Article in The Telegraph about Meta takes a SAVAGE swipe at Second Life!

[diamond Marchant]

1 hour ago, cunomar said:

If the megabuck names mentioned do ultimately own SL then its present and future is secured by virtue of it being a tax right off dead loss i'd guess

Second Life is a captive customer for Tilia, which may be what Waterfield views as the jewel of Linden Research. I heard on a youtube yesterday that there are 22,000 game studios. Tilia aspires to run the inworld transactions for game studios. Note that the trend in the gaming industry is to generate revenue with microtransactions. This is not a metaverse play... it it a gaming play which should persist regardless of what happens in "the metaverse" or Second Life. I strongly suspect that Linden Labs is required to break-even and is probably achieving that. We experience it as an underfunding of things like governance and region upgrades and stealth price increases like Premium Plus. This means that we will be around as long as Tilia needs us (recall how excited they were to say our inworld GDP is over 600 million, powered by Tilia).

[Persephone Emerald]

9 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

"Second Life - we've got all your Feels."

That's actually pretty good.. I like it. 😉

 

[Bree Giffen]

I remember when the Register called Second Life 'sadville' back in 2006. I think it was talked about in the forums back then. The Telegraph referring to a 16 year old swipe at SL is the real sad thing. 

[Theresa Tennyson]

10 hours ago, Bree Giffen said:

I remember when the Register called Second Life 'sadville' back in 2006. I think it was talked about in the forums back then. The Telegraph referring to a 16 year old swipe at SL is the real sad thing. 

It makes more sense once you find out that the writer at The Register who used to use "Sadville" a lot is now at "The Telegraph."

[Istelathis]

"Fifteen years later, few remember Sadville."

I mean, yeah.. it has been 15 years which is like an eternity when it comes to computing.  Few people remember GeoCities, Everquest, MSN messenger, yahoo groups, etc, etc, etc. They are just not relevant to web 2.0, which now consists mostly of social media, which is far from an improvement in my opinion.  

 

This author lacks vision though, it is pretty obvious what the bigger companies desire, the metaverse is going to be yet another layer sitting on top of the internet, which will generate trillions in revenue.  It will be both virtual reality, as well as augmented reality.  Meta wants in on that game early, I imagine their vision of our future is a steady stream of ads being projected into our eyeballs non stop, along with subliminal programming to get us to consume more. 

The article is rubbish.

[Drake1 Nightfire]

23 hours ago, Vanity Fair said:

Have you guys read this recent article in the Telegraph about Meta and Mark Zuckerberg?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/08/03/walls-close-zuckerberg-executives-desert-meta/ (Archived version: https://archive.ph/RQ0lD#selection-1043.0-1043.416)

There's a scathing, absolutely SAVAGE paragraph on SL in it:

23 hours ago, Vanity Fair said:

Zuckerberg’s company is sensitive to comparisons between the metaverse concept and Second Life, a mid-2000s internet-based multiplayer game memorably dubbed “Sadville” by technology website The Register. Sadville was the metaverse of its day: corporations such as Coca-Cola and IBM set up virtual offices within the game, convinced they had found the future of commerce. Fifteen years later, few remember Sadville.  

YEEOUCH! That's got to be one of the most dismissive things I've read about SL in the mainstream media for quite a while. Pretty funny for something that still makes millions of dollars a year for its parent company, 19 years after its founding. (Fun fact: did you know that the same Waterfield investment group that now owns Second Life also owns blue-chip investment firm Goldman Sachs? Check out the “Waterfield Network” listing of companies at the bottom of that last link.)

 

I'm sorry, seeing as I refuse to give them my cc info to read that article, is that the extent of the "scathing paragraph?" 

If so, that is hardly scathing. At best its possibly damaging, in reality its 2nd grade insults. 

