Featured News

I’m happy to announce some very exciting news today: Rod Humble is Linden Lab’s new CEO. Our press release is here. You’ll hear from Rod himself after he starts in mid-January, but in the meantime, we wanted to share a brief introduction.

We're excited to introduce Linden Realms, where Residents can dive directly into exploring the towers, caves and valleys of the Lab's first-ever game prototype. Dodge rock monsters and fierce fireballs as you cross deadly, toxic rivers to complete quests and cash in your crystals for Linden Dollars. And that's just the beginning...

Quests take you through the basics of game-play in Second Life while you earn Linden Dollars. You’ll start at Basecamp on Tyrah’s Island, where you’ll have your pick of exciting destinations to choose from!

• Sunspire — Investigate a tower of experiments in teleportation and astronomy.
• Shattered Cavern — Go deep into an intricate system of caves that snake down under a small mountain.
• Devil's Canyon — Brave a  dangerous valley of fire and rock monsters, where the courageous are rewarded.
• Whisper Hollow — Hike through a forest full of secrets and obstacles.
• Banshee Peak — Soar above it all at the northernmost point of the island and admire the view of Whisper Hollow.
• Tyrah's Peak — Scale the snowy peak overlooking the center of the island and the Basecamp.
• Dark Moon Bay — Explore this southernmost point of the island, where Tyrah wrecked her ship and hopes to eventually escape.

Our teams dove deep into the inworld creation process during development, and are eager to share some improved tools that came out of this effort. Residents will soon be able to use those tools to create even richer original experiences in Second Life.

Dive in, explore — and experience the wonder of Linden Realms!

Our thoughts today are with all of those who are suffering in the devastation caused by the earthquakes in Japan and the tsunami in the Pacific. We encourage all Second Life Residents to support the relief efforts however they can, and we would like to help.
 
We have created two special Linden Bears--one that is wearable and one that sits--which are now for sale in the Marketplace at several pricing levels: L$300, L$1,000 and L$3,000. Here’s the direct link to purchase them. We will donate all proceeds from sales of this bear to the Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami Relief efforts of the American Red Cross. 
 
Please help us to support the relief efforts - buy the bears, and help spread the word in Second Life.
 
Additionally, we know that independent groups in Second Life are also planning to support relief efforts. For example, Radar Magazine in Second Life will be holding a month-long event and are seeking designers to donate virtual items (see this article for details). If your group is planning an inworld relief effort, then please share it in the comments here.

Thank you,
Kim

UPDATE -- April 14, 2011: Thank you to everyone who contributed to this campaign! In total, this doation drive raised more than L$8.3 million.

The special-edition Linden bears are no longer for sale, but you can of course contribute directly to the charity of your choice and participate in the numerous efforts to support Japan in Second Life organized by fellow Residents. (If your group is planning an inworld relief effort, then please do share it with us in the comments here.)

Today, we are pleased to launch the new, and much improved, Second Life Community website. The new platform integrates Blogs, Forums, Answers, and the Knowledge Base into one powerful integrated system that enables you to more efficiently leverage the power and knowledge of the community. We have also redesigned the Customer Support Portal around this platform to make it easy to find the most relevant answers to your technical support and customer service questions online or to contact us when your issues are more complex.
 
Take a look at this video to get an overview of the many benefits that the new platform offers.

In addition to the video, we also wanted to share some helpful information and anticipate a few of your questions:
 

• Unified Search: You can find the information that you’re looking for in one federated search field that returns organized results from relevant content in the Forums, Blogs, Answers, and the Knowledge Base.
• Single Sign On: You do not need to be logged in to read the community content, but you do need to be logged in to contribute. Just use your normal Second Life username and password to login. 
• Share Blog Posts and Knowledge Base Articles: If you find an interesting blog post or Knowledge Base article, then you can now share that information on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks. Other kinds of content, such as user-generated comments, Forum posts, etc., will not have this functionality available.
• Contribution-Based Roles: You will notice that each person in Second Life has a role, or rank, based on his or her contributions to the platform. The roles start at Resident and go up to Helper and with each rank comes more capabilities. So, keep those contributions coming and watch your community platform ranking rise.
• A Smarter SL Answers: Try out the new Answers section. You’ll immediately notice that when you type a keyword, an intuitive category search will return common matching solution results. And, solutions accepted by the question author are automatically nominated for Linden editorial review and possible inclusion in the Knowledge Base.
• Please Resubscribe to RSS Feeds: If you had an RSS feed on the old blogs or forums, then you will need to resubscribe to the RSS feeds that interest you in the new system. We apologize for the inconvenience.
• FAQs Help You Get Acclimated: We have created a detailed Frequently Asked Questions area for each section of the new system that will get you up and running in no time.
• Yes, Archives Are Still Available: We preloaded Answered questions, Blogs, Forums, and the Knowledge Base with recent posts and/or solutions to get the conversations started. However, if you want to find older content that was available in the old platform, then you can still access it through search in read-only format.

