SL Winter 2009 season has arrived and there is less than a month to go until christmas day 2009.  Details of this year’s SL Winterfest will be announced on the Official Second Life Blog very soon. Winterfest includes Lindens Vs Residents snowman contests and snowball fights. Last year was a blast and I loved every moment of it.  I am looking forward to this years events and I’m sure you will too.

Recommendations

1. Click on Search > Showcase tab > Winterfest tab – Teleport and enjoy!
   
2. SL Winterfest Destination Guide 2009
   
3. Winter and christmas key words to try in SEARCH > ALL and PLACES tabs!

• “Winter”
• “Winter Wonderland”
  
• “Christmas”
• “Ice skating”
• “Snow”
• “Santa”

5. Check out my SL Winter Flickr Collection 2009

6. Enjoy and have a great winter season!

I asked this SL question on plurk on 25th November 2009 and here are the responses I had within 24 hours of posting. 

• Enjoy reading!
• Which is your favourite?
• Do you have another?…add your comment below!

1. When you look around at RL things and consider how many prims or sculpties it would take to build. Calculating which attachment points you could use (while dressing)
2. When you’re stuck in traffic and you try to reduce your draw distance to reduce the lag
3. You see someone interesting, want to check their profile or wish you could add them as friend!
4. When you try to use a HUD to hug a friend.
5. When you’re looking at the sky and wondering who made that WL preset
6. You start thinking about how you should get dressed in RL, and consider what to search for in your inventory.
7. When you try to see who is looking at you rl and looking for the ShowLook At function
8. When you see furniture in RL and wonder how many prims it would be
9. When you stand up from your chair and realize you have the imprint of the chair on your thighs and rear end
10. See someone with BAD hair in RL, and consider contacting the hairdresser about the texturing job
11. When you want to inspect someone wearing something you like in RL
12. I look at fashions and wonder if I’ve seen it in SL
13. You have nightmares about your SL friends
14. When you check clothing in the shop for perms.
15. When you see someone in the street and you think “Oh, they need a new AO
16. When you really wish you could just mod your shape
17. Go shopping and search for description- copy , mod or trans
18. When you’re looking at a picture online and try to zoom and cam to see whats behind the foreground
19. When you are disappointed that there is no Mute button for annoying RL people
20. You send your partner to the shop to get bread telling him its only about 2L a loaf
21. When you need to tp away to go get something, and you get up in rl and wonder why you’re in the kitchen
22. When someone asks you to dance and you look around for the pose balls
23. When you’ve changed your sms tone to the IM ding
24. When you sign your SL name on an official document
25. When you’re on the beach and look for a towel to sit on, can’t see one and tell someone to rez one, rather than get one
26. When you have a nightmare and dream that *everyone* in the entire world, SL and RL is just an alt! Yes!
27. When you are really annoyed that you can’t teleport thru Penn Station and actually have to walk
28. When I am walking through the crowded streets of NYC thinking OMG this lag is getting on my nerves!
29. When you wish you could turn on alpha
30. I see someone in RL and tell myself they got it at X shop on the grid
31. I actually asked someone once if she got her dress at Ivalde
32. When you do the kawaii dance irl
33. You hear Brazilian music at the grocery store and look for the dance balls!
34. When you’re talking with a friend about coming over in RL and you have to restrain yourself from asking for a TP
35. When you try to zoom in and around pictures on the Web and suddenly realize you can’t.
36. When your having a bad hair day in the morning and you wish that you could put on your Truth Hair
37. When you walk outside and are amazed by how quickly trees rez
38. Checking the price tag to see if I had enough lindens to buy it for Marmalade
39. You are sitting in a cafe in the Village and you see some hipster and you think, “Yeah, they got that skin at Redgrave”
40. When you’re pretty sure you see a UI surrounding your normal vision
41. When… you want to turn to middday or midnight

These are so funny. LMAO! lol

Other posts like this

• http://www.vintfalken.com/you-know-youre-addicted-to-secondlife-when/
• http://www.wordsyoudontknow.com/2008/01/10-sure-fire-signs-that-youre-addicted-to-second-life/

This is where I stand.