[Drake1 Nightfire]

3 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

I mean, yeah.. it has been 15 years which is like an eternity when it comes to computing.  Few people remember GeoCities, Everquest, MSN messenger, yahoo groups, etc, etc, etc. They are just not relevant to web 2.0, which now consists mostly of social media, which is far from an improvement in my opinion.  

 

This author lacks vision though, it is pretty obvious what the bigger companies desire, the metaverse is going to be yet another layer sitting on top of the internet, which will generate trillions in revenue.  It will be both virtual reality, as well as augmented reality.  Meta wants in on that game early, I imagine their vision of our future is a steady stream of ads being projected into our eyeballs non stop, along with subliminal programming to get us to consume more. 

The article is rubbish.

Pssst, its been 19 years since SL was launched.

[Istelathis]

11 minutes ago, Drake1 Nightfire said:

Pssst, its been 19 years since SL was launched.

I think the author was remarking toward the hype surrounding SL, he had that little snippet I quoted written about an article I believe was 15 years ago.  Check out the archived link from the OP, and you can view the full article without having to go through their paywall.

[Drake1 Nightfire]

1 minute ago, Istelathis said:

I think the author was remarking toward the hype surrounding SL, he had that little snippet I quoted written about an article I believe was 15 years ago.  Check out the archived link from the OP, and you can view the full article without having to go through their paywall.

I'm good, thanks. I dont need to give their trashsite a hit. 

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

18 hours ago, diamond Marchant said:

Second Life is a captive customer for Tilia, which may be what Waterfield views as the jewel of Linden Research. I heard on a youtube yesterday that there are 22,000 game studios. Tilia aspires to run the inworld transactions for game studios. Note that the trend in the gaming industry is to generate revenue with microtransactions. This is not a metaverse play... it it a gaming play which should persist regardless of what happens in "the metaverse" or Second Life. I strongly suspect that Linden Labs is required to break-even and is probably achieving that. We experience it as an underfunding of things like governance and region upgrades and stealth price increases like Premium Plus. This means that we will be around as long as Tilia needs us (recall how excited they were to say our inworld GDP is over 600 million, powered by Tilia).

I could see Tilia handling micro-transactions for MMOs like Wow, FlyFF and many others. My man plays some MMOs and many complain about Paypal not working half the time or the transaction fails. Unlike PP ---  and according to Tilia's website, it is built ground up for the VR and gaming platforms.

1 hour ago, Drake1 Nightfire said:

I'm sorry, seeing as I refuse to give them my cc info to read that article, is that the extent of the "scathing paragraph?" 

If so, that is hardly scathing. At best its possibly damaging, in reality its 2nd grade insults. 

If using a desktop browser, you can use "NoScript" and blacklist the site and it will stop the paywall begathon.

And as for the Register, I think they're jealous!

[Coffee Pancake]

38 minutes ago, Kimmi Zehetbauer said:

I could see Tilia handling micro-transactions for MMOs like Wow, FlyFF and many others.

I'm not sure that's actually something our corporate overlords want though.

They want a walled garden with lots of unnecessary stuff for users to buy, so far all very SL, but they also want to be the sole provider of all the additional content. The money comes in .. and that's where it stays.

The lack of supply is made up for by making the limited selection of items to buy very expensive. As in $45 US to buy a reskin for your character.

Ironically, if stuff in SL was an order of magnitude more expensive, media might be more willing to breathlessly sing our praises.

[animats]

Philip Rosedale's recent talks about Second Life have a "Sadville" tone to them. Rosedale: "roughly a million users still use Second Life today, but there aren’t a hundred million because it doesn’t work for grownups yet.”

LL really needs some better PR.

The underlying problem is that nobody knows how to make a metaverse fun for large numbers of people. Except Roblox.

 

Edited August 5, 2022 by animats

[Ardy Lay]

Doesn't work for grownups yet?  Who are we old farts then?  I have been assured that I am "too old to date non-grownups."