Thanks for your patience as we transitioned to the new system. Start exploring, contributing, and let us know what you think. As is always the case with new systems, you may run into bugs. If you do, then log them on JIRA. And, if you have general feedback on the community platform, then share it with is in the Feedback section of the Forums.

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Today, mesh technology is available gridwide in Second Life. All SL users can now benefit from mesh technology, no matter what you do or where you are inworld.

If you shop, be sure to check out items built using mesh — they can sit alongside everything else you own and love in SL, but often look superslick, and may have greater detailing or design than a similar item built without mesh.

If you build, mesh is another option to help you access unlimited creativity. All the other traditional SL building options are still intact, we’ve just added to your toolkit.

If you sell things, selling objects created using mesh is one way to diversify your offering.

If you own land, well-made mesh objects can be used to increase efficiency and maintain optimum performance on your parcel.


Make sure you use the new Viewer to view and upload mesh objects correctly; older viewers will not render objects created with mesh correctly. Please check with third-party viewers; mesh support may vary.

A More Technical Look at Mesh

You’ve probably already seen mesh technology at work in modern video games, special effects and 3D animation. The term “mesh” refers to an object that consists of polygonal geometry data. That means it is extremely flexible — and it certain situations, it can be way more efficient than the existing prims and sculpties you’ll find inworld currently. Although existing building tools and techniques may still be the best choice in certain settings. You can talk with other designers about mes here.

Mesh objects are first created in external programs, such as Blender or Maya, (check here for more information) and then imported onto the Second Life grid. Once there, mesh objects can be manipulated in pretty much the same ways you would manipulate a regular old prim. Learn more about uploading your own mesh items here.



September brings new developments to Second Life for Premium Memberships, improvements to Profiles and an update on mesh. These are all part of Linden Lab’s ongoing focus in 2011 on improving service, performance and usability.

New Premium Membership Benefits

At the beginning of September, we introduced some new benefits for Second Life Premium members. The first improvements? Exclusive gifts and Premium-only sandboxes.

Getting access to your new Premium rewards is easy. Premium Gifts can be claimed now by members via one of the many inworld Premium kiosks, and the Premium-only Sandboxes are already open.

Even more benefits are on the way, so this is just the beginning. Read the original blog post for more details about Premium Sandboxes and Premium Gifts.

Not a Premium Member? There couldn’t be a better time to sign up. We’re running a special limited-time promotion for new quarterly Premium memberships from now through Monday, Sept. 12 at 50 percent off the regular price.

Get Even More Out Of Social Profiles with Location Posting

September also brings a new social sharing feature to the Second Life Viewer. Residents now have the option to conveniently share where they are inworld by adding a location to their Profile posts as a tag:

This means that people reading your posts live can teleport directly to your location and join you. Those who see your post later can also check out the location to see exactly what you were talking about — even if you’re no longer there.

Of course, you can always choose not to use this feature — it’s just there when you want it.

These “Locations” tags get really fun when combined with your Profile's “Nearby” feature. To check it out while you’re inworld, follow the menu Me → My Profile. Then, click on the first icon:


Then click the second tab, “Nearby”:


Now you’ll see posts from people nearby wherever you are inworld. Some of these posts might even be made by people in the same location at the same time you are there. It’s a great way to connect with others to start a conversation.

You can also use this feature to browse through older posts, which can give you insights as to what kind of activities and conversations typically happen in that region. For example, you might uncover posts about recent or upcoming live music shows, hot new stores or the insider scoop on the hottest local dance clubs.

So... let people know where you hang out and why — or keep quiet, and just see what others are doing and saying.

If you haven’t heard the full story of Social Profiles, check out our post from last month for more details and the big picture.

Mesh Update

With the arrival of mesh, a number of Residents have already started to create some impressive mesh items inworld. Since its inception, we’ve seen more than 9,000 content creators enable mesh, and more than 20,000 items have already been uploaded to the grid. And we’re looking forward to seeing what creations you make next.

