First Kerfuffle of 2009 – XStreet SL and OnRez

Anyone that’s been in Second Life for at least a year and who follows the numerous SL related blogs and social media outlets will have noticed a recurring phenomenon that goes something like this.

Linden Labs announces something.

Everyone gets worked up and upset over it, then doom and gloom is predicted and the end of SL as we know it.

Thinks settle down and within a few weeks, the furor is pretty well past and everything is back to normal.

In 3-6 months, lather, rinse, repeat.

Linden Labs started early this year, just 20 days into January with the first kerfuffle of 2009, the acquisition of XStreet SL and OnRez, the two main online stores for buying/selling Second Life related merchandise, basically two Amazon.coms for Second Life.

Now, I’m not going to get into a deep analysis of this, I couldn’t claim to be qualified to do so. But I’ve spent 25 years of my life working for decent sized corporations and I’ve picked up a bit about how businesses operate so I’ll give my personal opinion from that viewpoint.

This acquisition by Linden Labs is a logical and correct thing for them to do from a business sense. From the first moment I signed on to XStreet SL back when it was known as SLExchange, I thought to myself that Linden Labs ought to buy this and integrate it into their website. It just makes so much sense, especially if, as some have surmised, Linden Labs is positioning itself as the supplier of a cross world infrastructure containing login information, inventory and a monetary structure. I just wonder why it took them so long.

Ok, great, but why buy OnRez as well? Most seem to assume that it’s an attempt to corner the market, to be come a monopoly, and I disagree with that. One, I don’t think Linden Labs is that sophisticated on the business front to pull something like that. Two, in my experience, businesses acquire other businesses for assets and proprietary knowledge/technology. I think that the OnRez acquisition was for both. The merchants/users of OnRez that don’t use XStreet SL represent an asset, one that Linden Labs is hoping to roll into XStreet SL. Also, I believe that there is some technology behind how OnRez works that Linden Labs wants and that they will use in its integration of XStreet SL.

Nothing nefarious, just sound business. No monopoly either, in my opinion, there is nothing stopping someone else from building a bigger and better XStreet SL or OnRez. And this certainly shouldn’t kill in-world shopping, any more than XStreet SL and OnRez killed it as separate entities. It could in fact create more in-world business once integrated so small shops can get a fair shake on showing up in the in-world search, assuming they opt to put their items into the XStreet SL.

So, what do I see down the road from this acquisition? Hopefully, an integration with the Second Life viewer so that not only can you shop in a web browser, but you can shop from a tab in the current search feature in the viewer. Vendors that can sell to people in-world and also act as the current servers for the XStreet SL do now (should Linden Labs consider buying a vendor system to integrate with this?). No need for XStreet SL terminals and money transfers, just direct debits/credits to your in-world L$ balance.

I believe this is a good move for Linden Labs, a move that fits in well with their future plans of being a supplier of the unifying infrastructure for virtual worlds that include Second Life and Open Sims. I also believe that this is ultimately a good thing for the residents of Second Life as well.

Time will tell.

Funny Blog - Absolutely amazing SecondLife discoveries

Catching up on my Google Reader backlog and happened to look at the recommended feeds links to discover a Second Life blog I’ve not come across before. 

 

From their About…

“This is your crazy ride through the depths of SL´s shopping malls. See things you have never dreamt of and of course never want to to dream of.

Weird and crazy shit compiled into a blog commented with a sharp tongue.

Welcome to SL´s most untypical shopping guide.”

 

And after looking through the posts there, I’d say they’ve succeeded.    Certainly got me to add them to my reading list.

Check them out at http://sldiscoveries.wordpress.com/

 

 

Goodbye 2008, Hello 2009

The ending of one year and the starting of the next is usually a time for reflection on the past year and making resolutions on what one plans to do differently in the next.   

The year 2008 started out a bit subdued for me because I was struggling to find the interest in SL that I’d previously had and lost for various reasons that I won’t get in to.   I passed my 1st Rezz Day in Second Life in April 2008, which was uneventful.   I reconnected with a special someone for a few months before she lost access to SL for the time being, something I hope changes in 2009.    For the latter half of the year, I’ve struggled to find the desire to go into Second Life.    Not for want of ideas of things to do, there have been many things I’ve thought to do, several times I thought I’d found that “spark” again, but ever so quickly to lose it and to find it replaced with a “what’s the point” feeling.    The big kerfuffle about Open Space Sims and the negativity that followed didn’t help, I wondered why I should bother with something like SL when even it’s most ardent supporters are so terribly negative about it much of the time.

