
While a number of users have requested a consolidation of four Openspaces simulators into a single ordinary simulator (which would represent an overall net loss of three simulators per consolidation) there is no data available to suggest that any of the requested consolidations have yet been processed. Linden Lab was not able to confirm for us that any such consolidations have yet taken place, so it is unlikely that they are a factor in this data. The net loss currently represents more than 6% of the total Openspaces simulators as at the time of the new pricing/product announcements.
The torrent of new users coming into Second Life is slowing, with today's signup rates now merely double the typical rates, and expected to close in the vicinity of 22,000 new signups for the day. This is all in the wake of the widespread run of a reprinted and regurgitated piece about the divorce of a UK couple.
The original piece has run in hundreds of print and online outlets since the story broke last week. Even tiny local tabloids in small rural towns with little or no Internet access have pushed the story, and by and large readers responded with enthusiasm.
In Scotland On Sunday, Teresa Hunter writes, "Last week's story about the divorce of a couple who met on Second Life must have been the kiss of death for the online virtual world."
CNN, ABC, AP, TimeOnline cover important news of the metaverse
Brave survivor of failed SL/RL marriage moves on, now dating WoW player
by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk
CNN reports that 28 year old Amy Taylor caught her real life husband, 40 year old David Pollard engaged in cybersex with a virtual prostitute - part of a string a virtual infidelities that led to the couple’s divorce in real life -- and in Second Life!
UK's Metro posts the estranged couple's RL typist's wedding photo
Mr. Pollard’s extra-marital virtual romantic encounters appear to have sunk the couple’s plans for wedded bliss as Ms. Taylor is quoted as saying, “I looked at the computer screen and could see his character having sex with a female character. It's cheating as far as I'm concerned.”
The report goes on to say that Mr. Pollard admitted having an online relationship with a girl in America - but AP reports that Taylor gave him a second chance. Pollard and Taylor were married in a lavish virtual ceremony in 2005 - a celebration that apparently eclipsed their RL wedding. But their relationship was doomed when Taylor “caught him cuddling a woman on a sofa in the game. It looked really affectionate” according to ABC news.
Meanwhile, the TimesOnline tells us that the couple “live in Cornwall, weigh 45 stone between them and are on benefits” and goes on to say, “In Second Life, the hugely successful virtual reality game that has about 15m signed-up users worldwide, they are Dave Barmy and Laura Skye – a cool-looking, lissom, villa-owning pair of hotties, whose Second Life marriage featured passionate embraces on enormous marble terraces, debutante-style full-length white gloves and yards of strapless taffeta (her) and an immaculate tuxedo, accessorised with killer cheekbones (him)”.
Sadly, the stunning virtual couple has chosen to part ways -- and Ms. Taylor has moved on to a more promising romantic partner. According to CNN, Ms. Taylor is now in a relationship with a man she met in World of Warcraft. Hopefully the mainstream media will pursue this story further, so the the most pressing question of the day can be answered - do night elf warriors journeying the lands of Azeroth really make better lovers?
The Imprudence project now has its first release candidate viewer for Second Life available, and far sooner than we expected. It's impressive work for a first release candidate as well. We've not had such a fast and smooth viewer experience since Nicholaz "The Mad Patcher" Beresford's series of Second Life viewers. Indeed, many of Beresford's patches are also a part of the Imprudence project.
Imprudence necessarily replaces proprietary fonts with Liberation Sans and Bitstream Vera Mono, which look a little peculiar the first couple of times out, but score high on improved readability. There's no audio either, yet, as the proprietary FMOD audio system has yet to be replaced with OpenAL, but that is coming soon, we understand. As for the change from Kakadu/KDU to OpenJPEG -- this is supposed to be fractionally slower, but honestly, the whole experience was so smooth we never noticed.
An old saying goes "There's no such thing as bad press, so long as they spell your name right" which is normally attributed to P.T.Barnum, but there are a few quotes attributed to Barnum that weren't his, so we'll take that with a grain of salt. Right now, it seems more proper to say "There's no such thing as bad press, so long as there's a whiff of salaciousness about it."
Now, much of the actual reporting about the couple, their situation, and Second Life (their most recent haunt) is pretty much utter tripe. Badly researched, poorly informed twaddle, really. But that doesn't matter, because it is causing a bit of a veritable torrent of new signups to Linden Lab's virtual world.
