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Is SecondLife2 LindenLab's "Osborne" Blunder?

6/25/2014

2 Comments

 
This past week during a Linden Lab (aka LL) weekly open office meeting LL CEO Ebbe Altberg made a surprise appearance.  But, Ebbe's appearance at the weekly meeting was the least of his surprises he had in store - not only the meeting attendees but also the greater SecondLife® (aka SL) community.

I am not sure if Ebbe's surprising announcements at this meeting were a horrible misstep on his part or if he purposely went into this meeting to release this big news.  Unless you are Ebbe or his senior management, everyone else can only guess and provide their theories as we all don't know.  My guess is that corporate news like the announcement of a major new generation of a product/service does not often come out from a CEO in such an informal "ohh by the way..." manner.  So my guess is that Ebbe let this news slip and did not intend to release this new - it just happened.  Just my theory.

 So HOLD ON !!  What were these big surprises that Ebbe shocked the entire community with?

FIRST - the Biggie - Ebbe revealed that LL is actively working on a completely new SL2 virtual world platform that will be built from the ground up with all the latest in virtual world (VW) technologies, techniques, and I am also sure lessons learned from all the mistakes made during the long life of SL1.  No concrete timelines were given as it is supposedly still in very early development but dates of 2016 are being thrown around.

SECOND - a followup shocker - Ebbe stated that the development of SL2 will NOT have "backward compatibility" to SL1 a development priority.  The explained reason was that they did not want to hold back the full modern day capabilities of SL2 by being forced to be compatible with older limiting inferior technologies and content of and within SL1.

THIRD - development of SL2 would not be Open Source.  It would be a close source code.  This would mean that there would not be spawned competing clones of SL2 as there is with the current SL1 where open source is available.

Not surprisingly, this news right out of Ebbe's lips of a new SL2 being developed by LL spread faster than wildfire throughout the SL blogging community and into the SL forums and social networks.  Also, not surprising AT ALL has been the massive and growing volume of interpretations, speculations, excitement and fears generated from the extremely little that was stated by Ebbe and also Oz regarding SL2 at this meeting.

In a few short days after Ebbe's shockers I have read a lot of concerns, fears, and doom regarding the decisions (more so the "not backward compatible" news).  I have also read many bloggers trying to calm the fears with stated reality checks about how little has been announced to seriously get scared about at this time.  And even bloggers that seemed to have taken on what should be LL's role of damage control from what I believe was a serious LL / Ebbe misstep in announcing such huge customer impacting news so early, so informal / unofficial, and with so little details.  These bloggers have speculated their own "positive spin" theories on why the SL community should not panic and not stop investing in SL1 because of this news.

But before I talk about LL's possible re-enactment of the infamous classic "Osborne Computer" business mistake, let me mention a few of my thoughts on what actually was announced.

Why did LL desire the need to develop an SL2 as opposed to continuing to improve upon the current SL1?  Well I am speaking as a Senior Systems Architect for over 25 years for large enterprises - for both vendors like IBM and multi-national industry segment customers.  When it comes to developing a new I.T. system, product, or service (like the SL sims and supporting systems and clients) it is always an System Architect's dream (as well as Engineers, software developers and even product managers) if they are given the opportunity to develop a NEXT GENERATION solution with no ties to the limitations, backward incompatibilities, and existing needs of the user base from the previous generation.  

I think its obvious for all to understand why, but just in case you are not aware... To develop a new fantastic state-of-the-art solution that must also be shackled with the burden of supporting the existing legacy code, content, user data of old long-in-the-tooth current systems is EXTREMEEEEELY DIFFICULT.  Compromises would have to be made and some great design concepts and technologies would likely have to be abandoned or watered down.  

The first generation of SL that LL keeps enhancing and improving upon is based on an architecture that is over 11 years old.  Many of the foundational components (both technology as well as operating policies and rules) of SL are far out-dated yet near impossible to overhaul without destroying the overall fabric of what makes SL operates as it does now.  It is like a house of cards - it stands but it is fragile and replacing a card at the base is nearly unthinkable.

As such, this dreamy "perfect" development environment of starting from scratch is what LL has decided to bestow upon their SL2 development team.  I envy the LL team for being given this rare opportunity.

YES, I said rare!!  In my 25+ years working on countless solution / system designs and architectures, I have only worked on a handful of large scale projects where the next generation system is allowed to be developed with no priority or regard to the backward compatibility AND user base of the current aging system.  Most times the reason is that the current user base is too valuable to be disrupted, or not trusted to join the new system and lose them, or risk them losing their critical data and start fresh.  