There’s a lot of excitement around what mesh models can offer — for more information or to try it yourself, check out this page. You can also browse through some of the first mesh creations in our Mesh Showcase. The Lab is working on continued improvements and the next mesh release will include upgrades to how we show resource weight and land impact of objects.

Mesh rolled out in August as an added option to all inworld building tools to help Residents craft even more creations inworld. For the best mesh experience, you’ll need the current version of the Second Life Viewer (Version 3.0) or a comparable viewer.

Go create something great,

Linden Lab


Today, we're happy to announce that Fitted Mesh is available in the main Second Life Viewer! As we've previously blogged, Fitted Mesh gives Second Life content creators the power to craft mesh garments that make avatars look their absolute best. We’d like to thank the vibrant community of creators for their thoughtful feedback and help testing this feature.

For more information, check out the

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"I’ve been getting a lot of emails from people that know nothing about Second Life, but have somehow found my blog through various social networks, asking me for more information. Therefore I figured I would write up a quick tutorial for those interested in joining and looking for some free resources to kick start their inventory..." Keep reading at StrawberrySingh.com



As of 10am PT Wednesday, September 8, the Emerald Viewer will be blocked from logging in to Second Life as a result of violations of our Policy on Third Party Viewers. Residents who have been using any version of the Emerald Viewer will need to use a different Viewer to access Second Life. You can download the official Second Life Viewer, developed by Linden Lab, here. Or you can learn more about alternative Viewers, developed by third parties, here. There are several new Viewers listed in the TPV Directory, so there are many alternatives available to you.

We take Residents’ privacy, safety, and security very seriously and will take action to enforce the policies that help protect it. As our CEO, Philip Rosedale, has blogged about, we recently removed the Emerald Viewer from our Third-Party Viewer Directory due to violations of our Policy on Third-Party Viewers.

Since then, we have been in communication with the Emerald development team and have requested several changes in order to remedy violations of our policy, including changes necessary to meet our privacy requirements, and to address GPL license violations. Unfortunately, the team was unable to comply within a stipulated time frame. As a result, we have decided to block logins from the Emerald Viewer in order to protect our Residents. All versions of the Emerald Viewer will be blocked from logging in to Second Life as of tomorrow at 10am. Please be aware that attempting to circumvent our blocking to access Second Life with a banned Viewer is a violation of the Policy on Third-Party Viewers and may result in the loss of one's account.

Search is a vital element in Second Life that enables you to find interesting people, places, events, items for sale, and other things to make your inworld experience more fun, collaborative, and meaningful. It has been a while since we last updated you on search and that’s because we’ve chosen to take a big leap forward versus smaller, incremental improvements. We believe that new search is a vast improvement over current search both in terms of usability and relevance. But we’re not the only ones who think that. We conducted a quiet test with a savvy group of Residents who preferred new search results over 75% of the time compared with current search results.

Now it’s time for you to test it out. Today, we have released a Search Project Viewer, that works on the main grid. Here are a few things that you’ll notice right away:

• Better Search Results User Interface: It’s not just prettier (we had to say it), but it’s also much more usable. Our new search engine considers Second Life specific data, such as how many people are at an event versus web-based data, so search results are more relevant and less subject to spam. And, now search results are compiled on a single scrollable page instead of several pages that require multiple clicks to see. You can even view multiple search results at one time by expanding results!
• Delivers More Relevant Results: The new search engine also serves more relevant results than the current search technology, based on four rounds of double-blind testing. And, we’ll always continue to test and tweak the results to ensure that you find what you’re looking for.
• To Buy or Rent? That is the Question.: The land sales category has been revamped, separating sales and rentals and giving you better options to limit your search by price range and land size. Now, it’s much easier to find that perfect place to settle in Second Life.
• Find Out What’s Happening Now: You can also search Events by either the exact start time or ”happening now,”  but might have started earlier. That way, you can quickly find out what’s happening in Second Life right now.
• Search Results Are Saved: Many of you have shared with us how you use search to discover your world and shop, and how you want your search results saved. We’ve all had this experience. We search for something, find an interesting event or place to go shopping, and then want to go back to our search results and find another place to go--but they are gone. When using the new Search, results are saved for 15 minutes so that you can easily go back and explore other options.

Take a look at this video and see for yourself.