I don't read either of those journalism sites mentioned.  (The promulgation of stuff that floats to the top, as-in is "trending") Out of curiosity I peeked at the cover of The Register and saw a buzzard logo.  The Telegraph seems like a quaint name harkening back very low bandwidth communications techniques.  What is their logo?  A murder of crows on some telegraph wires and poles? <peeks> I see some calligraphic text at the top, and that site sure tried to bugger-me-by-browser-exploits while I was there.  Eeeew.

[cunomar]

I'm British so i keep an open mind until the BBC reports on the subject , then i know the truth is the opposite of whatever they say .

[Tarik Darkheart]

Considering the infamous Boris Johnson is a regular contributor to the "newspaper" in question I would take any facts that they present with a hety dose of salt. They (as do all newspapers) write what their target audience wish to read and intermix a small amount of fact with a hefty dose of opinion.

Edited August 6, 2022 by Tarik Darkheart

[Alwin Alcott]

4 minutes ago, Tarik Darkheart said:

Considering t...

Tarik, please read the new rules if you didn't yet.

[Conifer Dada]

For those who might not know, The Telegraph, or "Smellygraph" is a British newspaper whose readers tend to be older, middle-class and conservative.  So these people would tend not to be interested in Second Life or any other virtual worlds - and indeed anything else that wasn't around 100 years ago! 

 

[Quartz Mole]

Please let's not get into a discussion of the political leanings of British newspapers, a subject which is really not on topic for either this thread or these forums.

[Vanity Fair]

On 8/4/2022 at 5:23 PM, diamond Marchant said:

Second Life is a captive customer for Tilia, which may be what Waterfield views as the jewel of Linden Research. I heard on a youtube yesterday that there are 22,000 game studios. Tilia aspires to run the inworld transactions for game studios. Note that the trend in the gaming industry is to generate revenue with microtransactions. This is not a metaverse play... it it a gaming play which should persist regardless of what happens in "the metaverse" or Second Life. I strongly suspect that Linden Labs is required to break-even and is probably achieving that. We experience it as an underfunding of things like governance and region upgrades and stealth price increases like Premium Plus. This means that we will be around as long as Tilia needs us (recall how excited they were to say our inworld GDP is over 600 million, powered by Tilia).

By the way, LL markets Tilia services to other platforms. Among their customers is the rather dubious and sketchy crypto/NFT-based Upland:
https://modemworld.me/2020/05/22/a-further-look-at-tilia-and-their-new-client-upland/

Edited August 6, 2022 by Vanity Fair

[EliseAnne85]

On 8/5/2022 at 10:51 AM, animats said:

Philip Rosedale's recent talks about Second Life have a "Sadville" tone to them. Rosedale: "roughly a million users still use Second Life today, but there aren’t a hundred million because it doesn’t work for grownups yet.”

LL really needs some better PR.

The underlying problem is that nobody knows how to make a metaverse fun for large numbers of people. Except Roblox.

 

Regarding your last sentence, people have difficulty with the human mesh avatars and I'll explain why I think so in a minute.  But, regarding Roblox and no fun in SL...that is not true for tinies and Dinkies in SL that only Roblox can do a large number of people.  We can have huge gatherings at Raglan Shire with near 80 to 90 plus tinies and Dinkies and have had a ton of fun.  Even a few humans mix in our large events.  The difference between the tinies and humans I believe may be scripts in clothing and hair.  Dinkies/Tinies make a lot of their own items and most Dinkie/Tiny clothing/hair is one color each - no huds, no scripts.  So, yes, in  SL, there are large events that run great.  Roblox is stupid, sorry...but it is.

I remember back in the olden days of Classic human avatars we made a copy of each color as we tinted it or something like that, plus once we made a color of an article to wear or hair we liked, we were directed to DELETE SCRIPTS in each item but keep the original so we could color it again.   People don't do this now, plus it's a lot of work.  Back in the day it didn't seem to be that much work for some reason.  It was just easier.  HUDS and SCRIPTS are preventing large gatherings, imho.  Or, it's just the human mesh avatars haven't found the right work for a proper viewer yet.  