Having no backward compatibility to offer internal or "captured" users is risky enough as the business has some control on this population.  But to to take this risk with an external paying user base - i.e. your primary customer - is either very brave or very stupid.  Only time will tell the final tale of LL was brave or stupid when everyone observes what the current SL user base - primarily the builders / creators of SL - will do.

Building SL2 based on a CLOSED CODE model?  Well there will be those that argue good or bad on this point but I have always been one in the SL community that believes LL should never have embraced open source as the strategy for SL1.  Maybe this decision was made to meet more of a community minded or philanthropic objective that Phillip and/or his initial designers and developers had.  But, I think it was a mistake for business reasons as it openly forced LL to assist in the growth of competing open source grids that took customers away from LL/SL1.  It also was a major reason that griefing was and still is a massive scourge on the SL grid.  Finally it meant LL lost a lot of control of its fat client to 3rd party viewers. Personally this was good for the user base of SL since these viewers introduced competitive spirit and a better viewer, but for LL it was a loss of control of their own destiny of the SL1 product.

So, personally I nod my head and agree with LL's decision to develop SL2 based on closed source.  No one but LL knows to what extent SL2 will be closed.  To me the wise approach would be to close and keep proprietary the SIM and SERVER code but expose a common standard SL2 Client API that 3PVs like Firestorm could use to develop awesome SL2 viewers.  Some have speculated SL2 might not even have a fat client viewer.  I personally do not see this as feasible because I believe an effective SL2 with real time animations and engagement with a VW needs to leverage the shared system resources of both the server and the client PC.  But I could easily be wrong.  We will see.

NOW... regardless of the announcement details that Ebbe appears to have let accidentally slip this week.  The bigger issue is if Ebbe and LL has executed another Osborne Computer Blunder by announcing the next generation of their flagship cash-cow VW service SL2 with such a harsh "no backward compatibility priority" statement so early before its release?

If you have never heard of the "OSBORNE EFFECT" or blunder or business case, then I will provide you a wiki link with all the details CLICK HERE FOR OSBORNE EFFECT DETAILS.  Basically, it is when a company prematurely and with poor timing announces their next generation of product which causes a serious negative impact in customer demand / response (i.e. collapsed sales as they wait for the new version).  For Osborne computers, it bankrupted them as their cashflow dried up before the next version could come to market.

In essence this appears to be what Ebbe and LL has done in similar fashion.  Ebbe announced the next SL2 grid that still appears to be 2 years from showing up and has informed his flagship base of customers that their content and investments in SL1 are not a priority for SL2.  

As mentioned earlier, the explosion of fear and concern by the community should have been expected and are fully warranted concerns.  LL has had a history of making many knee-jerk poor decisions that have often hurt their own SL customer base.  So their track record of protecting or being concerned about the interests of their customers is not stellar.  Therefor I am a bit surprised at bloggers that cannot understand why there is so much fear and concern about Ebbe's surprising early casual announcement of SL2.

I am not the CEO of LL but if I were Ebbe, regardless if he slipped or fully intended to release the news of SL2 to the world, I would seriously be concerned about how my move mimics that of the OSBORNE EFFECT.  I think it does.  If so, I would immediately engage in serious damage control with LL's cash cow SL1 customer base (especially the content creators that are the #1 reason why SL1 is the leader in VW).  I would be making a formal BLOG release on the SL Forums to clarify with much more details the vague information I released at a small weekly user meeting.  I would be having open interviews with the blogging community and media to provide HARD REASONS why the SL community should not be affraid to keep investing in SL1.  Not just the LL "favored" bloggers but even those bloggers that can ask the hard questions.

The time for LL and Ebbe to go into potentially LL saving damage control is now - before LL potentially becomes the next Business Case victim of the OSBORNE EFFECT.
2 Comments

Time Facebook Fixes "Real Names Only" TOS

6/3/2014

4 Comments

 
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On June 1st an outdated and completely illogical Facebook® (FB) policy that has infuriated 1000's of SecondLife® (SL) users over the years finally hit me - the real person - in the gut.
My "Toysoldier Thor" Facebook

account was disabled

MY FACEBOOK ACCOUNT & COUNTLESS OTHERS WERE DESTROYED
BY AN OLD COMPLETELY OUT-OF-TOUCH FACEBOOK POLICY
IT'S TIME FOR LINDEN LAB AND SECONDLIFE RESIDENTS TO DEMAND A CHANGE
FOR THE GOOD OF ALL  -   INCLUDING FACEBOOK THEMSELVES
I was lured and deceived into setting up my Toysoldier Thor FB account about five years ago when Linden Lab (LL) promoted to its customer base to set up Avatar Facebook accounts (like they did) as a place to interact with them.  I was reluctant at the time to join FB as I didn't see the value of FB for a marketing tool but I wanted to keep in touch with what LL was up to.  So I created my Toysoldier Thor account.  I was later surprised - like many others - that LL never had an agreement with FB to allow us all to violate FB's ill conceived "real names only" TOS.