For those who want more details, the Search Project Viewer FAQ explains the test process and the search terms that landowners will need to use when listing their land for sale or rent.

One of the first questions many will have is, “Will new search work in Viewer 1.23 and Third-Party Viewers?”  New search will soon be available to you in the official SL Viewer and we will not be implementing it for the 1.23 Viewer. To be clear, you can still use the 1.23 Viewer, but search functionality will be impaired once new search is released into general availability, after the test period. (We cannot speak to which Third-Party Viewers will adopt the new search technology.) All of our development efforts are focused on making SL Viewer with Basic and Advanced modes exceptional for all Residents--new and seasoned.

So, test out new search using the Search Project Viewer that makes finding cool people, places, and things in Second Life easier than ever before.

The Second Life economy continues to be steady, with nearly all key measures staying within a narrow range of just a few percentage points up or down over the last year. The largest changes compared to last year's Q3 were an increase of 7.2% in World Size, a decline of 11% in User Hours, and a 115% increase in Web Merchandise Sales Volume.

Over the last year, the number of people participating in the economy has also been consistent, ranging from 480,000 to 496,000 (currently 486,000), as has L$ Supply, which has ranged from US$25.4 million to US$26.2 million, and was at a 12-month high in Q3.

For a definition of the metrics in this post, please see this wiki page. Click on each image below to see a larger version.

AVERAGE MONTHLY REPEAT LOGINS

Average Monthly Repeat Logins fell 2.1% from Q2 but still rose 5.3% year over year.

USER HOURS

User Hours fell 3.7% from Q2 and 11.0% year over year. The most significant quarter-to-quarter loss of user hours was from the heaviest usage segment (accounts logging over 300 hours per month).

AVERAGE MONTHLY ECONOMIC PARTICIPANTS

Active economic participants fell 1.0% from Q2 and year over year.

AVERAGE EXCHANGE RATE

As expected from the fluctuations in June, the average exchange rate of L$ per US$ rose 1.7% from Q2, or 2.5% year over year. Note that a rise in the L$ exchange rate represents a drop in the value of the L$, as one US$ now buys more L$ than it did last quarter.

L$ SUPPLY

The equivalent US$ value of all Resident-held L$ grew 1.2% from Q2, or 6.1% year over year. Although there may have been fewer economically active accounts in Q3, this suggests the L$ in those accounts did not exit Second Life.

LINDEX VOLUME

LindeX volume in Q3 fell 3.8% from Q2 and 2.8% from Q3 2009. With fewer economic participants, there was less need to replenish L$ balances from the LindeX.

WEB MERCHANDISE SALES VOLUME

Total sales volume on both Xstreet SL and the new SL Marketplace rose 8.5% from Q2 and grew 115.2% year over year. Note that the SL Marketplace was only in beta during Q3 and makes up less than 10% of total Q3 Web volume.

WORLD SIZE

Total world size fell 1.4% from Q2 and grew 7.2% year over year.

Hello, everyone!

Firstly, thank you all for your kind words of welcome. It has been an unexpected delight to receive goodwill messages from so many Residents. I also appreciate the many thoughtful comments on BK Linden’s blog post announcing my appointment. I have read them and will be addressing some of your questions as soon as I’m a bit more settled in.

One of my highest priorities, over the last few weeks, was spending as much time as possible exploring inworld (with an alt and now Rodvik Linden) to better understand the product experience, your needs, and the culture of Second Life. I have discovered so much. I am amazed on a daily basis by what you have created. Over the holidays, I enjoyed many winter landscapes and seasonal activities. And, more recently, I have been playing around with vehicles and animals.

On the creation front, I am slowly learning how to build by playing around with the land tool and the building environment. I love trees and plants, so I probably overdid it a bit there

Next, I wanted to see how the scripting system worked. So, I made myself a “mail post” that emailed me. I was very impressed by how easy it was to get up and running.

Having no shelter on my island seemed a bit odd. So, I built myself a shack. It doesn't look like much, but it’s home.

Finally, I like the water so I built myself a simple raft to cruise around in. (OK, it’s very simple. But it works!)

Getting immersed in Second Life is the fun part of the job and I can see why you love the world that you’ve created.

I’m in the process of getting up to speed and working with the team to finalize our plans for 2011. I hope to start sharing more in coming weeks.

Until then, thank you again for such a warm welcome and please follow me on Twitter @rodvik. I look forward to serving you--our customers--in the times ahead.