Metaverse shocked as game god listens to residents, answers questions
by Curious Rousselot
"...its our fault because we didn't put the proper restrictions on them and then they were naturally used for more than they were intended. Its our mistake. Really. I mean it. Completely our mistake." - Zee Linden comments on OpenSpace sim fiasco
On November 12, 2008 Zee Linden, the Chief Financial Officer of Linden Lab posted his quarterly summary of the financial standing of the company. This communication, although a regular event, is astounding for two reasons. First, Linden Lab is a privately owned company and does not have to publicly disclose their financial information in anywhere near the level of detail that Zee does. Secondly, and for most of us more significantly, Zee himself was very actively involved in the conversations that went on in the forums.
To give you an idea of just how responsive Zee was, he posted approximately 34 of the 373 posts in the 2 days that the forum was open for posting. That represents around 9% of the posts. That is pretty impressive considering at times the posts were going up within seconds of each other.
Zee's involvement actually went quite a bit beyond reading and responding to questions in the forums themselves. He publicly offered to meet residents in-world and talked with several of them about their specific issues, including some issues not directly related to Linden Lab's quarterly financial standing. Read on for a summary of some of the more significant conversations found in the forum or go to the forums and read it for yourself (if you do go, be sure to skim through all of the entries because Zee responded to people throughout).
Wildcat Furse Was an active participant throughout the tread with strong concerns about getting information that would help in-world businesses be able to plan better for changes that Linden Lab was making. Wildcat started asking for some justification on tier pricing and some details on plans and, while Zee was unwilling to divulge details (and reasonably so as competitors could use this against Linden Lab), they seamed to come to a positive understanding at then end with this little exchange:
Wildcat Furse: Think I will come over to SF, you mind I bring my kids ? Zee Linden: Wildcat - if you want more detail on our strategic plans than that, then I'm afraid you'll have to get a job here. We haven't even shared much more than that with our board of directors and much less with our investors in general. Bring your kids. They can pet my dog avatar. Wildcat Furse: OK sent me an application form then, I cant wait to start. My kids I will leave here, then U can pet me, cause I have a cat avatar ..... ;-) ... Zee Linden: {Stares at the screen with jaw dropped} Wildcat, I can't believe after all your posts that you actually posted something positive. I am definitely going to re-enforce to our exec team how important lots of responses in the forums are. Thanks!
River Ely requested some more realistic metrics related to land sales and open spaces. Pointing out that most of the buying and selling in Nautilus is being done by greedy land traders who add no real value to Second Life and this should not be put forth by the Lindens as an indication of how much resident demand there is for the new Nautilus area. If you have a look at River's blog, River Rock, you can see some of the same arguements she made throughout the forums. What you will also find there, as her entry from November 13, 2008 is a significant change in attitude that can be directly attributed to Zee Linden's honest conversations with River Ely.
Something many of the people who have been hurt by the recent open spaces issues have been asking for is an appology. In particular an appology for something said by Jack Linden and quoted to us by Shibari Twine. I won't go over it here but you can see it in message number 341 in the forum thread. And for those who have wanted to see an honest admission of a mistake made, here is what Zee said in response, "A better way to say it would have been to say that its our fault because we didn't put the proper restrictions on them and then they were naturally used for more than they were intended. Its our mistake. Really. I mean it. Completely our mistake."
Numerous other issues were brought up and many of the addressed in this thread. How well problems are fixed and how quickly is not something we should expect to see overnight. We should expect that any changes to Second Life itself that may be needed to implement some of the ideas presented will take several months to complete. Remember that a year ago we were complaining about rapid depolyment of features and wanting stability. Second Life may not be as stable as we would like but it is more stable than it used to be. Many of us hope that this new level of communication and interaction with the residents will be one of the first steps in those improvements talked about.
Much has been made of a statement recently by Linden Lab's new CEO, Mark Kingdon, that 'Premium subscriptions are immaterial in our overall business.' You see, in a sense that's pretty much spot-on. Unless a premium account owns more than 512 square metres of the Linden Estate (colloquially known as the Second Life Mainland), that account is either only very small revenue for the Lab, or actually represents an ongoing cost to them.
Linden Lab's CFO, John Zdanowski said, 'The revenue we generate from premium subscriptions is largely offset by the stipends we pay out to these account holders, so this decline doesn't have a material impact on our business.'
Either you're on an older premium account with a 500 Linden Dollar per week stipend grandfathered in, or you're on a newer premium account with 300/week. There's also a choice of plans, ranging from monthly to annual. Let's take a look at the relative values.
Linden Lab's CFO, John Zdanowski is better known to Second Life users as Zee Linden, though we think of him more as a Zeno, after Zeno of Elea, who baffled, annoyed and amused pre-Socratic thinkers with a set of seeming paradoxes, many of which revolved around the adjustment of frames of reference and measurement -- and, whatever their original intention -- amply display the follies that arise from doing so.