Until Linden Lab reverse or modify their position on freebies, low-cost items and “stale” stock I will not buy one more goddam thing from Xstreet. I shall use it to find things I want and then contact the makers in-world and buy direct. As I can’t build or script I have spent a considerable amount in Xstreet over my three years in world but that stops now.

Greed is greed and I do not like it.

Latest update from Torley Linden via Second Life Answers. This was posted up on the How soon before Windows 7 & SL are compatible? in mid November 2009. Check out my last post on SL Windows 7. Latest SL Answer Windows 7 posts…:)

I don’t have a date on this but our Quality Assurance peeps know, and when we’ve ratified Windows 7 good and proper, our System Requirements page will formally state this (it should also be updated to include all those new GPUs… anyone else drooling over those ATI Radeon 5870s yet?): http://secondlife.com/support/sysreqs.php

I’m currently using Windows 7 32-bit on a Q6600 w/GeForce 8800GTS and it mostly works fine. By “mostly”, I mean there’ll be occasions I start up SL and it has horribly slow framerate despite minimal activity elsewhere. Not sure what’s causing it but it may be because I have something else going on, and I haven’t seen widespread reports of this. Overall, Windows 7 has been a better experience for me than Vista.

This is some good news at least. I will post more updates in the near future on the latest news relating Windows 7 with SL.

Will you be joining The Resident Help Network ?

As of November 23, 2009 the Resident Help Network is in beta according to Lexie Linden that has just published an official post called Join the Resident Help Network. The Resident Help Network known as (RHN) is going to promote “the best of the best” volunteer-run help groups in Second Life. The Resident Help Network is the future for Second Life it seems now after bad news that the SL Mentor program will shut down on december 11th 2009. There has been alot of reactions in the past week about the SL Mentors coming to an end on the SL Forums, social networking sites like Plurk, Twitter and many residents are talking about it alot inworld too.

Do you have a passion for helping others? Do you belong to a volunteer-driven help organization in Second Life? Then this could be the network for you.

There are tons of helping groups in SL and I do belong to many. I will join this network and see how it goes.

The first phase of this beta will be for established groups that have a primarily new Resident focus. Later, we will be able to add groups that focus on the more seasoned Resident.

Hmm, interesting.

Linden Lab will review each group through an application process, and each group that passes muster is added to our approved network. The searchable network will be available in high-profile locations, such as the website and other resources that are available to new Residents—enabling Residents to quickly and easily find the high-quality help they need.

O.o…another application process. Will it work? There many resources for new residents nowdays and glad to see it will be searchable in SL.

Second Life has a long history of active and experienced volunteer-driven, Resident-run help groups, and we think it’s time they get the attention they deserve. The RHN not only shines a spotlight on these passionate, hard-working volunteers, it also allows Linden Lab to work closer with group leaders to build best practice and identify ways we can better incorporate their groups into the Second Life experience.

True. But LL didn’t have to shut down the SL Mentor program. LL should keep the Mentor groups alive.

We hope you are as excited about this new program as we are! We look forward to highlighting the great efforts and community contributions of Resident volunteers—your amazing work deserves to be in the spotlight!

I’m excited. I hope it lasts.

We will see what impact it makes to the SL community in the upcoming weeks and months. I know many SL Mentors will enjoy taking part in this new program and I might to. On the other side of the scale I don’t think many are interesting anymore and are annoyed because of the recent closure of SL Mentors.

MORE INFORMATION

There is a short FAQ available here as well as more details, eligibility requirements, and application in the Resident Help Network Guidelines.