Also, as has been the case with the vast majority of SL residents, it was and still is an imperative for me to maintain anonymity of my real life (RL) identity.  My Toysoldier avatar name and avatar has his own existence in SL.  More importantly, Toy interacts with the 1000's of my friends and acquaintances who only know me as Toysoldier Thor.  If any of my countless friends and others in the SL community want to find me - they would NEVER EVER look for me nor even know my RL name.  

Is this a situation unique only to the SL virtual world community?  NOT BY A LONG SHOT!  Think of the many other virtual world communities with avatars.  Think of the countless MMOG gaming environments where players are only known by their game name.  Think of the authors, bloggers, and artists that have established "Pen Names".  Think of the RL individuals (such as women & children) that establish anonymous names on the Internet to protect themselves for personal security reasons.  

When you add up all the people within each of these examples, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that any online social networking or online services business would be extremely foolish to NOT ACCOMMODATE wishes / requirements of this huge online user base.  It would be a massive population to to ignore.  And yet, ironically, this is exactly what the largest social media company on the Internet has been doing from its inception.  Yes, FB has a very strict, short sighted, and crystal clear Terms of Service (TOS) policy that does not allow any of its potential Users from using any identity other than their real name that the Government has validated.  Notice I did not say FB's customers as their customers are all the advertisers wanting their ads to be placed on all our user pages to be viewed and even clicked on.  The more user pages and the more active a user page - the more revenue FB gains from its customers.  Remember this for later.

I will get back to why this FB policy is so out of touch and slapping users in the face while hurting themselves.  I first must point out that like the countless SL customers who have set up and spent countless hours to groom and establish heavily followed / viewed pages, I knew there was always a risk that one day the FB Real Name cops would eventually target me and shut down my account.  I saw FB do their SL Avatar Witch Hunts taking down large batches of SL avatars over the years.  Its one of FB's never-ending administrative battles since many SL avatars simply create a new account.  

But this past weekend I was still shocked and devastated when they disabled my account and destroyed the massive time and effort I put into making my Toysoldier Thor account an extremely powerful and effective tool to promote my personal interests in SL as well as promote countless activities, events, milestones, and celebrations of my large community of SL friends (with over 500 followers and friends).  It was the #1 way for me to know what was happening in SL.  Toysoldier's FB account was also my voice to raise interest to important causes in the SL community.  Sadly.... devastatingly.... its all gone.


Now lets talk about the reasons why its finally time to for FB policy makers to make changes that shuts down this discriminating and self-damaging policy.  Its very clear how this FB policy hurts a large population of the online community, but why does it also hurt FB and not make sense for them?

  • Remember again who is the FB customer that is generating the bulk of their revenue?  All those advertisers that pay for their ads to be strategically placed on all our User FB pages.  Like most other ad revenue sites, FB generates more revenue when there are more page views / activities.  The busier and more popular a User page - the more ads being viewed and potentially clicked on.  It doesn't matter to the advertiser if the ad on a User page is a real name or an avatar name - the relevant ads will be placed on our pages when viewed by real humans - regardless of the name.  So why would FB want to shut down all these FB User pages simply because they are not a real name?
  • Lets go one step further on this.  I will use me as an example.  I violated two FB policies.  The other policy is that I actually had two FB accounts.  One was my Toy account.  The other is my RL named account for my RL family and friends.  My Toy FB account had 500 followers / friends and about 100 to 200 views / activities.  My RL account has a couple dozen friends and I log into it once every few weeks.  FB has shut down my Toy account.  Guess which of the two accounts is most valuable for FB to generate ad revenue?  YUP, my Toy account.
  • Lets mention another mis-aligned logic in FB's real names only policy.  Recently Mark Z. of FB decided to spend over $2 Billion to acquire the Oculus Rift technology.  The Rift is clearly an virtual reality (VR) tool best designed for virtual worlds like SecondLife and MMOG's.  One of the clearly primary target markets for FB's new expensive Rift technology will be virtual worlds like SL.  If so, why would Mark Z. maintain a policy that discriminates against the actual user bases of these target markets?  Seems like FB's "real names only" TOS policy is in conflict with their latest Rift acquisition.
  • Finally, think how much wasted effort FB's Real Name Witch Hunters have to expend to find, shut down, and then go through the process of the appeals and debates and efforts from each user that fights the shut down.  Not to mention finding many of these same TOS violators later as most of them have created another account - again in violation of their TOS.  Imagine if FB changed its policy and allowed non real named accounts.  How much staffing effort on administration could be spent time doing better more useful things??