Rod Humble / Rodvik Linden

I’m delighted to announce that today we have released Viewer 2.3 as the main Second Life Viewer and the default download for new Residents. This release includes the full launch of Display Names allowing greater self-expression, improved Event Scheduling, Viewer Hints, and many additional performance and usability enhancements. For more information on the new features, see our Viewer 2.3 Beta blog post.

This is just a few short weeks from when the Viewer 2.3 Beta was made available; a big thanks to those Residents that downloaded the beta and provided feedback.

Download the Viewer 2.3 Release today, try it out, and Twitter your thoughts using the #slviewer2 hashtag.And, if want to learn more about Display Names, then there are plenty of places to find information including some excellent videos by Torley. Check out the helpful links below.

Please note: If you are using an older version of the Viewer (including most 3rd party Viewers) that still has three login fields (first name, last name and password), please read this page for guidance on how Display Names affects logging in.

As we explore ways to make the Second Life experience faster, easier, and more fun, we are testing a number of approaches to bring new users closer to the richness of our virtual world. Yesterday, we quietly launched a beta test of a new technology that opens up Second Life to new users like never before: Second Life on the Web! The SL Web Viewer allows new users to become Second Life “guests” through the Web and enjoy basic SL functionality while exploring exciting destinations in Second Life -- all without downloading a Viewer.

We need your help to test the SL Web Viewer!

Just click http://interest.secondlife.com/beta to check it out. There is a 45-second video that will run while the system loads and then you’ll either be offered an “Explore Now” button -- which means that you have successfully qualified -- or a “Join Now” button -- which means that you do not qualify for the test at this time*.  If you qualify, you’ll be asked to share your email address to create a temporary guest account to use the SL Web Viewer.

We’ll be running tests like this from time to time, and we may ultimately choose to further pursue some or none of these approaches, depending on what we learn from our testing, but we’re very excited to make SL an easier experience for guests and look forward to hearing what you think.

*Note: We’re in the early stages of testing this technology, and not everyone who navigates to the link will be able to access the SL Web Viewer.

The Second Life Discussion Guidelines have moved here.

^ As a friendly reminder, please read the guidelines before commenting on the blogs or posting in the forums so you can be awesome!

This change was done by Torley Linden as part of making help easier to find... because the previous version couldn't be read by non-logged-in Residents and contained numerous formatting glitches and old references (for example, "Xstreet" instead of "Marketplace"). The meat and spirit of the Discussion Guidelines' content remains the same, and been cleaned up on the wiki help pages, where future versions can be updated easier. Please let Torley know if there are further errors to correct.

After about four months as interim CEO, working closely with Bob Komin, the management team, and the board, we've decided we are ready to start the search for a new CEO. I'll be leaving day-to-day management of the company and continuing in my role on the board, including helping in the search to find a great CEO. I will also be continuing my work with my new company, LoveMachine. Bob will lead Linden Lab while we conduct the search. It's been an intense few months of transition, and we all feel like we are in a better place now, with a clearer sense of direction and more focus, and are ready to bring someone new into the mix as a leader.

Today, is a bittersweet day. As planned, we have taken down the Avatars United site, as outlined in last week’s blog post. The Avatars United website now points to the main Second Life homepage.

Although many are sad to see Avatars United go, we are very excited that soon we'll be sharing more of our thinking as we explore how to integrate social networking capabilities, powered by Avatars United technology, directly into the Second Life experience. We want to make it even faster, easier, and more fun to find friends, build vibrant communities, and share the richness of Second Life.

For Avatars United members, we hope that you’ve taken advantage of the past week to save any pieces of content that you wanted to keep. And, if you have an account balance, then yesterday you should have received an email regarding your AU Coin refund. Expect another email later this week with more specifics on your individual account.

As I stated before, a big thanks to all Avatars United members and we encourage you to reestablish your connection with friends--and find new ones--in Second Life. See you there soon!

Following on from my previous post, I am delighted to announce that we will begin the Mesh Open Beta on Wednesday, October 13th, allowing all Residents to experiment with our new mesh upload fuctionality. We’re extremely excited about this project; here is what to expect from the beta program:

On October 13th, you will find a new “Mesh Project Viewer” on the Downloads page, which will be available for any Resident to download. This Viewer cannot connect you to the main grid; instead, it will take you to a development grid (called Aditi) where mesh has been enabled. After you download the Mesh Project Viewer and log in to Aditi, you can then experiment with mesh without impacting your regular SL account. The mesh features should be fully functional, so you’ll be able to upload mesh files, define their physical shape, apply them to objects, and link multiple mesh objects together.

