Today was the opening of SL6B (Second Life 6th Birthday) celebration with a speech of Philip Linden, the founder and creator of what Second Life is (well, actually himself and his team). The picture above was taken during that speech. Just after the speech i started to think about how residents see Linden Lab and its events, specially when a friend said to me:

Wishing i was that enthusiastic about a Linden event.

In the last couple of years Linden Lab had a “tense” relationship with the residents, specially about one issue: the maturity of content and the grid, there was also quite a bit tension about the land prices but that was occasional. Nipples, child avatars, etc… all those were quite a conflict in some Linden events, at least in Burning Life and SL5B. At the same time, in this period, it seems Lindens are away from the residents and possibly this can be one of the reasons of this conflicts. Of course there are other reasons, like the pressure of some media and politics and the image of Linden Lab as business, possibly they don’t want to look like a sexual service, or a place where perverts have their games. Of course i understand their position is not easy, between the residents and the media + politics, but in the past i think they didn’t do thinks as good as they would.

After some time i presume i feel “in peace” lately with Linden Lab although all those mistakes, or at least after all those actions i think were not right. And i feel this peace because i think they are doing it better, or a few better. I think is a good idea to promote SL as an education tool, i think is a good idea to give the Linden Prize to organizations like Virtual Ability (with a program of help to real handicapped people in SL), i even think is not a bad idea to concentrate all the “sex industry” of Second Life in an special continent. At the same time, with this last action about “Adult” content the limits are clear and are not particularly “narrow” for what i saw and read. One can agree or not, but at least the statements are quite clear, or at least clearer. After this times feeling a bit upset with Linden Lab as resident and as customer it feels weird to talk good about them.

Of course this would never be “the last word”, Linden Lab can do it better… or worse. Anyway, while i was at Philip’s speech, i was wondering where M was. Well, i don’t like M much, you know it, actually i think things were quite worse after he started being CEO. I don’t know if the last actions i talked about are part of his strategy, but someway i see him as an administrator more than as a “president”. M doesn’t has the charisma Philip has, M is more “grey”, more like an office man in a dark suit and white shirt. So i wonder if M was not there because this lack of charisma, because he was on holidays or because things will change again at Linden Lab soon. Well, i presume we will know sooner or later.

Sometimes, in the past, i protested for some comments of Philip Linden, the founder of Second Life. Most of the times i though he was having a wrong idea about the community of residents. Anyway, although all that M Linden is making me miss Philip badly. And we are having M for the last six month, so maybe is time to analize his work.

M said in an interview by Dusan Writer some days ago:

80% of our business is focused on the consumer market — which of course includes content creators. We are putting more than 80% of our investment in the consumer market because a good part of our investment in Enterprise crosses over (shared media). We talk about Enterprise because we are doing new things there. We need to talk more about our plans for consumer because we have many big projects under way there.

Ok, is only me? I don’t see where this 80% is going, and i don’t think it is for LDPW and the roads. Either seem to be for software development, because performance is getting worse in the last months although the “lower” impact of Openspaces now that almost 2000 sims disappeared in the last month.

We still don’t know how many islands will be lost until July next month, when the process of changes on Islands products will change. I just know we are having less “land” to explore and enjoy… and more residents (users hours and residents inworld are peeking), and that produces more problems with servers, so the “excuse” of poor performance to change the Openspace product is just going against Second Life itself.

As you may know Reuters left Second Life recently, Eric Krangel (Eric Reuters inworld) wrote a really interesting article talking about his vision of Second Life and why they left. I think you should read it because his opinion is pointy.

Personally i think all that is due the bad work of Linden Lab, Public Relations must be on holidays, Software development to be too it seems, so we just have M saying in an interview basically “All is good, all is ok.”.

Linden Lab acts like if the residents were citizens of a benevolent dictatorship, where M is the “Emperor” and the Lindens, the government. A dictatorship where they do “the best for the nation and its people” under their point of view ignoring the citizens. But they seem to be forgetting we are not citizens, we are customers! They seem to forget Linden Lab derives its revenue from user fees, not compulsory taxes. They seem to forget Second Life is NOTHING without the residents and their creativity but empty virtual land, where teaching virtual classes or making business presentations, of course.

I’d like to quote here, to end this post, something Vint Falken wrote in a blogpost, something that explains also my feelings with Linden Lab in the last times:

Excuse me my bitterness. But I still feel betrayed: a 2 year relationship, that you _know_ is dying. You still wish to fix everything, mainly because of the effort you put into it, because of you’re used to it and because of the mutual friends you now have, not because the butterflies are still there. You keep trying, attempt to be bedazzled again, but the other party just f*cks it up, each time. Eerrr… overreacting, me?

If the resident had the power to vote for Linden Lab CEO, be sure i would never vote for M.

UPDATE (Dec. 02 2008): Just after posting this M published a post in the Official Linden Blog in the same line “We are better than ever and nothing is happening”.