• Join the Discussion
• Resident Help Network Portal

Linden Lab are once again asking the content creators in second life to give their time and creativity to support their Public Relations marketing and bottom line.  The majority of which have just been told they’re to pay more for the same substandard marketing/sales service offered by XstreetSL.

https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/commerce/blog/2009/11/17/a-helpful-hand-makes-a-world-of-difference#cf

Kiva is a very worthwhile cause.  Microfinance in the developing world has been proven time and time again to be an extremely positive benefit to those who use it.  Here’s a bit of reading to give you an idea of how it works and the benefits.

However:

Are Linden Lab going to match the money raised from the efforts of their creators?  No

Are Linden Lab going to waive the fee they’ll charge to transfer the money raised out of Second Life and into the real world where it will be used?  No.

So, Kiva won’t get the full amount donated and Linden Research gets lots of good publicity and makes some money.  Clever huh?

You can support the work of Kiva directly – right down to chosing the type of microbusiness you wish to invest in. 

Do that instead.

Thanks to eloheliot for this.

It’s almost December and this is my special early post on events, stories and popular talking topics during 2009. I will post up Part 2 at the end of next month with all the latest SL happenings. It’s been a bumpy roller-coaster ride so far during 2009 in Second Life. What have been your key highlights so far of 2009 in Second Life? I would love to know!

Popular stories and events during 2009:

• OnRez and XStreet SL was integrated –  January 20th 2009
• SL Valentines Day 2009 – 14th February 2009
• New Second Life Blogs – 25th February 2009
• BunnyJam 2009 – 17th April 2009
• Adult Content Changes policy – 21st April 2009
• Linden Memorial Park was opened – end of April 2009
• SL6B Birthday – June 23rd 2009
• Second Life Land Expo 2009 – 15th May 2009
• Bay City’s First Anniversary – 17th May 2009
• Homestread Pricing plan – 26th May 2009
• Beta launch of Second Life Answers - 28th May 2009
• Second Life 2.0 photos leaked – 12th June 2009
• Big Bad Blogger Challenge 2009 - June 2009
• Zindra regions opened - 15th June 2009
• Relay for Life 2009 - 18th to 19th July 2009
• New SL Content Management Roadmap – 3rd August 2009
• Snowglobe 1.1 released – 3rd August 2009
• SLCC09 – 13th August 2009
• LL redesigns SecondLife.com – 26th August 2009
• Second Life Content Creators Sue Second Life Creator Linden Lab -  15th September 2009
• Orange Island closed down in SL – 29th September 2009
• Philip Linden moves on from LL to work on LoveMachine - 15th October 2009
• SL Knowlege Base migration completed – 19th October 2009
• Third Party Viewer Policy – 20th October 2009
• SL Burning Life 2009 – 17th-25th October 2009
• SL Step Up! Day 2009 – 5th November 2009
• SL Mentor program closure announcement – 18th November 2009
• Xstreet SL fees on freebies – 18th November 2009

> Links will not be posted.

Upcoming in December 2009

• SL Winterfest 2009 (TBC)
• My 1st year milestone on the Main Grid
• Christmas Day events
• 24-hour music festival (TBC)

> (TBC – To be confirmed)

Predictions for 2010 for Second Life

• My Predictions

orignal post here: http://theriseofthesurreal.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/you-think-your-real-life-data-is-kept-safe-by-linden-lab-think-again/

In a nutshell:  No substantial action from LL and they claim that someone being able to log in as someone else isn’t a security breach.

The two people who were involved in it talk about it here: http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/general-sl-discussion/37048-new-linden-lab-account-security.html

Two things of interest.

1. Linden Research are not treating it as a security breach (they closed the bug report that was lodged in the security section).  

2. Linden Research have a reputation for a lack of attention to detail and sloppy processing of customer issues with no reason given for their actions and no recourse.  So much so that people are reluctant to ever give names of someone if they are only peripherally involved as a spectator- simply because LL is likely to take punutive action against the name by cancelling the account.

This second element is remarkable.  Despite the quite amazing sums of money people pay to Linden Research for the use of their services there is no guarantee of fair dealing by the company.  They have a ToS that effectively states they can do what they want, when they want and you have no recourse.  If they decide to close your account they feel they have no obligation to telly you why they have cancelled it, refund you any moneys in the account (they say it’s not real, despite it having been procured with real money) or allow you access to the account to remove any intellectual property you may own.