So, here on the 1st day of the new year, I reflect on why I became involved in Second Life in the first place, and why I should stay involved because if it’s not fun then there isn’t much point, is there?

Resolutions then, for 2009?   

Get back to what I enjoy about SL, exploring and finding new places.   Lately, Second Life has been more like one gigantic mall to me, stores everywhere you look.    Seems like there are more people trying to make money in SL than there are people just building neat stuff, so one of my goals is to try to find more interesting stuff, getting pictures and blog posts out there on them.

Speaking of blog posts, I managed to do 20 in 2008, which is an average of slightly less than 2 per month so my goal is to double that for 2009 but hopefully keeping them interesting and useful.

I’m also going to try to get back into building, one of my projects for 2008 was to build a very primmy banjo.  Rather than do something with just a few prims and mainly texture based appear to be, I created a fairly detailed prim based banjo that to my non-expert eyes, looks pretty good.   It looked good enough that pictures of it on my Flickr stream were used in two separate non Second Life related blog posts.   I enjoyed building that, and would like to come up with a few projects for 2009 that involve building something challenging like that.

Another thing I want to do is more machinima of places and things I come across in Second Life.   I liked filming and editing the stuff I’ve done for Drama Libre but would like to do a little more stuff of more general interest to the community at large.

Well, I think that’s enough resolutin’ fer now.   Though these are more than just resolutions, I think they are necessities for me if I’m to remain involved in Second Life.

Second Life Architecture

Recently came across a presentation by Ian Wilkes, VP of Systems Engineering with Linden Labs, on the Architecture of Second Life.   Recorded at QCon San Francisco 2007.

Second Life Architecture by Ian Wilkes

 

I thought it was a good presentation which gives an overview of how Second Life works on a technical level, including some of the problems with some of the decisions that were made when it was designed.  I definitely recommend sitting down and watching this if you’re at all interested in the behind the scenes stuff that goes on and if you wonder about some of the technical reasons behind why SL misbehaves and why “just fix it” is more complicated than it seems.

Can SL and RL truly be separate?

Since I've been having difficulty in coming up with something to blog about, I decided to shamelessly borrow one of the topics used in the recent SL Bloggers mix and match.

So, can Second Life (SL)  and Real Life (RL) truly be separate?    Many would say yes, they keep SL and RL totally separate but is that really true?   It's true that you can hide, to some extent, your RL from your SL, and your SL from your RL as long as you take care to keep things hidden but are they really "separate"?

Separate can be defined in several different ways but when most people use the word in regards to Second Life, I believe they mean the following.

independent; not united or joint;

It would be my contention that SL can not be truly separate from RL.  Whether one finds oneself deeply immersed in Second Life or just casually involved, events in real life can impact your SL and events in SL can impact your RL.   Witness the recent news stories about the couple that divorced in real life over what happened in Second Life.   I will grant that those two probably didn't do much to keep the two lives separate but I wouldn't be at all surprised to find in one or both of their profiles,  a statement to the effect that RL and SL are separate, just as one finds in many profiles.

But are those kind of statements valid?   Is it even possible to keep it separate?

Avatars in SL are driven by real living humans, with feelings and emotions, hang ups and physical problems, and all those things that make us human.

Emotions from either life can spill over into the other.   Whether it's having a fight with a friend in SL that makes you grumpy all day at work in RL or a flat tire in RL causing you to snap or fight with a friend in SL later that evening.  

That's not being separate, how could it be?  Unless you're Mister Spock and can keep the emotions of one world separate from the other and switch back and forth between the two.

How can you keep RL separate from SL when each can impact the other so readily?

Anyone that has been in SL for any length of time knows that spending too much time in SL impacts RL, even if you don't have much of a RL it's still an impact when you choose to sit all day in your pajamas in front of the computer in SL rather than do your laundry or go to the grocery or just go outside and be in the sun.

And when RL events or circumstances prevent you from going into SL abruptly, at the very least it impacts the relationships you've built in SL, your friends worry, your SL "boss" wonders why you didn't show up to host that event, and in RL you stress over not being able to get in.

SL and RL can't truly be separate.   You may be able to hide the actions and life you live in one from the other, and that is your prerogative, but no matter how hard you try, eventually something from one life is going to slip over into the other and that separation will be broken.