It was November 10th 2008 when Robin Linden realized that there was only one way to make all this grief and protesting over price hikes go away. The Lab would have to offer *Big Prize Money* to some lucky resident for their most excellent contribution to the world as a whole, using Second Life as the tool or medium, or at least related to second life in some way. Because, as we all know, residents of Second Life have the attention span of a gnat and so they will forget all the recent nastiness when they learn about this fantastic competition.
What exactly is happening? Well our beloved game gods are going to bless some lucky avatar with 10,000 US Dollars in Linden dollars. And what, do you have to do to win that? Well basically use Second life in some world altering way before January 15, 2009 and document it in obnoxious detail. Oh ya, you will also have to sell your soul to the Lab so they can experiment on it. Or, as it was put in the contest details:
* In order make the results of the competition accessible to our worldwide audience, Linden Lab may engage in a public relations campaign aimed at particular media outlets (press, radio, TV and Internet).
* Finalists and the winner may be asked to participate in Linden Lab marketing events, including press releases, award ceremonies, and media interviews, as appropriate.
Over on SLUniverse, on of the most influential and innovative residents of Second Life, Trout Recreant, has already submitted his registration and receive the typical Linden response. As he said in his own words,
just got this in the mail (I'm lying - no such thing happened)
I have no idea where it came from (still lying).
I certainly didn't write it (yes, I did)
At any rate I'm crushed that I won't be winning the Linden Prize this year (no, I'm not. I didn't nominate myself either). This letter pretty much destroys that dream (complete fabrication)
Dear Mr. Recreant (if that is in fact your real name):
Hi. It’s us again. The Lindens. We want to thank you for taking the time to nominate yourself for the Linden Prize, our first ever $10,000 prize for the person who has done the most to do stuff for some undefined group of people who may or may not have benefitted from whatever he or she did. We are both honored and proud to inform you that you have absolutely no chance whatsoever of winning this award. In fact, we aren’t even considering your nomination.
In your nomination, you mentioned the following activities that you feel have enhanced the lives of our residents: “Slut ratings, Bollywood videos, free biplane rides for orphaned prim babies, and something you refer to as “Letters from the Lindens” which we have referred to our legal department. To be perfectly frank, these sorts of degenerate activities were not what we had in mind. In fact, Robin is still quite cross with you following your posting of an unsolicited slut rating where you a) declined to call her a slut, and b) alleged at least one act of debauchery that did not ever occur. She wasn’t thrilled that you asked her to restock the toilet paper in the Linden men’s room either.
More importantly than the fact that you traumatized a senior staff member is the fact that the activities listed in your self-nomination have done nothing to increase the value of our stock. You have yet to try to impress our business accounts by directing one of these “Letters from the Lindens” to a major corporate sponsor, such as IBM, Sun Microstuff, or Mouseworld (don’t even think about it – remember: LAWYERS). Additionally, although you claim to have stimulated the economy of Second Life in a significant way, the only example you gave of doing so was “tipping strippers”.
Finally, when we talk about charitable contributions to Second Life, we mean donating time, effort, and funds to organizations like Medicins Sans Frontiers, Relay for Life, Heifer International, and other organizations. We cannot consider “Free Biplane Rides for Orphaned Prim Babies”, “Dancing with Noob Chicks”, and “The Trout Recreant Prim Penis Fund” to be legitimate charitable endeavors.
While we acknowledge that your contribution to Second Life, while decidedly odd, has resulted in what you colloquially refer to as “lulz with a z”. We can hardly consider it worthy of an actual reward, unless that reward comes in the form of an IP ban. We’ll make you a deal, however. If you knock that shit off, and we mean it, we’ll give you a trophy that you can proudly display in your Second Life home. That will be great for you, because we are placing you on house arrest. The next time you log in, you will notice ban lines around your property facing in.
[It's a bunneh! The first time I met Marx in world, she was all human and kind enough to pose for one of my picture projects. I knew she spent a large proportion of her online time in fur but would have never dreamt she might actually want to do her Post 6 as her bunny self. There we were – the kitty Bunny and the fluffy bunny standing in the back alleys of Kowloon discussing the deeper meaning of Godard movies while snapping away happily. I hope you enjoy reading about her life as much as I enjoyed our photo shoot. Ladies and gentlemen, blogger and bunny extraordinaire – Marx Dudek! – Bunny Brickworks]
When Bunny asked me where I wanted to be photographed, I immediately replied "Kowloon!" In my opinion, there are few sims as immersing and exotic (to my American mind, at least) as the Kowloon sim, which attempts to recreate the look and feel of the old Kowloon Walled City of Hong Kong. Tall and deep, cramped and expansive, dark and bright, ancient and futuristic, it embodies so much of what maintains my fascination with Second Life. It's a place I can disappear into, a place where the virtual feels almost tangible.
