LINDEN RESEARCH, INC. TO BE ACQUIRED

[heygeeksandgamers]

I could never understand business in a million years (I have a functioning moral compass) but I'm curious what on earth the goal could be, whether there's enough in LL worth sucking out. If you believe the cries, Second Life's been on its death bed for years, and I can't imagine that SL as it looked a few months ago had much to even siphon off. Do investment companies usually buy out boats with holes in them?

Given the recent.. everything happening in the world I've read that SL's had a bit of an upswing in users recently, but I imagine this deal was set in motion well before that. Wonder if the potential resurgence might make the investors think twice about at least immediately cannibalizing us.

[Akane Nacht]

Is it because if SL turns 18 they have to let us all vote? 🤔

[Sabrina Tamerlane]

The risk here is to see SL turned into a cash cow, with higher upload prices for example. Maybe they have different plans, I hope so.

[Kathryn Hijinks]

My initial question of course is if they plan to make it more family friendly. I think the only reason that you'd buy SL and Tilia if you wanted some assets was seeing promise in Tilia. Else....they just want to grow SL. How is the question.

I don't see what they could strip from the business really. I'll remain hopeful.

[CollidingNeurons]

my concern is after reading one of the investors bio and seeing how he started several companies only to move them on to some giant corporation like Pepsi etc is this is like flipping houses, buy a company invest in a new coat of paint , rugs etc, sell it to a bigger company for a profit. a fixer upper company in a good neighborhood

[bigmoe Whitfield]

8 minutes ago, CollidingNeurons said:

my concern is after reading one of the investors bio and seeing how he started several companies only to move them on to some giant corporation like Pepsi etc is this is like flipping houses, buy a company invest in a new coat of paint , rugs etc, sell it to a bigger company for a profit. a fixer upper company in a good neighborhood

I think with SL,  there are some big name people in the world that could and might swoop in and buy it,  users owning the platform would be of interests to even me.

[CollidingNeurons]

1 minute ago, bigmoe Whitfield said:

I think with SL,  there are some big name people in the world that could and might swoop in and buy it,  users owning the platform would be of interests to even me.

as long as its not someone like google, facebook or disney

[Blaise Glendevon]

1 hour ago, Kimmi Zehetbauer said:

Same here.  I remember there was a great chat website, WBS, was great until Disney bought them and folded it into their Go platform. 

I will never recover from the shuttering of the WBS roleplay rooms. NEVER.

[Ceka Cianci]

1 hour ago, Kia Kiyori said:

Famous last words - and oddly enough, almost word-for-word (bar names) that the owners of our formerly small and wildly successful ISP said at the last minute (literally), when they sold us up the river without warning (just like this) to a big group who thumb their nose at the law, government and customers and do as they please. They happily pay massive fines for false advertising - and keep right on doing it.

Micro-transactions, reduction of services; take, take, take, give less, less, less; and let's be honest, anyone can make anything look like its a good thing - just google your angriest questions about Microsoft and watch numerous paid shill sites come up with the  countless reasons why we should adore Microsoft.

I hope time shows those of us who are wary, that we needn't be. I really do. But until then...thinking Kotick and ActiVision; R.I.P. WoW.

All I can say is, I have faith in Phillip and his words. So I guess only time will tell.

[Sabrina Tamerlane]

58 minutes ago, heygeeksandgamers said:

I could never understand business in a million years (I have a functioning moral compass) but I'm curious what on earth the goal could be, whether there's enough in LL worth sucking out.

They may be after profit, technology, or influence, or some kind of mix of the three. If they are after technology they might just want to take Tilia and let the rest crumble. If they are after influence they will want to make SL grow.

Microsoft has bought Nokia phones to get rid of a competitor and get some patents but that did not help them that much. Facebook has bought Instagram because it had a lot of users. There are many possible goals.

[Farthington Whetmore]

Expect subscriber fee increases! 

Edited July 10, 2020 by Farthington Whetmore
Add more to the comment

[Farthington Whetmore]

5 minutes ago, Farthington Whetmore said:

Expect subscriber fee increases! 