So why should Ebbe Altberg, CEO of LL want to lobby Mark Z. and FB on behalf of all SL's residents to address this FB policy or work with FB to come up with a solution that fairly ends this discrimination?

  • Lets remember that on a few occasions - even recently - LL has tried to integrate FB's service with SL's service.  In fact, even though LL very well knew of FB's TOS against avatar names being used, they still released a new feature in the viewer code that allowed SL residents to post directly from inworld to their respective FB account.  When Firestorm later released the feature, it didn't take long for the spike of activity from SL into FB to be noticed and countless SL resident SL FB accounts were disabled by FB for those that used the feature.  IF Ebbe could negotiate a solution with FB to remove this policy, LL could return this feature and actually start integrating into FB with no guilt or risk of angering their own customers.
  • Secondly, SL has a set of utterly useless social networking tool inworld to allow effective inter-communication / promotion of SL activities, events, happenings, and Avatar promotion to occur.  Their Avatar profiles site is barely used as well since it pales in comparison to the features and capabilities and performance of FB.  Solving this major roadblock by formally outsourcing this external social network to FB would safely allow LL to promote the use of FB to promote SL's inworld activities and make SL more enjoyable which retains and attracts more SL accounts.

So if ending this FB "real names only" policy benefits all, what are a few solutions that Ebbe and Mark could discuss to fix the problem and benefit ALL?

  1. The first idea may seem the most obvious solution but has as issue.  That would be for FB to simply change the policy that allows any new FB user to create any account they want using what ever name they want.  Problem solved - right?  Well not exactly.  FB would know accept the result - one that is similar to the problem that faces LL now.  FB would likely get an onslaught of ALT and BOT FB accounts owned by the same users.  FB would not accept this solution.
  2. So FB could come up with a new technical solution that allows control freedom for FB users to created a couple or three visible FB User Pages but no more.  How?  FB would require all users to register as a REAL LIFE user with a validated credential and then keep this validated account information internal only to them.  Then each of these registered accounts would be allowed to create no more than three independent and full featured User Page profiles.  One of the three accounts must be a real name user page - which would be used by the user to maintain the users main account.  The other two User Pages would only be counters to the first but in ON WAY could anyone else ever find out who the real life user is to these other two accounts.  This solution would require FB development - maybe even extensive.  So maybe FB would not be interested in all this effort to solve the problem.  The long term would be good for FB.
  3. The third option is one I personally think would be the best solution for everyone and the quickest to deploy.  This would be for FB to create a new special instance of FB specifically deployed to service the VIRTUAL WORLD communities.  They could brand this as FACEBOOK-VW or VW-FACBOOK.  Since FB already has agreed after all these years that they were not interested in their main FB service to service non real name accounts, they should not care when a large populous of online users from the VW, MMOG, Pen Named people, etc. would use this new instance.  LL would be able to promote the use of FACEBOOK-VW for their users to register onto and use.  Advertisers would still be very interested in posting ads to this new and more specific base of users on this instance.  AND... SL residents as well as so many others would have a FB service that maintains their privacy.


NOW A CALL TO ACTION FOR EBBE ALTBERG, LINDEN LAB, AND ALL VIRTUAL WORLD USERS THAT WANT TO SEE FACEBOOK FIX THIS OUT OF TOUCH POLICY.....

Share this blog post on twitter, facebook, inworld, or any other way.  Post your own Twitter tweets, write your own blogs, email, IM, and talk about this topic to Ebbe, LL decision makers, Mark Z., FB decision makers, or anyone else that can influence Mark Z. and the FB architectures / decision makers to address this problem.

We need this topic addressed for all our benefits.

What are your thoughts?

Toysoldier Thor
4 Comments
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    IMPORTANT NOTE
    Old ToyTalk
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    On October 19, 2013, Toy released his completely re-branded website and left his old toytalks.weebly.com" site that existed for 3 years.


    Due to limitations on the weebly hosting site, old blog postings could not be migrated .  

    ALL TOYTALK BLOG POSTS PRIOR TO OCT 19 2013
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