I suppose that's what Second Life is to most of us – an escape from our everyday lives. In some ways, though, it can be an almost transcendental, spiritual experience – a waking dream in which the laws of space and time and gravity and nature need not apply. What appeals to me most of all about Second Life is that it's not "about" anything. I refuse to define it as a game as there are no goals, no points, no rules, and no strategy. Everyone's experience is different and, more often than not, we end up in places we never expected to find ourselves. I began my Second Life as a trash-talking tomboy with a fiercely independent streak, an aversion to makeup of any kind, and no interest in responsibility whatsoever. My, how things change! I had no idea that I would own and manage two residential sims, create skyboxes and furniture, be a successful club DJ, and (gasp!) tie the SL-knot with a plucky, beautiful, inspirational visual artist who lives in the UK and who rocks my virtual world.
I also had no idea that half of my Second Life would be lived as a bunny. But it has, and this has proven to be a surprising and joyful discovery along my SL journey.
I've never felt comfortable being pigeonholed. I am who I am, and that's the best anyone can hope to be in either world. I feel comfortable and welcomed in the fur communities, just as I've felt welcomed in most communities in Second Life. Does this make me a "furry"? I suppose it doesn't matter. I'm fine with it either way.
However, I suppose my decision to appear in fur is somewhat of a political statement. I have a cherished (and stunningly beautiful) friend whose avatar is plus-sized. She was invited to appear in Post 6 but ultimately chose not to subject herself to ridicule from the usual social misfits – the ones who take great joy in kicking the legs out from under anyone who doesn't meet their criteria for what is "normal", "acceptable" or "attractive".
We co-exist in a virtual world with limitless possibilities and infinite opportunities for self-discovery and self-expression. However, for some, the fight for acceptance – even in Second Life – is a constant battle. It would have been very easy for me to appear in Post 6 in "normal" human form. I've never done things the easy way, though, and I'm not about to start now.
When Bunny informed me I was the first Post 6 model to pose "full fur", I was honored but also a little bit sad. There are some breathtakingly spectacular anthromorph avatars in our world, and I hope that my appearance here may embolden a few of them to share this spotlight.
So for my plus-sized friends, my fuzzy friends, for all of my friends who deviate from the norm - for the inspiration, friendship and acceptance you have shown me in my first year in Second Life – this is for you. To everyone, I encourage you to be who you want to be, celebrating who you are, and live boldly and without regret.
Dean’s Vegas Club - what a Cher celebration it was! First of all, there was a pretty good turnout, but of course, I came fairly late in the day. There may have been a bigger crowd earlier - you might expect that from a Cher crowd. What I do know is this was the hottest party on SL I’ve been to in a long time. After all the drama and woes of the SL land problem, this was really a nice break - and I’m not really keeping track of the land situation. I don’t even own land! Too much financial liability; I would be so behind on payments! :D.
The Cher celebration at Dean’s was one of the few times I have seen people on SL in a while. To tell you the truth, it seems that a boycott of SL seems to be in effect, or at least on the sims I go to.
There was a Cher impersonator, of course, but the interesting part is that it was the club owner. They also had very impressive backup dancers, all perfectly synchronized. Not a single glitch or lag problem. Now I don’t know about you, but I’m a sucker for Cher. Sure she’s 60 or something years old, but she’s still kicking’, and that’s impressive in itself, let alone the music’s good.
Anyway, the club had a great selection of everything from her classics to her modern day stuff, and it even had me up and dancing at one point! The club was exceptionally decorated, and I got a sneak peek (it’s not that hard!) into the VIP lounge, and every part is so perfectly decorated. It could legitimately be a Vegas club! Except for the ribbon roof.
All in all, this place gets 4 out of 5 stars for the club. I found almost nothing wrong with it. It’s a perfect place to have a romantic dinner and dance, or if you just want to go and meet some really nice people. I can only imagine how good it is during its “Rat Pack of SL” performances! So head on down, and see what all the buzz is about! All I can say is DEAN’S IN VEGAS BABY!!!