Some aspects of mesh are complex, but don’t worry -- we will also provide documentation explaining how to get started with mesh, along with some simple examples to get you started.

The main purpose of the beta is to have as many folks trying out the technology as we can, so that we can improve the quality and iron out any issues early. I’ll blog again on our progress shortly and will also let you know how best to file bugs or give us other feedback. We are still actively working on the user interface for mesh, so you should expect this to look a little rough for a while as we polish it up and make changes based on your feedback.

So, if you’re someone who is comfortable trying out beta software, and you’re interested in creating mesh objects in Second Life -- a whole new level of creativity -- please do put October 13th in your diary!  The more involved you get, the better it will be!

It has been several weeks since we announced that Teen Second Life, our Second Life grid for 13- to 17-year-olds, will be closing at the end of this year, and that we would be admitting 16- and 17-year-olds to the main grid. Today, we are excited to tell you that we will be able to continue serving all of the educational and not-for-profit communities of the Teen Grid, including those that serve 13- to 15-year-olds, without an interruption in service.

Since our announcement, we’ve been speaking with many people from the educational and not-for-profit communities in Teen Second Life to better  understand their needs and determine what measures would be necessary to create a safe, secure, and collaborative environment for their students and faculty. I’m happy to say that we are able to meet these needs, and allow 13- to 15-year-olds access to limited locations on the main grid, with appropriate controls for administrators. We will implement these controls and transfer these rich and exciting projects from Teen Second Life before the end of this year.

The 13- to 15-year-old students affiliated with these organizations will be unable to visit any regions except those of their hosting organization, and those accounts will not have the ability to search the Grid or to purchase items from the Marketplace. Unlike on Teen Second Life, adults that work with these students will now be a part of the broader Second Life experience, allowing them to bring rich educational content to their students. The ability to invite organization-approved guest speakers and other approved members of the community to safely interact these students will further enhance their learning experience. For more details, see the Teen Second Life transition wiki page.

We are happy to provide this support for the educational community in Second Life, and we look forward to the community continuing to create  innovative and exciting projects!

In January of this year, Linden Lab purchased Avatars United as part of our social strategy and a larger ambition to integrate powerful social networking capabilities into the Second Life experience -- to make it even faster, easier, and more fun to find friends, build vibrant communities, and share the richness of Second Life with fellow Residents inworld and friends outside of Second Life. We purchased Avatars United for its underlying social technology -- the ability to create social networks, communities and groups.

During Philip’s keynote at the 2010 SLCC, we committed to bringing Mesh import to Second Life. This functionality would allow content created in the mainstream 3D creation tools, such as Maya or Blender, to be imported directly into Second Life, in much the same way that animations and textures can be uploaded today. In this case, we would provide support for the Collada file format. We see this as an important step to empower content creators to make the inworld experience an even richer and more creative one than it is today.

Find Out What Our Mesh Import Beta Testers Think

As you know, we have been working on Mesh import for some time and have had an awesome group of Resident beta testers helping us to iron out the kinks. Those testers have been under NDA, but today we will be lifting that NDA so that those folks in the closed beta can talk publicly about their experiences with Mesh in Second Life. This is in line with our desire to be ever more open about what we are working on. Look for other videos, blog posts, and Tweets (#slviewer2) shortly.

In fact, I encourage you to view the Second Life Youtube channel where we already have six videos showcasing Mesh Import technology, contributed by beta testers Draxtor Depres, Timmi Allen, and Matrice Laville.

And, big thanks to all of our Mesh Import beta testers. Your dedication, creativity, feedback, encouragement, and patience has been invaluable. We couldn’t have gotten here without you.

Open Beta Coming Soon
We’re also getting ready to move from the current closed beta, to an open beta so that any Resident interested in helping us to test the Mesh toolset, or just curious about the technology, can get involved. Mesh Import has some incredibly exciting implications for inworld content creators, so we’re very keen to get as much feedback as we can; and of course, the more people that use it, the better the feature will be when we go live gridwide.

