Congratulations to Linden Labs

[katiapfurtscheller]

My congratulations to Linden Labs on securing investment from JP Morgan. Undoubtedly, this is a vote of confidence in the Second Life virtual world. It should give us all confidence. Well done to Linden Labs management and staff for their hard work not just in this investment, but in creating a great platform for us all

 

🥳

[Finite]

20 minutes ago, katiapfurtscheller said:

My congratulations to Linden Labs on securing investment from JP Morgan. Undoubtedly, this is a vote of confidence in the Second Life virtual world. It should give us all confidence. Well done to Linden Labs management and staff for their hard work not just in this investment, but in creating a great platform for us all

 

🥳

I thought it was Tilia being invested in.

[Coffee Pancake]

It is Tilly, nothing to do with us.

We're just a "case study".

 

The further Tilly can be positioned away from us, the better, for Tilly.

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

Tilia getting spun off helps Linden Lab better serve the community.

Edited October 19, 2022 by Kimmi Zehetbauer
Smacking ENTER too fast.

[diamond Marchant]

3 minutes ago, Kimmi Zehetbauer said:

It is Tilia getting invested in.  It helps out Linden Lab too.

Again, the transaction was to spin off Tilia from Linden Research. Linden Lab is  now merely a customer of a financial services company, just as they are a customer of AWS. If anything, this positions Linden Lab for sale.

Edited October 18, 2022 by diamond Marchant

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

1 hour ago, diamond Marchant said:

Again, the transaction was to spin off Tilia from Linden Research. Linden Lab is  now merely a customer of a financial services company, just as they are a customer of AWS. If anything, this positions Linden Lab for sale.

I edited my post above --- I put the wrong thing in.

As for a possibility of the Lab being sold to another entity, might explain why the new mboard policies were put into effect. A buyer looking at Linden Lab and SL would want to see most everything related to SL here.

[diamond Marchant]

13 minutes ago, NevaehHeartstrings said:

Not a sale, just transferring the remaining assets to one of linden research's other owners for an undisclosed sum.

Forbes said "Linden Lab announced the spin off of its proprietary finance engine Tilia this morning. " No details given. By definition a spin off is "When a company creates a new independent company by selling or distributing new shares of its existing business, this is called a spinoff. A spinoff is a type of divestiture. A company creates a spinoff expecting that it will be worth more as an independent entity. A spinoff is also known as a spinout or starburst."

What is weird is that the Second Life blog is mum on the spinoff. They do not mention it.

Edited October 19, 2022 by diamond Marchant

[Coffee Pancake]

27 minutes ago, diamond Marchant said:

Forbes said "Linden Lab announced the spin off of its proprietary finance engine Tilia this morning. " No details given. By definition a spin off is "When a company creates a new independent company by selling or distributing new shares of its existing business, this is called a spinoff. A spinoff is a type of divestiture. A company creates a spinoff expecting that it will be worth more as an independent entity. A spinoff is also known as a spinout or starburst."

What is weird is that the Second Life blog is mum on the spinoff. They do not mention it.

This is what breaking a company and it's products down into smaller marketable, salable components looks like.

All that's left now is to wait for the rest of the shoes to drop.

[Paul Hexem]

Nice try, Brad Oberwager.

You're in charge, the least you can do is get a last name!

[Harley Linden]

Hi there! Thread is remaining open for now, but I'm disappointed that I've had to remove several not-so-nice posts from the conversation. Please remember that Flaming is disallowed, and keep your comments civil: 

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Forum_Participation_Guidelines

Thanks!

[Innula Zenovka]

20 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

This is what breaking a company and it's products down into smaller marketable, salable components looks like.

All that's left now is to wait for the rest of the shoes to drop.

LL had no choice but to set up Tilia as a separate entity in the first place, since it needed a completely separate entity with all the necessary licences to comply with ever stricter US and international reporting requirements on international money transfers (anti money-laundering rules).   The status quo, LL's accounts department handling everything in-house, was a regulatory and administrative nightmare just waiting to blow up in LL's face.   It's something that's worried me ever since I started in SL in 2007, when the rules were a lot less tight than now they are, and I was greatly relieved LL were at last able to put such an essential part of SL -- in-world transactions and cashing out -- on a sound legal footing.

Now more and more virtual worlds are starting up, successful ones that allow people to monetize their in-world creations are going to face the same problem, and Tilia offers an obvious solution.   

To my mind, it's a bit like Amazon and AWS -- you create something because you need it to operate your core business, and then you turn it into a profit centre by offering its services as a standalone product because it's something lots of other people can use, while continuing to use it yourself.

 

 

Edited October 19, 2022 by Innula Zenovka
Fixed spelling of Tilia -- Thanks EliseAnne

[EliseAnne85]

I remember when Tilia was introduced.  I think Tilia is spelled with one l.   It was said Tilia has some brilliant kind of coding and may be un-hackable.  That made Tilia a very valuable asset than I gather from this news.  But, otherwise, perhaps Linden Research needed to raise some funding at this time also. 

[animats]

This makes a lot of sense. Tilia was not succeeding at marketing their financial service to others. The service wasn't big enough to justify a marketing organization visible in the B2B space. At J.P. Morgan Payments, it becomes one of the many services their sales people can sell to business clients. They're a unit of Chase, the biggest bank in the United States.

