Rezzable was the featured guest on Metanomics. Yes, I went for a goth look, thanks to Draconic for the cool skin and Hyasynth for the xlent suit.

I was a guest, both as an avatar and human person at the same time, on the Metanomics live broadcast on 10 November and they now have the show video (it's an hour so get popcorn) and the show transcript up. I sorta think the transcript reads better than I sound on the video!  It is a bit of an odd experience though to give an interview while watching the avatar flop around.

Doug Thompson (Dusan Writer) and Nic Mitham (owner of K-Zero) were also on the panel where we discuss the future of Second LIfe and future trends around Opensim and other virtual worlds.

Thanks to Mark Kingdon for reminding me to downgrade my premium account -- is like $USD 108/year when I was paying quarterly. I guess only reason to have this is to be able to have a parcel on Mainland? Anyway, there is a nice little feedback form that pops-up when you downgrade. So I suppose another chance to let the Linden Lab team know about why I am not spending more money with them.

Looks like someone hacked the SL email list somehow (some many clever minds turned to mischief). It is not from Linden Lab. Would seem to be an attempt to overload SL support page. But looks like Linden has a problem with email to avatar list security or someone is scrapping a web page where this is posted.

Email comes from "no-reply@secondlife.com" Subject = Warning or Suspension of Your Second Life Account

text =

Dumb Bots and Campers entice newbies to wander into empty shopping malls on the Second Life grid. It is a scam that Linden Lab continues to allow as it masks the lack of engaged user growth. Linden Lab knows the percentage of sessions and the amount of hours that Bots/Campers represents, but is not revealing this information.

While grid continues to protest the OpenSpace scandal and Linden Lab continues its policy of spin, hype, confuse and ignore, the big issue of where is the growth on the Second Life platform is still a mystery--or is it? Is there in fact no real growth and just a lot of data mixed up with Bots and Campers? And if LL is serious about improving the "user experience" wouldn't getting rid of this scam practice be a major step forward?

It doesn't really take a lot of effort to see that the price “jack-up” on the Voids that became OpenSpaces means anyone who keeps that simulator product will be paying a lot more for a lot less. And not just less prim density--but less peformance. Aren't hosting+server costs supposed to go down over time? Isn't performance meant to improve over time? Isn't efficiency meant to improve over time? LL seems to have it all backwards (...again).

The offering from M Linden (= Mark Kingdon, CEO Linden Labs) does little to make this mess right and adds a new layer of confusion and technical nonsense to the already stressed Second Life user-base and the SL virtual world platform as well.

Anyway, here are some comments and more detail on why the OpenSpace offering looks so terrible. I am not sure this commentary is new, but some of the ideas explaining what the issue really is might be interesting enuff.  * Warning danger of boringness is high and I show a spreadsheet*  (Better to go watch a fun machinima here!)

Virtual World News reports comments from Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon on the void crisis:

"Openspaces were intended for empty areas of ocean and desert, allowing estate owners to add scenery and space to their estates, just as Linden void regions are used around the Mainland. Instead, the large majority of Openspaces are being used as more than simply space," Kingdon continued. "They have people living in them, building on them and generally using them as a cheaper version of normal regions. The increase will adjust the cost for this type of land to match the way in which it is actually used."

But...this is what people do on full sims? What commitment is there from Linden that the next announcement won't be to "jack-up" full sim prices (of course with 60 days notice).

So then we can expect the price of a full sim to increase by $195 per month then also? $390 per month tier on full sims coming next?

Linden Lab has destroyed credibility with its latest surprise announcement to "jack-up" the prices on more than 50% of the grid's monthly fees. They claim their own incompetence in setting the void sim ("openspaces") features and their own mis-management as justification to bring monthly tier fees from $USD75 to $USD125. This poorly considered annoucement will send the hardcore SLers into panic. New landowners will feel very betrayed.  Frankly this step looks like suicide for Second Life.

I was on a panel talking about Brands and user engagement in virtual worlds. Ad Agency people seemed pretty unconvinced that they should push their clients back to virtual worlds.

The most amazing thing about the Virtual Worlds London conference last week was that the organizers (Show Initiative) think Virtual Worlds space is GAME OVER. Their next show in New York has been hastily renamed “Engage!” 

Mark Kingdon interviewed in the london-based Times, by Murad Ahmed, claims “Our economy in Second Life has been growing this year,” he said. “In the last 12 months its been up 67 per cent, which is a heck of a lot more than the real-world economy.” Amazingly the reporter did not ask for any details on this. Is Tech press all puff and no investigation still? The media vanguard once again digging deep into the hype to find the real story for the public.

The first question would surely be--er...what is the "economy" comprised of? What are the key drivers? Why is it growing when the whole world is tanking?  SL has been throwing out the $1million/day number for years already? What are the key sectors and which are growing more than others? If the user base is flat--then why is the "economy" growing?

I spent the day over at the Virtual Worlds London show is the very big and confusing QE2 conference center scenically overlooking Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. Mark Kingdon, CEO of Linden Labs gave the opening keynote address (check official excerpts here). M pumped his appearance on the SL blog, although actually he did not take any questions after his speech.   I am there tomorrow at 11:45 spewing discussioning advertising and sponsorship opportunities--questions welcome (in fact hecklers welcome also..it is a bit staid)

Here are a couple of points that I caught and my comments related:

* "SL is an expansive platform for virtual world innovation" -- yup, we like that and totally agree. LL is cranking out the ideas faster than spider-monkeys chuggling mountain dew. SL is still the leader in practical virtual world operations, research and activity.