The plan is to blog again in two weeks, when we’ll announce when the open beta will be available and talk more about the development process and the remaining work to be done. As you’re starting to see on other projects, there will be a specific Project Viewer for the open beta for Mesh Import that will take Residents to a development grid where Mesh is enabled. The open beta will be a ‘technology demo’ rather than being a complete product -- so you should expect that the user interface will change significantly as we receive your feedback and continue to work on it. The technology for Mesh Import is complex, so making sure that it is not only easy to use, but also a powerful tool for content creators, is part of the challenge. We’re looking forward to getting your help.

The L$/US$ exchange rate briefly experienced fluctuations for approximately one week in June. At the time, we interpreted this as being due to a number of factors, including uncertainty over our recent reorganization. Further research has shown  this was also caused by the effect of merging Residents’ inworld and XStreet SL account balances in late March. Previously, Residents had two separate balances: one for inworld transactions, and one for XStreet SL transactions. Merging those balances provided a more convenient, efficient way for Residents to maintain and spend their L$ balance. Residents are no longer keeping a higher than historical average L$ balance across their two accounts and this process of reducing their  total balances caused new L$ purchases to temporarily be lower while  these “extra” L$ were used and/or added to the selling volume if the L$ were taken out of the economy. At this time, total Resident L$ balances have stabilized and are no longer falling.

Despite this temporary uncertainty and related market impact that caused sell volumes to briefly spike beyond purchase demand during one week, trading activity and the exchange rate have since returned to near historical levels.

The L$ exchange rate is a floating rate that can change based on supply and demand. Although Linden Lab employs a variety of methods including  sinks, sources, and selling L$ from time to time, and tries to maintain a relatively stable money supply and exchange rate, we are committed to allowing the economy to fluctuate based on its own market forces. As in the real-world economy, these market forces can sometimes result in changes that can affect businesses positively or negatively in Second Life.

For more information on the Second Life economy in the second quarter, read today’s blog post.

The Second Life economy remained stable in the second quarter of 2010, despite one-time events that affected a number of metrics. The most notable economic event of the second quarter was a temporary decrease in the exchange rate of the L$ vs. the US dollar in mid-June that has since returned to typical levels. Our research in the weeks since this occurred indicates this change was due in large part to our merge of Residents’ inworld and XStreetSL L$ balances.This had the temporary effect of reducing L$ purchase volume as Residents lowered the total amount of L$’s they were holding because they now had one combined account.  Previously, Residents held a higher combined L$ balance in two separate accounts and purchased L$’s more frequently when they were keeping a minimum balance in each.  You can read more details in our quarterly economic spotlight post.

Changes in Reporting

From time to time we will change our reporting in order to provide the most relevant and accurate summary information for the use of merchants, landowners, content creators, and other participants in the Second Life economy. Our goal is to provide those who participate in the economy and run inworld businesses with the data they need to make informed business decisions.  We are making a change from the recent past by reducing the relatively large set of metrics we have provided--many where causality is complex or unclear--and we will instead provide a more focused data set with a briefer description about each quarter’s activity.  We believe the indicators below are the key items to focus on, and we are adding a page describing the content and methodology behind each figure.

In addition, we will be phasing out the data feeds at http://secondlife.com/statistics/economy-data.php. We’ll have more updates on this shortly, but because this data currently bears little relationship to the health or strength of the Second Life economy, we feel it’s appropriate to discontinue these feeds.

Resident-to-Resident Transactions

At least for the time being, one figure we will no longer publish in our historical charts is the Resident-to-Resident transaction data. As we’ve analyzed this data we believe that it is not as accurate a measure of the inworld economy as we would like. We are currently working to develop a more accurate metric with which to replace this number. For the near term, we will continue to publish a comparable Resident-to-Resident transaction figure for historical comparison. In Q2 2010, Resident-to-Resident transactions totalled approximately L$40 billion, or US$152 million.

RESIDENT USAGE INDICATORS

MONTHLY REPEAT LOGINS

Monthly Repeat Logins indicated improved retention and engagement over recent quarters:

• Q2 2010 averaged 805 thousand monthly repeat logins, a rise of 8.6 percent vs. the Q2 2009 average of 742 thousand.
• Levels are flat with Q1 2010.

USER HOURS

User Hours were slightly lower, at 108 million for the quarter.

• The Q2 2009 User Hours figure of 126 million includes substantial usage attributable to “bots” and other scripted agents. Bot policy changes took place in mid-Q2 2009, making it difficult to make accurate comparisons with the year-ago period.
• User Hours in Q1 2010 totaled 116 million.