The payment side will probably be connected to J.P. Morgan Integrated Payables. J.P. Morgan already has a system for handling payouts, where the business transmits data to them and they do ACH, virtual credit cards, wire transfer, etc. as requested. Tilia never got that far. J.P. Morgan also has a system for handling just about every currency in existence, and a large-scale fraud prevention and recovery operation. They handle something like $9 trillion a year in payments.

For Second Life, it removes a management distraction. That's a good thing. Second Life is quite profitable (one of the owners has used the words "a cash machine") and has a long life ahead, if expensive distractions (Sansar, etc.) can be avoided. Refocusing management attention on the core business will be helpful.

(The version for MBAs: It's tempting to have a financial-services subsidiary. This tends to happen when the CEO has a financial background. Messing with the financial structure is something the CEO can personally do. Like M&A activity. But financial-services units of non financial companies tend to become a headache. See the history of General Electric in the Jack Welch era, and what happened to General Motors Acceptance Company. The tail came to wag the dog, and then the tail got caught in the 2008 recession and took the dog down with it. Those financial units were sold off to actual banks.)

[Arielle Popstar]

Would be interesting if Tilia were to provide financial services to the Opensimulator Grids on the Hypergrid metaverse. Since they are now a separate company, it wouldn't be a conflict of interest.

[Lucia Nightfire]

1 hour ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Would be interesting if Tilia were to provide financial services to the Opensimulator Grids

A copybot black market backed by a financial institution. What could go wrong? 😆

[Arielle Popstar]

1 minute ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

A copybot black market backed by a financial institution. What could go wrong? 😆

Worked for Secondlife so yes, what could go wrong?

[Love Zhaoying]

6 minutes ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

A copybot black market backed by a financial institution. What could go wrong? 😆

That was kind of my thought also.

While Second Life can police itself, you'd think accepting payments on potentially fraudulent / illegal sales may be problematic for OpenSim (where LL has no power). But then again, the Power of JPM Compels you!

[Lucia Nightfire]

1 hour ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Worked for Secondlife so yes, what could go wrong?

Does OpenSim have a DMCA process or Governance?

[Arielle Popstar]

12 minutes ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

Does OpenSim have a DMCA process or Governance?

Osgrid, Kitely as well as many of the other commercial Grids have DMCA policies that are strictly followed when a DMCA notice is filed. But like S/L, they do not take stuff down unless it is actually filed which in many cases it isn't, even when residents inform the original creator even if they are in S/L. 

Ps, Opensim is a platform, not a grid.

Edited October 19, 2022 by Arielle Popstar

[Arielle Popstar]

25 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

That was kind of my thought also.

While Second Life can police itself, you'd think accepting payments on potentially fraudulent / illegal sales may be problematic for OpenSim (where LL has no power). But then again, the Power of JPM Compels you!

But then again, there was and may still be a bigger market in S/L with Marketplace stores that sell copied items from legitimate creators and those stores being up for months selling even after the powers that be were notified, but again, like Opensim grids, their hands are tied until an actual DMCA is filed. In many Opensim grids at least it is currently not possible to profit from cb items because with a few exceptions, there is no economy for taking money. Besides which,  many know which items have been brought over and wouldn't part with a plugged nickel for them.

[Love Zhaoying]

26 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

But then again, there was and may still be a bigger market in S/L with Marketplace stores that sell copied items from legitimate creators and those stores being up for months selling even after the powers that be were notified, but again, like Opensim grids, their hands are tied until an actual DMCA is filed. In many Opensim grids at least it is currently not possible to profit from cb items because with a few exceptions, there is no economy for taking money. Besides which,  many know which items have been brought over and wouldn't part with a plugged nickel for them.

I'm not catching your point. Is it something like, "Second Life is already that bad (with copybotted etc. items)"?

[Coffee Pancake]

2 hours ago, animats said:

Refocusing management attention on the core business will be helpful.

I give them a collective 5 minutes before they're off down the rabbit hole.

[Arielle Popstar]

4 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I'm not catching your point. Is it something like, "Second Life is already that bad (with copybotted etc. items)"?

Something like that being Tila already supports a Platform (S/L) wherein there is plenty of copybotting going on, they have set a precedent for doing business where such can take place. Therefore I would say they would have little to no justification on those grounds to not be open for being a financial institution to Opensim grids. That would no doubt extend to many other platform where there is likely copying going on to one degree or another. If they are to reject each and every other platform for those reasons, they wont go far or last long.

[Lindal Kidd]

On 10/19/2022 at 9:14 AM, Innula Zenovka said:

it's a bit like Amazon and AWS -- you create something because you need it to operate your core business, and then you turn it into a profit centre by offering its services as a standalone product because it's something lots of other people can use

Yes, but only a bit. The major difference is that AWS actually works. LL's system is clunky, slow, and very limited. Plus, the costs (to us, the users) are comparatively high. This last was not true in the past, but LL's raised their fees significantly. The system only accepts a few payment methods and can't handle non-US currencies. Transaction amounts are ridiculously limited and one must jump through some very time-consuming hoops to get the limits raised.

They didn't fix ANY of this when they spun it off as Tilia. Hopefully the new owners will be able to fix these problems.

[Coffee Pancake]

38 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Hopefully the new owners will be able to fix these problems.

By adding a blockchain !!