I have been in SL since 2006.  There were millions of subscribers with hundreds of thousand of people logged in at any given time back then.  Today SL is lucky to see 35K login at any given time. The in world economy sucks and sims are too expensive!  Might be a good time to leave...

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, animats said:

Always good to have a Plan B.

Lets just put this one to bed right now. 

There is no Plan B.

NONE.

OpenSim barely has the capability to handle a tiny percentage of us, and it will take significant investment in development and infrastructure to get it into a state where it could even hope to stand ready "just in case".

OpenSim looks like SL from a user perspective, if you don't look too closely. To use a Minecraft analogy, Start digging and bedrock turns out to be 3 blocks down and the redstone is painted on.

If SL dies, the tiny percentage of us that even know how to log into OpenSim will DDos all remaining grids in 5 minutes flat, and they wont come back up again. By the time things are up to speed, most everyone will have moved on.

[Rex Cronon]

is possible that at least one board member(original investor) wanted out so ll had to be sold to pay their share.

also it might be possible that this sale is going on only because sl saw a sudden influx of new and old users due to covid19 and it was too good of an opportunity to get a better price for it?

since our new overlords to be are not a game company is very likely they are only interested in money..

in order to make money they can:

-sell it piece by piece

-make some cosmetic changes and sell it(disney?)

until this happens, i think we can expect:

-at least one revisioned tos

-new lindens in and very likely some old lindens out

-more rl advertising in world(like those annoying email add for viagra?)

-maybe even a trump rally

-destabilization of the $L

ps

initially i was going to say that i hope for the best and prepare for the worst, but considering how "good" this year has been so far, i think the second part is more likely. this year still has more than 5 months left...

i guess this is what happens with "your world, your imagination"? it gets sold to investors:(

now it makes sense why the tos says that ll reserves the right to use at perpetuity(or something similar) everything we create:(

Edited July 10, 2020 by Rex Cronon
typo

[Sylvia Tamalyn]

17 minutes ago, Rex Cronon said:

 

-maybe even a trump rally

 

Umm what's he got to do with SL?

Edited July 10, 2020 by Sylvia Tamalyn

[Alwin Alcott]

5 hours ago, Sardonyx Mysterious said:

WHO DID THIS???

1. @Whirly Fizzle, she did say she her goal was to “Break all the things”

2. @Alwin Alcott, changed his avie from socks to full avatar and it threw off the balance of the universe.

it's a conspiracy well planned thing, of course we can't give details.

I'm not that worried yet..

Edited July 10, 2020 by Alwin Alcott

[Mollymews]

3 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

 Does the acquisition get the VCs out of the picture entirely? And sweep the board clean, finally? (If so, honestly, this is bound to be a win.)

In any case, FFS, it's not as if Linden Lab is a non-profit. It makes money and the buyers want something that's pandemic-proof. I mean, looking at the current US coronavirus statistics, Linden Research Inc looks like a fine investment to me.

pretty much yes.  Looking at what the new owner is, a long-term stakeholder in mature, stable and profitable companies then is a good investment for the new owner

i think is good that the ownership has passed from VC owners looking for the next big thing, to staid, solid ownership for the profits that Linden Research currently generates

comparatively Second Life has a mature stable staid and solid customer base. And does quite well from an ROI pov which solid staid investors are most interested in

Tilia is icing on the Linden cake. There is some potential for the new owners to advance Tilia. I would not be surprised to see Tilia split off from Linden Research into its own company. Second Life becoming a customer of Tilia. If so then I would not be surprised if Ebbe Linden were to go to Tilia

Investment funds like the new owners are not into strip and toss. Second Life will just trundle along as it always has. Small, unsexy and quite boring (in the comparable other worlds/games sense) but quite profitable ROI-wise

 

[bigmoe Whitfield]

1 hour ago, Farthington Whetmore said:

I have been in SL since 2006.  There were millions of subscribers with hundreds of thousand of people logged in at any given time back then.  Today SL is lucky to see 35K login at any given time. The in world economy sucks and sims are too expensive!  Might be a good time to leave...

most ever logged in at once was 89k and it crashed the grid.   never has been that many on at once.

[animats]

It's too early to say much. We'll probably have the obligatory "everything is going to be fine, no real info" speech from Ebbe tomorrow. Then we wait.