MONTHLY ECONOMIC PARTICIPANTS

Monthly Economic Participants (those accounts that receive or distribute L$ in a given month) are the most active and engaged participants in Second Life and the economy. Economic participation in the second quarter, on average, was flat against the previous quarter, and rose against the same period a year ago.

LINDEN DOLLAR RATES AND RELATED METRICS

EXCHANGE RATE

The average Linden dollar exchange rate moved from approximately L$261 per US dollar at the beginning of the quarter, to just under L$269 per US$ at the end and fluctuated across a larger range for two weeks during June (see second chart below), as we noted at the time. Average exchange rates, however, remain largely unchanged. As noted above, our research indicates this change was due to our merge of Residents’ inworld and XStreet SL L$ balances and temporary market uncertainty immediately after the announcements of our restructuring and changes in senior management. Read more details in our quarterly economic spotlight post.

L$ SUPPLY

We are also improving and changing how we report the L$ Supply figure with this quarter’s post. Previously, this metric did not include individual XStreet SL account balances, and misclassified some administrative accounts as Resident accounts. For this quarter we have updated the calculation to include only Resident accounts, and have summed their balances across both XStreet SL and inworld. This number now more accurately represents the total purchasing power of all Residents in Second Life. Note that we have shown both calculation methods in the charts.

• L$ Supply in Q2 was US$25.9 million vs US$26.2 in Q1

LINDEX VOLUME

Historically, LindeX volume has been very stable, and the slight decline from Q1 is within past ranges. This metric is traditionally less volatile than many other indicators we report, and we expect this behavior to continue.    

• LindeX trading volume of US$29.4 million in Q2 2010 was up slightly against the year-ago Q2 volume of US$29.1 million, but off from Q1’s US$30.7 million

XSTREET SL MERCHANDISE SALES VOLUME

Q2 2010 saw 39% growth in sales over Q1 2010 and 124% growth over the same quarter a year earlier. The primary driver of this growth was the merging of users’ Xstreet SL and Second Life Linden dollar balances. This simplified the purchase process on Xstreet, producing an immediate jump in sales volume. In addition to the benefits of the balance merge, we continue to show healthy growth from the acquisition of new users paired with the development of new creative products from our merchants. Q2 continued the trend of setting record sales volume and this quarter in particular contained an important milestone, as Xstreet SL had it’s first month with over US$1 million worth of sales.

LAND

WORLD SIZE

World Size grew to 2,110 square kilometers at the end of Q2, from 2,070 at the end of the previous quarter, and 1,900 for the year-ago period. Private regions accounted for the largest portion of inworld land (44 percent), and private homesteads the next largest (36 percent). Mainland regions accounted for 19 percent of the total inworld land mass.

Linden Lab recently welcomed a new addition to its executive ranks: Kim Salzer, who became our Vice President of Marketing, at the beginning of August. Kim (known as Kim Linden inworld) joins us from Activision Blizzard, where she was Vice President of Global Brand Management for properties like Guitar Hero and Call of Duty 2, among others. Kim brings a deep background in gaming (including experience at Electronic Arts working on massively multiplayer online games and hit sports franchises), and in online learning, and we’re excited to have her as part of the team. As an introduction to Residents, I asked Kim to tell us a bit about herself in her own words:

Q: What’s the one thing you bring from the gaming world that will be most useful to you in your position at Linden Lab?

A: Working in gaming taught me a lot about just how creative and  passionate that audience can be, and I think the same is true for the  Residents of Second Life. And SL provides so many great tools to enhance  and bring out that creativity, I’m really looking forward to helping foster that as we move into the next phase of the platform’s growth. I  want to see if we can make the range of what’s possible in Second Life  even broader.

Q: What are your goals for your new position as VP Marketing at Linden Lab?

A:  What I really want to do here is help the Lab figure out what the “X  Factor” is going to be for Second Life. When I was working on games, I  always tried to choose a single idea to focus on and bring out, an X  Factor that helped people get into the game and helped them discover all  the rest of the possibilities there. If I can help bring that kind of  focus to Second Life, I’ll be happy about how I’m doing my job.

Q: What excites you most about working on a product like Second Life?

A: I’m excited about the prospect of helping to build a product that  really empowers people to express what they’re about, and that can make a real difference in their lives. I think we’ve only just started to see  what can be done here, and I can’t wait to see where we and our  Residents can take things from here.