It isn't presently clear how long this downward trend will last. So far, those net losses amount to just 2.8% of the total Openspaces 2.0 product that are actually out there on the Second Life grid. Many owners, however, have said that they intend to hang on to their void simulators for as long as possible, and dump them just before the jump to Openspaces 4.0 (or Homesteads 1.0) becomes mandatory. It remains to be seen if the Lab can shake off the chill and push those figures up in the latter half of the month.
Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.
Paris 1900 in grave danger -- reports of OpenSpace landowners flight
by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk
DATELINE Fri Nov 7 06:27:53 2008 -- Paris 1900 (9,175,16)
YadNi Monde:
I am generally pleased to announce, this time i am not. Laurent Savon, actual owner of Paris 1900, cannot afford land tier anymore and he is going to NUKE Paris 1900, an ensemble of sims i built two years ago.
Either YOU know of someone who could save Paris 1900 from obliteration, then please let me know, or you just know yourself and there is nothing you can do, in that case, go have a last visit to this ancient Top Of The Pop project that in it's time exploded the charts of visitor counts.
DATELINE Thu Nov 6 17:17:38 2008
Cummere Mayo:
Sims being returned or abandoned:
loss of openspace sims:
various stores: 100+
seperate park, galleries, and small rp zones: about 80
ccs: 1
RPS: 3
Pete Brim: 1
Neo-modern rentals group: 62 (at least)
Bitova Loon: 4 (possibly another 8 additional)
Alikat Stables : 2
Albatroz Hird and friends: 3
aPiscean Liberty: 1
Shanna Sungsoo: 1
Lileigh Cazalet: 1
Boby Brim: 1
Rush Gastel:1
Bengaltiger Writer and Wheemzel DeCuir: 28
The7Seas Estate: 8
Vanillia Vantelli: 2
Skulldevilman Alter: 1
Renee Faulds: 1
Raptors Reef: 1
listed on http://web3d.admicile.com/openspace/: 49
Joia Lane: 5
Aiku Yokosuka: 1
Rimpoche Kiama: 2
total so far 354
cost per year at 75$/mo
$318,600
this does not include many of the groups that posted on the forum that they were closing up all of their openspace sims or all of their owned sims of any type and whose numbers i do not know.
This is most likely only the tip of the iceberg... I would guess the real losses will be ten to 20 times this.
Experts blame alien abductions for site’s destruction
by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk
Metaverse experts dismissed the possibility that Second Life is a hostile environment for mainstream marketing efforts and media outlets, pointing out that alien abduction is the most likely explanation for the disappearance of CNN’s in-world “iReport Hub”.
CNN iReports Hub Nuked!
Almost exactly one year ago, the opening of the in-world I-Report hub was celebrated with promises of journalists - or at least avatars representing journalists - appearing at a special virtual building which included “a news desk where CNN producers will hold weekly editorial discussions, and an amphitheater for larger in-world events, such as training sessions and appearances by CNN anchors and correspondents”.
Today there is no evidence of the building, and the iReport site is indistinguishable from any other abandoned SL property.
Many believe that flying saucers or beings from another galaxy are responsible for the surprising disappearance, and point to a pattern of disappearances including Reuters and The Bild's AvaStar - shocking departures from the metaverse media scene that puzzle some residents. Another factor in the disappearances could be a shortage of aluminum foil hats resulting in excessive exposure to dangerous thought control beams. At press time it was unclear if the CNN leaders were wearing the shiny protective headgear before they vanished.
A few traces of the Hub remain however, and the CNN web site still has a video of the iReports Hub in happier times:
"The thing we most hope to gain by having a CNN presence in Second Life is to learn about virtual worlds and understand what news is most interesting and valuable to their residents" - Susan Grant, executive vice president of CNN News Services, November 2007.
Let us hope that the aliens did not erased Ms. Grant’s memory during her time in the flying saucer - we'd hate to see all that valuable market research go to waste.
You could be forgiven for having forgotten about the Linden Prize already, given that it's been four months since it was announced by Mitch Kapor. Nevertheless, we weren't entirely surprised to see Linden Lab reannounce it, this time with some actual details, terms and conditions.
The fundamentals of the prize seem to remain unchanged. It is US$10,000 worth of Linden Dollars for (as Kapor put it) 'superlative achievement exemplifying the mission "elevating the human condition" through using Second Life.'