Apparently they used to have a habit of double billing people and not refunding the account when notified.  If you had the temerity to ask your credit card to reverse the second payment Linden Research would suspend or cancel your account until you withdrew the request from the card company.

These days as I understand it they still double bill on occassions and may or may not refund.  Unsurprisingly most people don’t go to their credit card providers and complain anymore – despite these double billings sometimes being anything up to 295USD.

Now of course those companies that choose to deal with Linden Research with their new standalone system will possibly not have these problems.  I would hope Linden Research are at least smart enough to behave as a professional company does rather than the way they show their distain for their entertainment platform userbase.  Sadly companies rarely make their reasons for their dissatisfaction with a company known. I suppose we’ll find out when Linden Lab stop providing statistics to support their claims of success.  Which, coincidentaly, they’ve just done with the entertainment platform statistics feed, which can be found here: http://secondlife.com/statistics/economy-data.php  note the date on the web page.  I must say I found it amusing on many levels..

Even the BBC can’t muster any enthusiasm for Second Life anymore: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8367957.stm

Some of the comments explain the lack of retention rate…

Second Life is boring! You can’t do anything without spending money, so for the person casually checking it out, there’s absolutely nothing to attract them. And despite the comment in the article about “talking to weirdos”, it’s actually quite difficult to find anyone in there to talk to at all.

~~~~~

I joined SL but it was absolutely impossible to navigate. I could barely get out of the intro area and once you did, there was no help or guidance left. I wandered round and round in circles for a couple of days and then gave up. It was a great idea but just didn’t work in practice. Shame, really.

~~~~~

Updates; that was what killed it for me. Every time you revisited you were compelled to upload more and more updates, which seemed really cool at first, until you realised that you were inflating the spec. Eventually, the technological improvements outstripped the natural upgrading budget of the average PC owner – there were a lot of stay-at-home moms, kids and freelancers online when I was there – and the experience became like wading through buggy sludge until it crashed on you. Not pleasant.

 

Linden Research have always been too busy to do any of this so far..  A couple of days ago they announced they’re getting rid of their volunteers they use to help those who are new and pushing it out to community groups to self manage and they also announced they were going to start charging people for using their shopping website to give away things free to the community.

Apparently though things are ok..  they’ve had a 23% increase in repeat visitors in the last year.  Which still means no real growth just people coming back.  It’s an interesting thought that they have accepted that there’s only 1.3 million people (approximately) who can be bothered to log at least twice every couple of months out of the 17+ million who have set up accounts.

This is the second of these “where are they now?” stories  I’ve seen on Second Life in the last few months.  This is despite them recently managing to get an article in both the Wall Street Journal and in the New York Times. 

Interesting times ahead. 

Linden Lab recently announced on the Official SL Blog, that there will be a new policy on freebies on XStreet SL. This is a very bad week overall for the community of SL because first LL will be closing the SL Mentor program and now ontop of that there will be a fee for freebies on XStreet SL. From what I’ve been hearing lately many residents are removing products from XStreet SL as a result of this new policy.

• Roadmap Managing Freebies on XStreet SL
• Freebies on Xstreet SL Roadmap FAQ

We will enact the following new controls for the Xstreet SL Marketplace within 90 days, with at least two weeks’ notice, in order to improve the shopping experience:

Monthly Listing Fee for Freebies of L$99:

• Listings for free items will now be treated as a marketing/promotional tool and thus will have a price.
• L$99 is the price of our least expensive listing enhancement and so we will start there.
• Depending upon desire for this marketing opportunity and perceived value given such demand, we will adjust the price as necessary to maximize this value and keep the freebie listings from becoming bloated again.
• Expected Delivery: 30 – 60 days

Minimum Commission of L$3 on all items priced L$1 or greater:

