PeterCanessa Oh Posted May 2, 2012 Share Posted May 2, 2012 As I mused on LL's complete lack of interest in engaging with its customers I wondered if it was just us they wouldn't talk to, so I took a digital wander over to look at their press releases. (http://lindenlab.com/press/releases). What depressing stuff it is. I couldn't bring myself to go back further than 2009 but here's the summary:2009 (good news in bold)20th January: (working) OnStreet and XStreet XL bought-out, to be replaced by (not working) marketplace27th January: LL spend money on 2 more executives (the faceless sort, as they should be)21st April: Zindra debacle30th April: The first and only 'annual' Linden prize20th May: \o/ 15 Billion minutes of voice reached \o/27th May: Gold Solution Provider program - RL companies didn't want SL solutions, even if you paid LL to advertise you.31st August: LL buy another executive - this time to kill profiles and make SL look like twit-face22nd September: \o/ 1 Billion hours, 1 Billion US$ reached \o/11th November: SL Enterprise launched for business. Like (free) opensim but costs US$55,000. No known takers.201019th January: Another executive (CFO)31st March: (loved) viewer 1 replaced by (loathed) viewer 29th June: 30% of the company fired.24th June: \o/ Kingdon fired at last \o/23rd December: Rodvik joined (I thought that was good news for a long time)2011 - LL had absolutely nothing to say for themselves or about SL201216th February: New toys are more interesting than SL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ceka Cianci Posted May 2, 2012 Share Posted May 2, 2012 i thought this would have been cool hehehe it was cool having IBM around i thought.. July 8, 2008 Linden Lab and IBM Achieve Major Virtual World Interoperability Milestone Open Grid Protocol enables avatars to teleport between Second Life and OpenSim virtual worlds Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madelaine McMasters Posted May 2, 2012 Share Posted May 2, 2012 PeterCanessa Oh wrote: As I mused on LL's complete lack of interest in engaging with its customers I wondered if it was just us they wouldn't talk to, so I took a digital wander over to look at their press releases. (http://lindenlab.com/press/releases). What depressing stuff it is. I couldn't bring myself to go back further than 2009 but here's the summary: 2009 (good news in bold) 20th January: (working) OnStreet and XStreet XL bought-out, to be replaced by (not working) marketplace 27th January: LL spend money on 2 more executives (the faceless sort, as they should be) 21st April: Zindra debacle 30th April: The first and only 'annual' Linden prize 20th May: \o/ 15 Billion minutes of voice reached \o/ 27th May: Gold Solution Provider program - RL companies didn't want SL solutions, even if you paid LL to advertise you. 31st August: LL buy another executive - this time to kill profiles and make SL look like twit-face 22nd September: \o/ 1 Billion hours, 1 Billion US$ reached \o/ 11th November: SL Enterprise launched for business. Like (free) opensim but costs US$55,000. No known takers. 2010 19th January: Another executive (CFO) 31st March: (loved) viewer 1 replaced by (loathed) viewer 2 9th June: 30% of the company fired. 24th June: \o/ Kingdon fired at last \o/ 23rd December: Rodvik joined (I thought that was good news for a long time) 2011 - LL had absolutely nothing to say for themselves or about SL 2012 16th February: New toys are more interesting than SL 2013 CDC reveals that Second Life is actually a vaccine, deployed to stop the spread of virtual worlds. With innoculation rates (new user signups) now over 50,000/day, the infected population (concurrency) has dropped to just 26,000. The vaccine was first discovered by a team of researchers guided by Professor Philip Lactic of Tufts University. CDC spokesperson Dr. Viru Lence sets a target worldwide extermination date of 2020. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterCanessa Oh Posted May 2, 2012 Author Share Posted May 2, 2012 Pah. I worked short-term IT contracts for many years so have been employed by more than 20 companies. IBM was the worst for several reasons, IT ability being one of them, complete lack of customer-focus the main one. Their influence on SL is obvious in several areas although, curiously, not in marketing (the only thing IBM is good at). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucinda Bulloch Posted May 2, 2012 Share Posted May 2, 2012 Some times we expect to much, it is not what they can do it is what can we do, example below. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ceka Cianci Posted May 2, 2012 Share Posted May 2, 2012 PeterCanessa Oh wrote: Pah. I worked short-term IT contracts for many years so have been employed by more than 20 companies. IBM was the worst for several reasons, IT ability being one of them, complete lack of customer-focus the main one. Their influence on SL is obvious in several areas although, curiously, not in marketing (the only thing IBM is good at). having them around i meant their sim..they had a really cool sim with all kinds of free scripts and other neat stuffs heheh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Penny Patton Posted May 3, 2012 Share Posted May 3, 2012 I still believe Rodvik becoming the new CEO has been a good thing. Since then SL has slowly been moving in a better direction. Sure, improvements might not be coming hard and fast, but you have to realize, LL made about 12 years of poor decisions before Rodvik was brought on board, and now he's tasked with turning that all around with less than half the manpower (Before Rodvik was brought on, LL began cutting loose employees over the course of about half a year, which ultimately amounted to about 60% of their workforce.). Not only that, but while the man in the hotseat might have changed, all of the employees under him are still the same employees and same corporate culture which have been with LL during the past decade of poor decisions, and not all of them consider the decisions to have been bad despite the situation. Due to the reality of the situation, there is no way a single personel change, even at the CEO level, could show a substantial improvement to the company within even a year or two. Still, we have gotten some nice signs of improvement. The Viewer 3 UI is awesome. Pathfinding is finally coming! SL has needed this for years, as well as other NPC functionality (more of which will hopefully follow). The Lindens are talking of bringing client side AOs to the official viewer. The Lindens have voiced a desire to include ex-Linden Qarl's mesh deformation patch (finally bringing rigged mesh functionality without which rigged mesh is arguably broken). There's also been a few missteps, but in the past Linden Lab reliably made the worst decision every single time. Now there's a substantial move towards LL making good decisions. That's worth noting before declaring Rodvik's bid to turn SL around a failure. Again, we'll need another year or two to see the full scope of Rodvik's changes to Linden corporate culture and decision making. I know that's not what people want to hear, but realistically it's the very best we could possibly expect. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterCanessa Oh Posted May 3, 2012 Author Share Posted May 3, 2012 Yes, I'm still willing to give Rodvik the benefit of the doubt. However, I think that's more the psychological reluctance to admit I was wrong about thinking he'd be good in the first place. It's certainly true that he hasn't been an unmitigated disaster like M. Bit of communication would be nice though (this thread is about the insistance on using twit-face instead of the SL family of sites/tools) @ Qwal - Are you just making a joke? If not, I don't know what you're trying to say. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Penny Patton Posted May 3, 2012 Share Posted May 3, 2012 He actually uses his profile to communicate a lot, unless that's what you mean by "twit-face", in which I have to disagree was a bad move. If anything, my biggest complaint about the current profiles is that LL halted development on them just short of adding some extremely useful functionality that had been discussed, the kind of functionality that, like "Profile Picks" would have been superb at drawing users to user created content and communities that would interest them. SL has always suffered from poor social and search tools, and LL can't really be faulted for taking inspiration from popular social tools when developing SL's social feature set. In this regard he corrected Philip and M's mistake of copying the look of twitter and facebook without any substance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Deakins Posted May 3, 2012 Share Posted May 3, 2012 "Corporate culture"? What corportate culture? LL isn't big enough to have corporate culture. It's only big enough to have a 'relatively small business' culture. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Penny Patton Posted May 3, 2012 Share Posted May 3, 2012 Bogging a conversation down in useless semantics isn't very constructive. The fact of the matter is there is a culture at LL, a mindset and way of doing things that is present in how they've handled development, customer service, addressing technical disruptions, etcetera for over a decade now. When you've developed a culture like that it takes time to change, unless you plan on firing all your employees and immediately replacing them, which isn't really feasible or necessary. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Deakins Posted May 3, 2012 Share Posted May 3, 2012 Oh, I don't think that my little observation is going to bog anything down here Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Perrie Juran Posted May 3, 2012 Share Posted May 3, 2012 Penny Patton wrote: He actually uses his profile to communicate a lot, Seriously???????? One post in the entire month of April. https://my.secondlife.com/rodvik.linden SL has always suffered from poor social and search tools, and LL can't really be faulted for taking inspiration from popular social tools when developing SL's social feature set. But they can be faulted for not listening better to their users. Please don't get me wrong though. I think it has improved under Rodvik. But it has a very, very long way to go. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Penny Patton Posted May 3, 2012 Share Posted May 3, 2012 Perrie Juran wrote: Seriously???????? One post in the entire month of April. https://my.secondlife.com/rodvik.linden Not sure what you're expecting, a weekly podcast? I do agree that communication has actually gotten worse since Rodvik took over, but it's not like it has ceased entirely and he has been communicating when focusing on certain issues. Perrie Juran wrote: But they can be faulted for not listening better to their users. Please don't get me wrong though. I think it has improved under Rodvik. But it has a very, very long way to go. LL doesn't so much ignore their users as listen to the wrong ones too often. I'd say this has actually improved since Rodvik came into the picture. As for LL still having a long way to go, that's pretty much what I was saying. It takes a long time to turn a slow boat like LL and being only one man Rodcik can only give his personal attention to so many issues at once. I'm not even saying LL will definitely get there under Rodvik, just that if it's moving there it will take a long time to even notice it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Perrie Juran Posted May 4, 2012 Share Posted May 4, 2012 Penny Patton wrote: Perrie Juran wrote: Seriously???????? One post in the entire month of April. https://my.secondlife.com/rodvik.linden Not sure what you're expecting, a weekly podcast? I do agree that communication has actually gotten worse since Rodvik took over, but it's not like it has ceased entirely and he has been communicating when focusing on certain issues. You had used the phrase "he.....communicate a lot." I'm not sure of what your definition of "a lot" is. I am certain that the Merchants who have been devastated by the problems that arose from the Direct Delivery conversion would be tickled to hear even "a little." No, I am not expecting a weekly pod cast. But still, I don't think one sentence in a month can be defined as '"a lot." Penny Patton wrote: LL doesn't so much ignore their users as listen to the wrong ones too often. I'd say this has actually improved since Rodvik came into the picture. As for LL still having a long way to go, that's pretty much what I was saying. It takes a long time to turn a slow boat like LL and being only one man Rodcik can only give his personal attention to so many issues at once. I'm not even saying LL will definitely get there under Rodvik, just that if it's moving there it will take a long time to even notice it. Agreed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Penny Patton Posted May 5, 2012 Share Posted May 5, 2012 Perrie Juran wrote: No, I am not expecting a weekly pod cast. But still, I don't think one sentence in a month can be defined as '"a lot." I said he has communicated through the profile feeds a lot, as in since the feature was added. It's been around slightly longer than "April". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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