The terms and conditions now make eligibility somewhat more precise.
the virtual newspaper birthday party that rocked so hard it crashed two sims
by pixeleen mistral, lower case grrrl
we've been running short on uppercase characters here at the herald, but i've been assured by audrey from typesetting that this is a temporary situation which has nothing to do with cack-handed jack linden's unique approach to customer satisfaction or m linden's new theory of pretend land pricing -- it is pure coincidence that every one of the upper case typeface artisans suddenly deserted sl. so there is nothing to worry about and this is not a problem! e.e. cummings made a career out of this sort of spot shortage.
in any case, i was a bit worried about how the herald's 5th b'day party would turn out the weekend before last - would anyone show up? my fears turned out to be totally unfounded - not only did some of the herald staff show up - we also got at least one griefer, and reliable sources suggest that it was none other than that wild and crazy canadian guy: mr. frizzle fry!
for those of you that missed out on the fun, here is how the herald's 5th birthday celebration looked from this reporter's perspective. as you will see, any doubts i had about using sl for serious business were totally erased.
new world notes & hamlet au smackdown! - the herald has two kris alts and they both have white suits
ms. tizzy teardrop worries that mr. metus mouroutsos will spill his drink on his coat
post 6 photographer extraordinaire bunny brickworks takes a cig break - and ponders how to get a linden lab staffer to pose for the herald
the party gets rolling in shivar sim - shaun altman has been hypnotized by eggthighs adamski as intlibber bnt looks on - but this special moment is interrupted when the particle effects start. we enjoyed both mario and goatse images courtesy of a griefer located in the far corner of the sim
tizzy teardrop has changed into a formal party dress, but then the lag gets bad and I am logged out of sl.
trying to log in again
still trying to log in
shivar sim admin sarahelizabeth had enough and closed shivar to outsiders - so the herald b'day party goes mobile
jimbo quality joins the party after it moves to fort longcat - jimbo is wearing the special barefoot-look men's shoes that are taking the fashion scene by storm
urizenus sklar is happy to see herald writer denise domela
uri is rocking the latest fashion - barefoot shaped shoes that make it look like you are barefoot. uri declined my offer to paint his toenails.
sigmund leominster has been working out - and it shows!
quelle surprise! longcat sim crashes - and this second sim crash sets a new record for a herald party
longcat does not come back up - I am dumped into a noobie welcome area
chat sessions to the sl herald group are failing intermittently. eventually jimbo quality teleports me to the new party location - a nice underwater spot beneath a temple
urizenus sklar asserts that he is urizenus sklar and therefor self-identical -- chat is still not working reliably
oliphant ming shows off another pair of shoes that look like bare feet and metus returns to the party after cleaning the spilled drink off his coat
Linden Lab announced that it has signed on interactive design agency, Big Spaceship, as a key part of its strategy to rework the user-experience, user-interface and signup system for Second Life. The project has been dubbed the UX (User eXperience) project. Big Spaceship, in fact, has apparently been onboard with the Lab for some little while now -- we're only really just hearing about it.
We had the opportunity to steal a bit of time with Benjamin Linden (otherwise known as Ben Glenn) who is a Director on Linden Lab's User Experience team and talk to him about Big Spaceship's involvement. Ben is primarily responsible for the user interface design of the Second Life viewer. Along the way we learned a lot about the Lab's reasoning behind this project, the goals they were shooting towards, and how they intended to achieve them.
One of the latest additions to the Linden Lab team is Amanda van Nuys, now the director of Enterprise Marketing at Linden Lab. I don't think there's any prizes for guessing that van Nuys was hired by Mark Kingdon, the Lab's new CEO, as she spent five and a half years as vice-president of Corporate Marketing at Kingdon's old haunt at Organic Inc.
'I'm leading the marketing charge when it comes to how companies can use virtual world technologies -- powered by the Second Life Grid -- to communicate, collaborate, and learn,' said van Nuys, 'Needless to say, the possibilities are endless and the timing is perfect. With the current economic downturn, companies are going to be searching for ways to reduce costs (particularly travel), increase innovation, and conduct business in more eco-friendly ways.'
Opinion is divided at the moment on whether the economic downturn pushes enterprises towards or away from virtual worlds. It might be another six months before we really start to see an indication of which. Nevertheless with the Enterprise Marketing team continuing to grow at the Lab, it doesn't seem like a stretch that Kingdon would poach someone with a skillset and record that he knows well.
Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop.
Combat diminishing between armies, New Jessie on the brink
Militaries must work together to save combat in the metaverse
by Vegna Fouroux
New Jessie in grave danger
It was the best of times and the worst of times. The two major alliances of SL (The Ascendant Iniative and The Iron Symphony) had put aside their turbulent pasts and had begun a new age. An age where combat was king, an age where scandals and gossip were frowned upon, where the ban hammer was the final solution and not the first, an age where a sense of honour prevailed. Alas, the trust is not so simple, so let us look past the lofty ideals and examine what is really going on.