• We will enact a minimum commission of L$3 on all sales of non-freebie listings.
• Since Freebie listings are now considered marketing and are charged as such, they will not incur this fee.
• A L$3 commission will raise the commission on all listings under L$50.  This was a range suggested by residents, but it turns out that this is the price range where there is a very high transaction volume and low commission income which combine to cover the costs of those transactions.
• We may adjust this minimum commission as we see its effects on the marketplace.  L$3 does not cover the full cost of a transaction, but the goal here is first to manage freebie growth first.
• Expected Delivery: 30 – 60 days

Monthly Listing Fee of L$10 for all items L$1 or greater:

• All non-freebie listings will now be charged L$10 per month to remain listed in the Xstreet SL Marketplace
• Currently, less than 20% of Xstreet SL listings make at least one sale per month.  This displays just how much clutter of unsold items exists on Xstreet SL.
• Doing this will provide an incentive for merchants to remove listings which are not selling, while keeping this fee low enough to have a minimal effect on listings which are selling and are desired by shoppers.
• By reducing the overall number of listings on Xstreet SL, the shopping experience will drastically improve which will please our shoppers and be a boon to the business of all of our merchants.
• Expected Delivery: 60 – 90 days

Separate freebies into their own category:

• There is already a freebie section on Xstreet SL.  This section will become the place to browse for new freebies.
• We will remove free listings from the browsable categories and keyword search results on Xstreet SL.
• Expected Delivery: 60 – 90 days

Timeline:

• We will provide at least 2 weeks notice before releasing any of these changes.
• We expect to enact these controls within the time window 30 – 90 days following this roadmap announcement.

By now I expect most will have heard about the listing fees being introduced to items on XStreet SL, however if you have not I suggest you read this blog post from Linden Lab, especially if you have items listed on XStreet.

https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/commerce/blog/2009/11/18/roadmap–managing-freebies-on-xstreet-sl

For me as a merchant, the above means that I would have to pay L$400 a month for my 40 items, plus commission, whether the items sold or not. For the same price I could rent a shop in any location I wanted in-world AND have more prims.

I’m saddened to have to add my name to the list of merchants leaving XStreet SL, but I have no choice. I am not going to pay L$10 per item listed as well as the commission which I have never been happy about.

I simply cannot afford this and do not understand why I am being penalised for the rubbish items other people place on XStreet SL, when I spent my time making things and paid commission the same as every other merchant on XStreet. The only merchants who will be able to afford these changes are the ones who make thousands from sales – and I seriously doubt even they will be happy about wasting money on this.

If anyone from Linden Lab is taking any notice of public opinion, I would respectfully suggest that you reverse the decision to incorporate listing fees, or you will be left with an empty marketplace.

By now I expect most will have heard about the listing fees being introduced to items on XStreet SL, however if you have not I suggest you read this blog post from Linden Lab, especially if you have items listed on XStreet.

https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/commerce/blog/2009/11/18/roadmap–managing-freebies-on-xstreet-sl

For me as a merchant, the above means that I would have to pay L$400 a month for my 40 items, plus commission, whether the items sold or not. For the same price I could rent a shop in any location I wanted in-world AND have more prims.

I’m saddened to have to add my name to the list of merchants leaving XStreet SL, but I have no choice. I am not going to pay L$10 per item listed as well as the commission which I have never been happy about.

I simply cannot afford this and do not understand why I am being penalised for the rubbish items other people place on XStreet SL, when I spent my time making things and paid commission the same as every other merchant on XStreet. The only merchants who will be able to afford these changes are the ones who make thousands from sales – and I seriously doubt even they will be happy about wasting money on this.

If anyone from Linden Lab is taking any notice of public opinion, I would respectfully suggest that you reverse the decision to incorporate listing fees, or you will be left with an empty marketplace.

https://blogs.secondlife.com/message/38377#38377

and because the likelihood is that Linden Research will delete this thread to hide the evidence, I’ll repost the salient post here:

Yesterday came as a big shock to many SL Mentors that the mentor program (mentor groups) will be closing down next month (11th December 2009) and in my eyes this is one of the saddest moments in Second Life since 2006.