[sceneris]

i can't see any optimistic here, i had see a few game company after being acquired by investors everything goes downhill and eventually shut down

this news came so suddenly, unlike tilia which mentions a few months earlier, this news hardly can convince me that this is for the good of second life

only time can tell

[Nika Talaj]

I've spent decades in venture-funded companies, and I've seen acquisitions be very successful.  But acquisitions by investment firms are delicate beasties - it is easy for them to turn into a liquidation frenzy.  However, in this case, LL doesn't have all that many assets that would bring much, except Tilia. 

I can kinda see how Tilia might be directly useful to Jyve, Bradford Oberwager's current company.  And I can definitely see the appeal of Jyve to Phillip, since it seems like a useful platform for matching skills to short-term contract gigs, which is exactly how Philip ran High Fidelity.  So I can see that Phillip might have some insight into this deal, and think it's great. 

Frankly, tho, it is hard for me to see how SL is a good match with Oberwager or the Waterfield Group.  Maybe that's just a lack of vision, or information, on my part.  Hmmm ... one way this acquisition could have come about is if Waterfield made an offer for Tilia, and LL/the board refused to split it off, insisting that the acquisition had to be all or nothing.  Along that same line of thought, it would not be terribly surprising to me if SL were almost immediately spun out to some other firm, perhaps in a deal mediated by Globespan.  it sounds farfetched, but stranger things have happened.  Deals are what VCs live for.  And that is particularly true of Andy Goldfarb, Globspan's managing director.

And Ebbe?  He might be contractually obligated to stick around, or perhaps his employment contract will be bought out.  Maybe that's just my gut feel talking ... it just seemed that his whole interest in LL centered around Sansar; perhaps that's not fair to him.

Then again, I have felt for a while that @Grumpity Linden would be a logical choice to run LL if Ebbe were to step aside.  Interesting that she commented on this thread, when no one else did.

This post may sound like I'm thinking this will not turn out well.  I don't think we have enough information to say that yet.  First the dust has to settle.

 

Edited July 10, 2020 by Nika Talaj

[Mollymews]

4 hours ago, Vic Mornington said:

I've worked for several companies that got taken over by investment companies.  What happens next falls into two categories depending on the path that the investment company follows.

1: Things run smoothly for a year or so, then the investment company starts asset stripping piece by piece.

2: The investment company...invests.

.

i go for option 2).  If only because I am pretty much always optimistic

while I can see Tilia being spun out, I don't see this as necessarily a detrimental thing for Second Life.  No more than I see my bank > credit card  > tilia > linden being detrimental to my Second Life

i also don't see as detrimental for Second Life to end up as a little company just chugging away earning money for its owners. From a stable mature dedicated and quite passionate customer base which is quite happy, and always has been, to pay for what they want

 

[Aemeth Lysette]

Years ago, I started noticing a trend with SL and prepared any dev stuff I had done for a portfolio. I invested some time into a side career, aggressively pursuing work there.. and now I have some work away from SL that is my own.

Because things can go either way, I suggest anyone who makes things in Second Life to get their portfolio together. Tech is changing and these games are all fighting for customers. Change will come again as new virtual worlds arrive (which they will, this year or next). You need to be ready to weather that storm. You don't need to leave SL for this, just have your bases covered.

This is my prime advice right now.

Things that seem solid can fall to ruins, and things that look like a pile of ash can return to a roaring fire. That is the way of social games right now.

Edited July 10, 2020 by Aemeth Lysette

[Mikkoto Takeda]

yes. I hope Second Life would have Marketing in Malaysia and Thailand in southeast Asia! due to having more investors! and i suggest Linden Lab to create the office in Bangkok Thailand. That's very great move! Linden Research!

[MLALRS7044]

I hope nothing really BAD happens with this purchase yet. Remember M Linden? He was very bad to SL as a CEO. It's not the case to Ebbe, as he's a wonderful person. Plus we all, residents of SL, do not want another "M Linden" in the command of the Lab.

PS. By M Linden i'm referring to Mark Kingdon, CEO of LL from 2008 to 2010.

Does anyone Agree with me?

Edited July 10, 2020 by MLALRS7044
Adding a question.