The military which I believe to be the finest (partly due to me being a member): The Merczateers has 400 + members. That's more than the Ascendant Iniative groups COMBINED. Hence any combat on a large scale can't be undertaken often as these groups only have a fraction of men in relation to the numbers of our invading force at any given time, thus combat is taken on very rarely and large scale, pitched battles on the scale of those fondly remembered epics; Operation Crucifix and Operation: Wrath of Toll have not been seen in quite some time. Ordo Imperialis and even The Militant Collective (both I.S members) have similar issues.
"AHA!" I hear you readers cry "I also have some knowledge of military matters! My dear Vegna. What of the Sovereign Regime, what of The Fuhrer and his Vanguard, of the Chtonic Syndicate, newly arisen and ready for the fight, THERE! there Mr. Fouroux is your advesary!." The Iron Symphony with of course, all due consideration has seen fit to put a combat blockade on The Sovereign Regime thus leaving VG and CS' only enemies The A.I who, as I have just pointed out are often too small in number to counter invasions leaving the S.R in the same predictiment as The I.S. Which really makes you wonder about the validity of these "Alliances" but more on that later.
Cheating and Blockades
The reason for the Iron Symphony's blockade? Cheating! those dirty Sovereign Regime evildoers have been cheating..Well...That's an outrage! All self-respecting militaries must have nothing to do with cheaters. Again this theory looks dubious upon closer scrutiny.
What have the Sovereign Regime done that qualifies as cheating? They follow STABLE and The Alliance Navy (who first drafted STABLED, albeit by a member who is now in the I.S) seems quite content with this. Ask any I.S Leader about this blockade and the reasons will be vague.."Cheating, unfairness....Meaness, we've tried our best..uh." The fact is, the old grudges are simply still there. The Sovereign Regime have scripters and builders who are among the oldest in the community, they know the game, the rules, they just don't have the greatest of character..To them this is the internet and the internet hast lulz, Accumulate thy lulz while thy is able. This infuriates some leaders, to whom this is a game not to be taken lightly, as such, the ban button looms temptingly.
But cheating exists in the Second Life Military community..oh yes my readers it does. There's one military, proud of it's history, steeped in tradition and stalwart in the face of common sense; The Ordo Imperialis.
goto teleports considered harmful
Before I continue, make no mistake, this is no Ordo smear story, this is just highlighting a hypocrisy of the highest order. The Ordo must have the most boring time of all, you cant even fight the Alliance Navy, Sparta and other militaries when the opportunity DOES arise. Why? The major A.I groups have put a blockade on the Ordo for not following STABLE. And I have to say they are probably right to do so. Ordo use goto teleporters (i.e I want to teleport my avatar to the enemy position I simply type "goto: Enemy name") which this reporter has seen with his own eyes right in the middle of combat (OH but they'll claim it's strictly non combat only).
Admittedly they have their merits; good discipline and other pros you can see in another article on this hallowed site. They use fairlight and titan industry weapons in day to day combat (both known for their deep unfairness and Titan Industries even incorporates TOS breaking features such as spy bullets). Yet, readers I digress, these are small matters, but surely if these blockades were put aside combat would take place full throttle, myself and others wouldn't have to suffer the dreaded occasional one-man noob army assault as our daily combat. Again, it's up to a prestigious few grudge bearers not willing to let bygones be bygones.
The new void sim prices are the other cause of the looming annihilation of the militia community.
New Jessie sim is now an established combat region where all groups and freelancers can come and fight - but New Jessie is on the verge of collapse due to financial problems and they certainly won't be able to pay for it with the new 66% void sim price increase.
Nor will other militaries who work off Void Sims for that matter like Vengement or The Echelon Union or 2142 or The Militant Collective. Unless you've got a lot of cash in your back pocket that is. Running a military just became a hell of a lot more expensive
No, only a few militaries like the Merczateers, Vanguard Armed Forces and the Ordo Imperialis could afford to pay for those kinds of costs...and they aren't even fighting each other! (or on void sims for that matter). have you grasped the point? The only militaries that will be left alive, will be the ones that aren't fighting each other.
The Solution? Cut your ridiculous blockades, get out into the main sphere, raise awareness about these astronomical new prices. This is your community. It's time YOU gave back.