Moving On…Here is a list of helping groups in Second Life you may want to join to support new residents joining the Second Life community. Feel free to comment and let me know what you think about the end of the SL Mentor program etc. I’m currently reviewing where to go from here in terms of future mentoring.

Popular helping groups

• Mental Mentors
• Mentor Lounge
• Metaverse Mentors
• Mentor Cooperative
• SecondAbility Mentors
• Help People
• White Tiger Mentors
• New Citizens Inc.

Newer helping groups

• New User Expert Q&A
• Second Life Ex-Mentor
• Ex SL Mentor
• Former Mentor Q&A
• Real Mentors

The future: New Volunteer Groups, New Resident Networks, SL Answers, Community Gateway Program and perhaps SL seasonal events for volunteering for folks that are still interested in helping others in SL.

• Where can we go from here ?
  
• What do you think ?

Update 2

Just been posted up….18th November 2009…..

During the SL Mentor Meeting at SLVEC, Linden Lab announced that the SL Volunteer Mentor Programme will end on 11th of December 2009. The SL Mentor program has been running since 2005  with it’s ups and downs. But now its the end of a era. Linden Lab will shut down the SL Mentor groups and will remove SL Volunteer Islands in the upcoming weeks. For those that wanted to be official SL Mentors the door has been closed. Linden Lab wants everybody to create their own helping networks in Second Life nowadays and form helping groups.

I have only been in the SL Mentor groups since December 2008 and I have enjoyed mentoring new residents at various new resident places during 2009. Today hearing that news was very upsetting and came as a big shock to everybody. I was on the TG (Oct06-Dec08) before I transferred on the MG and I joined the TSL Mentor group in September 2007 but sadly eariler this year I heard that LL shut the TG Mentoring group down. I will carry on helping new residents whatever happens and sharing info with others.

Closing Down

[9:29] Lexie Linden: The timing for the close of the Mentor Volunteer group is as follows:

[9:29] Lexie Linden: The Mentor group itself will disband on December 11th, this includes the Mentor Q&A and Instructor group

[9:46] Lexie Linden: The current Mentor group will not stay

[9:47] Lexie Linden: SLVI’s, SLVEC, and Volunteer OI, so any Mentor with items there will need to pick them up by Dec 10th

[9:46] The help islands will remain open, although the content and experiences will be evolving

Other non-official LL Helping Groups you may want to join!

• Mental Mentors
• Real Mentors
• NCI
• Ex SL Mentor
• And more in Search > Groups tab in SL!
  

November SL Mentor Meeting

Today it has been announced that there will be a SL Mentor Meeting, hosted by the VTeam in Second Life. It’s sheduled for 9am PDT on Wednesday 18th November 2009. The November 2009 SL Mentor meeting will take place at SL Volunteer Islands Main Stage. The last SL Mentor Meeting was back in January 2009, where many mentors were given a update on progress and the future of the VTeam. In July 2009 I posted some SL Mentor Stats on my blog.

SL Mentors Group Count

2nd February 2009
1, 733 Members

17th November 2009
1, 610 Members

SL Mentoring through 2009

Over the course of 2009 the SL Mentor VTeam have been working on a number of projects and only a few Lindens still involved with the program. I’ve noticed a large decrease in SL Mentors still left in the official mentor group (shown above) and there is a average of 10+ SL Mentors leaving the official group every month. There has been alot of exciting events during 2009 including SL Mentor Day, Burning Life, Valentines in which SL Mentors could volunteer with.

Future

I don’t think anyone knows whats going to happen from Wednesday onwards into 2010. We will have to see. I’ll be doing a follow up post about the SL Mentor meeting afterwards. There will be a blog post (transcript) at some  on Wednesday for folks that cannot attend.

• Check out my SL Feeds SL Mentor page for news and links!
• SL Mentor Flickr Group

Stay tuned for updates!