By the way, I agree with Chin Rey who spoke in this thread (and I'm not saying this is a mean way) but I don't care.  Second Life has never been sad to me but it does need better pr.  

[animats]

57 minutes ago, EliseAnne85 said:

The difference between the tinies and humans I believe may be scripts in clothing and hair. 

Excessive avatar complexity is a difficult technical issue. It's been discussed at Creator User Group many times. thee main conclusion so far is that changing the complexity calculation enough to have an effect will produce major user complaints. I've been plugging for a mesh combining system that does its work when you change clothes. Like Bakes on Mesh, but for meshes, not just textures. Roblox has something like this, as does Ready Player Me, so the idea gets taken more seriously now. This is hard to do. You have to read SIGGRAPH papers and look at new advances in mesh manipulation.

This isn't relevant to the PR problem, though.

Edited August 6, 2022 by animats

[Alien Sun]

Quote

On 8/4/2022 at 4:28 PM, Codex Alpha said:

It has been Meta's aim and goal from the beginning to be THE Metaverse, and in their own words "to discourage competition and if possible make sure they don't even get started", and their words back up their actions so far, so not a surprise.

Meta is not our friend, nor anyone's friend. What Zuckerberg wants is everyone on his version 'working, living, and playing' there. Yuck.

 

Meta's Metaverse hasn't got a leg to stand on.

Edited August 6, 2022 by Alien Sun
I put my pithy one-liner in the wrong box.

[EliseAnne85]

1 hour ago, animats said:

Excessive avatar complexity is a difficult technical issue. It's been discussed at Creator User Group many times. thee main conclusion so far is that changing the complexity calculation enough to have an effect will produce major user complaints. I've been plugging for a mesh combining system that does its work when you change clothes. Like Bakes on Mesh, but for meshes, not just textures. Roblox has something like this, as does Ready Player Me, so the idea gets taken more seriously now. This is hard to do. You have to read SIGGRAPH papers and look at new advances in mesh manipulation.

This isn't relevant to the PR problem, though.

That sounds fascinating what you are talking about.  I just wanted to counter in my first post that only Roblox could have large numbers of people, although large is subjective plus I believe SL is restricted to 90 avatars per sim.  However, with Dinkies and tinies we had two sims once so we had in the hundreds of people.  Also, back in day, we could have lots of avatars when we were Classic.  Also, with Dinkies, tinies  and  humans mixed in as well, we rent large sky platforms with just grass, a stage, some bales of hay (a few props) but it's out in the open with no buildings nor shops and we can have a lot of avatars and have music festivals on SL.  So, it's like what would people rather have?  People and fun or a club building and shops?  Not having a club building and shops makes for lots of avatars to attend.  

Yeah, I know it's not relative to the pr problem(s).  There are people like Vitalik of Ethereum who thinks he will be the future of the metaverse with his Decentraland and Mana which I also find looks about 50 years BEFORE SL and pretty horrible and that his Decentraland will be the metaverse.  The metaverse has been here near 20 years now.  I think Vitalink of Ethereum (a cryptocurrency) is speaking about a decentralized metaverse.  However, those Decentraland graphics are not very good.  The truth is though the money is looking towards Ethereum and a new 3.0 metaverse that probably will happen.  How SL can tailor it's pr over that, I'd have no idea.   I rarely see any SL pr.  

Edited August 7, 2022 by EliseAnne85

[Randall Ahren]

What's worse, sexville or sadville? Definitely sadville. People will login to see what sexville is about, but they won't bother to have a look at sadville.

[NevaehHeartstrings]

If Meta has to go after SL it's very telling on their part considering SL is more of a Corporate Passion Hobby then Balls to Walls Competition showing just how desperate they are at this point to get people into a 3D Version of Datamining by Mark(Be an Android like me) Zuckerberg.  wouldn't shock me if they wanted DNA from users to login next.