Open Space sims and how Linden Lab got it right - for themselves
by Maximilian Proto, Department of Random Guy Posting
After Linden Lab introduced a new pricing policy for its highly popular Open Space (OS) sim product, residents joined to celebrate the cherished tradition of feverishly complaining about price increases ("they're making it too expensive"), price decreases ("they're devaluating my investments"), new product introductions ("they're hurting mainland owners with those islands"), product changes ("they're are hurting island owners with those OS sims") or even when Linden Lab doesn't do anything at all ("they're not doing anything at all").
But why did Linden Lab decide to respond with such a steep price increase for a highly successful product risking alienating their customer base (further)? In particular when the RL economy is on the brink of a recession? And wouldn't Linden Lab suffer considerable losses if estate owners would really abandon their OS sims as a reaction?
Unfortunately, the idea that JIRA issues or threats of abandoning sims will change Linden Lab's pricing plans is futile. In fact, Linden Lab's move makes a lot of economic sense for the company, and even large scale abandoning of OS sims will likely have little to no impact on Linden Lab's financial performance.
And this is why:
It seems that OS sims turned out to be much less of a success to Linden Lab when they compared the profit and loss statement with that of standard sims. Apparently, on a like-for-like basis the average operating costs of OS sims are considerably higher compared to standard sims which turns an OS sim into a lower margin product for Linden Lab.
Hence, Linden Lab decided to rectify this situation by introducing a pricing structure that deliberately reduces the incentive to purchase and maintain OS sims in order to make people chose standard sims instead that are generating higher margins for the company.
Obviously, Linden Lab's move (understandably) infuriates OS estate owners and leaves them with four basic options:
Option 1: Keep going and pass the extra costs to tenants (if they are in the land business), customers (if they are in the content business) or group members (if they are a non-profit community).
Option 2: Convert OS sims (back) into standard sims and hope to keep your tenants/customer/group members.
Option 3: Give up and sell the OS sims to another resident.
All three options will have only very little impact on Linden Lab's revenues as they will continue to receive the tier payments for the sims. In fact, they will get more revenues and better margins due to the increase in tier fee.
That leaves option 4: Give up by simply abandoning the OS sims.
This is the most interesting option to look at – not only because the other three options are pretty straightforward but also because many estate owners are using the abandonment argument as a threat to convince Linden Lab to change its course.
Let's look what would happen to Linden Lab's revenue if OS estate owners would decide to abandon in droves and see if the company would be impressed. In order to be able to do so, we need to make a few sensible assumptions and do a bit of math (you have been warned):
1. How many OS sims are there actually?
When the new OS sims where introduced in spring this year the Second Life grid had about 14,600 islands. By the end of October this number will be 27,000, an increase of more than 12,000. Considering the popularity of OS sims, there may well be up to 10,000 of them on the grid by now.
2. How much revenues is Linden Lab generating from those OS sims?
Assuming roughly 10,000 OS sims, Linden Lab is currently generating monthly revenues of US$750,000 from those sims (note 1).
3. What would happen if Linden Lab lost 50% of all those OS sims as a result of the new pricing structure?
Obviously, the effect of the new pricing structure and the adjustments to it will be felt over a certain period of time, probably up to 6 months. Let's think a little about Linden Lab's revenue development over this period of time by making a few simplifying assumptions:
If Linden Lab had kept their pricing policy unchanged, they had 10,000 OS sims generating US$4,500,000 over 6 months (note 2).
If Linden Lab loses half of those OS sims as furious estate owners leave the grid and simply abandon their sims at the beginning of January Linden Lab's revenue will fall to US$3,750,000 (note 3). This would be a shortfall of US$750,000.
However, abandoning those 5,000 OS sims frees up server capacity for either 5,000 new OS sims or 1,250 standard sims. Assuming that OS sims have fallen a bit out of favor, Linden Lab will now go and connect those 1,250 sims for a setup fee of US$1,000 each. In addition, Linden Lab will generate tier revenue of US$295 per month from those newly connected sims.
How much tier revenue Linden Lab can generate in the first 6 months that we are looking at depends on how fast they can sell the freed up capacity. Looking back in time, Linden Lab connected about 500 islands every month between October 2007 and March 2008. Let's be conservative, and assume they can connect the freed up server capacity at 250 sims per month.
Looking at our 6 months following the price increase Linden Lab would generate revenues of US$1,250,000 in setup fees and US$1,106,250 in tier revenue selling the abandoned capacity over this period of time (note 3), which together is US$2,356,250 to offset the initial shortfall of US$750,000.
The 
October metrics for Linden Lab's virtual environment, 
The torrent of new users coming into 
Since 
You could be forgiven for having forgotten about the Linden Prize already, given that it's been 
Linden Lab announced that it has signed on interactive design agency, 