It’s been a good year so far and for me I love mentoring!

• Locate your Second Life icon
• Right click and pick Properties
• Find the Target line
• Add –multiple at the end of the address

Example: “C:\Program Files\SecondLife\SecondLife.exe" --set InstallLanguage en --multiple“

Example

Important Information (November 2009)

• Works with Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, MAC OS and Linux
• This works with the standard Second Life viewer, Emerald, Imprudence, Snowglobe and many others
• Linden Lab do not officially support running muliple viewers (proceed at your own risk)
• Make sure you have enough RAM and a good enough graphics card to run two viewers or more
• More INFO click here

Here are my predictions for Second Life 2010 below in a list. At the end of next year I will review how many of the below predictions actually happened or not. 2009 is almost over and 2010 is now about 7 weeks away.

• Second Life Viewer 2.0  (December 2009 release possible)
• SL will become more social (facebook, twitter, web etc)
  
• Teen Integration (Merge of grids)
  
• Second Life grows in popularity around the world
• OpenSim grows and more 3rd party viewers
  
• Second Life Enterprise will let customers extend their businesses to virtual world environments
• Cheaper homesteads and new additional fees for services
• More news press from RL sources and SL sources
  
• Official SL Shadows in viewer
  
• Mesh Exporting
• New creation tools
• More Linden Lab HQ’s around the world
  
• Windows 7 compatibility support for SL
• Relay for Life 2010 will hopefully raise more than $500, 000
  
• Second Life online residents to reach the 100, 000 milestone mark (new record)
• Total SL registered accounts will exceed 18 or 19 million
• And theres more…

• Have I missed anything else out ?
• What are your top SL 2010 predictions ?
• Please comment and I’ll add it up!

Previous Predictions by others

• 2009 Virtual World Meta-Predictions
• The Traditional Predictions List for 2009
• Ten virtual worlds predictions for 2009
  
• Second Life Predictions for 2008!
• Prokofy Neva’s Predictions for 2008
• Second Life Predictions for 2007

Snowglobe 1.2 Release Candidate is now ready for download. The release was yesterday with many new features and bug fixes. DOWNLOAD NOW

I think Snowglobe rocks!

LL have come up with the perfect solution to the first hour problem.  They’ve reduced the window to 10 minutes, well if I were a newbie and was confronted with this when I came inworld I would think 10 minutes would be about all I’d stand before going for the x and looking for something less user unfriendly.

I wouldn’t believe this report if it wasn’t Linden Research and Second Life we’re talking about here. Their behavour does seem to be one of trying to drive people away.  I know that people have been conditioned over the last 5 years to accept poor quality design for software (where is Jakob Nielsen when you need him?) but I’ve got to say that as a business plan it’s not one I’ve ever seen recommended but people do seem to be hanging in there so perhaps appealing to the masochists is a good business model.

Near is preparing to release a 3D shopping area called Near London.  When I came inworld in 2006 , this kind of marketing and selling struck me as being the most optimal use of the platform for retailers. In 2006/7 there were a few token efforts at catalogue selling but the idea was never developed to anywhere near its potential.

Three years later Near have created their own version of this shopping experience

Perhaps in the end all Second Life has been is an incubator, generating the ideas that people take away and use elsewhere.  Certainly the platform has never been conducive to ease of use for product developers or consumers and Linden Research have demonstrated a committment to the key requirements of infrastructure, quality software and ease of use that are necessary for business to consider investing in another channel.

Another avenue for diversity in Second Life is now effectively replaced by something better elsewhere.  Opportunities missed seems to be the constant story of this platform.  Certainly it looks like the next 6 – 12 months are going to be critical if Second Life is to do anything more than move from stagnation to irrecoverable decline. There are interesting times ahead.

Second Life has around 750,000 hard-core users with around 500,000 who come in at least once every couple of months.  It’s around 7% of the total number of registered accounts. These numbers have been pretty constant now for the last 12 months. Kudos to Linden Research for managing to stem the decline.

The current LL business plan is to move to a 2D web-based social networking front end and it’s not a bad idea.  SL is not suitable for anyone but the hardcore or the desperate.  The system requirements to run it are beyond what most average users have and the learning curve for the user interface is off-putting to say the least.  Add the poor quality platform and the amount of time it takes to do anything and the chances of improving the retention rate is not good.

LL do claim they have a new viewer in the pipeline. Apparently it’s completely different to the current viewer.  Whether that is good or bad is yet to be determined but early reports indicate that those who are already familiar with the current viewer will struggle to quickly adapt to the new release. 

But then it’s not aimed at improving the lives of people using SL at the moment.  This is about making life easier for the missing millions of people who signed up and never came back because their initial experiences were so off-putting.  Pity this is 3 years too late.

Second Life is in decline.  A lot of long-term customers are seriously considering leaving and a large proportion of them have begun the downsizing in preparation.  Declining incomes, lack of LL committment to fixing the defects in the product, content theft, capricious application of hastily thought out policies and a myriad of other reasons has created serious dissatisfaction with the product.

A large proportion of those long-term customers are content creators.  As they leave they remove their goods from sale and whilst there are always those who want to take their place, the quality isn’t there.  Bit by bit SL is moving from a platform where businesses can behave as a business, to an evironment where everyone is a hobbyist playing shopkeeper while creating on the whole lower quality items to be sold cheaply to people who don’t know any better.  

Perhaps that’s no bad thing.  LL has no intention of improving the underlying platform and at 7 years old it’s moved into legacy system status now.  The structural issues facing the technology probably mean that it might support anything up to a 50% increase in users but it will never be able to service the numbers that facebook, myspace, youtube et al manage.

So moving into 2D as the primary entertainment provider is probably a good end strategy.  I have no idea what the projections of people moving from the 2D to inworld would be but I suggest that it will be a fraction and those who do won’t stay long.  The makeup of those using the social networking sites is different to SL users.  They want quick communication whereas sl is cumbersome.  

A percentage of those who do come in will stay.  So the initial benefits of an increased userbase will be felt in the avatar augmentation sector – skins, hair, clothes, shoes etc.  Cheap and disposable will become the keywords, they’ll want to look good but won’t be staying around.

For those who do stay and establish a presence here they will be looking for better quality and will be searching for other content; land, housing, furniture etc.  Yet despite the claims of the NYT that people can live the lifestyles of the rich and famous they’re not going to spend anything more than they have to. Certainly the current perspective of younger online users is that they shouldn’t have to pay for content.  The concept of financially rewarding creators is being diminished

Ultimately though I’m looking forward to a more socially adept group of people coming inworld but from a content perspective perhaps the future really is amateur hour.  

We should know in around 6 months at a guess.  That’s if we can hold on inworld that long.

Currently there is no official SL support for Windows 7 and there is no official windows 7 compatible SL viewer yet. I have heard many SL residents that have been using Windows 7 with no problems at all. However on the other side of the scale there are residents that are having problems with using Second Life on Windows 7 including video card problems, driver problems and so forth.

Some SL residents have experiencing issues and still are having technical issues with the computer CPU usage reaching 100% when using Second Life on Windows 7.  The official SL requirements page is outdated and using SLsystest says “Sorry, your operating system does not meet this minimum requirement”. Linden Lab needs to fix this!

Already there are many Windows 7 issues reported on the Second Life JIRA and there many questions being asked about SL on Windows 7 which can be found on Second Life Answers.  Just make sure you have good enough specs and make sure you have updated drivers before running SL on Windows 7. If you have problems then submit a JIRA report etc…Second Life is used on all popular operating systems today such as: Microsoft Windows (XP, Vista and now Windows 7), Mac and Linux.

I’m sure in the coming months or next year at some point there will be SL support for Windows 7 and a Windows 7 SL compatible viewer (just like XP, Vista). Just hang in there!

• Are you running Second Life on Windows 7 ?
• Have you had any issues?