New book about SL: "Making a Metaverse That Matters"

[animats]

Wagner James Au, who was LL's "embedded journalist" in the early days, has written a new book about metaverses which covers SL's history at length. He covers the onboarding and mass appeal problem at length. He quotes an analyst from 2010: "Second Life is an extreme example of how you can develop a very happy group of customers, and still fail miserably at reaching a wider audience."

Worth a read. I assume all the Lindens have read it already.

Edited July 4, 2023 by animats

[Arielle Popstar]

56 minutes ago, animats said:

Wagner James Au, who was LL's "embedded journalist" in the early days, has written a new book about metaverses which covers SL's history at length. He covers the onboarding and mass appeal problem at length. He quotes an analyst from 2010: "Second Life is an extreme example of how you can develop a very happy group of customers, and still fail miserably at reaching a wider audience."

Worth a read. I assume all the Lindens have read it already.

What's the name of it?

[animats]

33 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

What's the name of it?

"Making a Metaverse That Matters"

Edited July 4, 2023 by animats
Heading too blg.

[Ceka Cianci]

I honestly think that for a metaverse to have such a huge draw in the kind of success that they are looking for.. The world would have to go through some major changes to where more people than there are now are willing to stop what they are doing in the RL for a virtual one.

I think that is way off in the future.. I think the internet makes things look more populated than they really are.. Look at second life for instance.. We know our population isn't really as big as the numbers show..

We have alts and bots and then the real population buffing the numbers.. Social medias are flooded with bots.. now AI is entering the picture..

I think there is still way more people interested in many other things out in the real world, than sitting in a virtual world for long periods of time..

[Qie Niangao]

1 hour ago, Ceka Cianci said:

I think there is still way more people interested in many other things out in the real world, than sitting in a virtual world for long periods of time..

RL is a big "competitor" but people do spend a lot of time and money on escaping the real world. Games, movies, books, drugs, they're real competition too. (This is one reason I don't think SL is much of a "game" because for most of its market, its competition is more directly that of other escapes, not so much other games.)

Probably this all has nothing to do with the book… which I suppose I'll eventually force myself to read, as much as I dread spending that much time with Hamlet's prose.

[encidious Opus]

12 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Probably this all has nothing to do with the book… which I suppose I'll eventually force myself to read, as much as I dread spending that much time with Hamlet's prose.

🤔I know there's more to this sentence than meets the eye. I guess I will wait for further comments.

[Qie Niangao]

14 minutes ago, encidious Opus said:

🤔I know there's more to this sentence than meets the eye. I guess I will wait for further comments.

Maybe less. It's just that I've read New World Notes sporadically for so many years that, to be fair, I really shouldn't expect more new insights than I find at this point.

To be honest, I feel the same about each new interview with Philip Rosedale. At this point my internal LLM can generate a reasonable facsimile of a Philip answer to any question he's apt to be asked.

[Love Zhaoying]

I found Wagner James Au's recent articles on Second Life are a bit misleading - leaving out bits, de-emphasizing bits, over-emphasing bits.  Written for the audience, instead of for "truth".

I am afraid his book would just p!ss me off.

Let me know if anyone reads it, if it actually seems "fair and balanced", or if it white-washes / sugarcoats / is obviously biased.

Yes, I know he is a pillar of our community, and is essentially a "founder" in some ways (as someone who wrote officially FOR LL).

 

[Ceka Cianci]

43 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

RL is a big "competitor" but people do spend a lot of time and money on escaping the real world. Games, movies, books, drugs, they're real competition too. (This is one reason I don't think SL is much of a "game" because for most of its market, its competition is more directly that of other escapes, not so much other games.)

Probably this all has nothing to do with the book… which I suppose I'll eventually force myself to read, as much as I dread spending that much time with Hamlet's prose.

Plus many are working most of their time or involved in other hobbies, which there are so many.. The RL has such a long list of things that many people are involved in that eats all their time or to escape to..

Another thing as well is, Escaping for many people in the whole world population is a luxury that a lot  can't afford..

I look at the numbers that a lot of platforms have  and they seem big, but then compare I think of how many people out of the 8 billion on the planet that are not doing it.. then they don't seem like such huge numbers..

I think meta verses or virtual worlds are going to have to make things a lot more accessible to those that can't reach them  as well.. To me that is such a long way off..

I remember Phillip saying something along those lines way way back years ago, where he wanted an internet even in the most remote of places that couldn't afford it or even knew about it...

[animats]

He discusses why SL hit a ceiling while IMVU, VRchat, and Roblox continue to grow. That's the important takeaway here. What have they got that SL doesn't have?

Maybe SL needs more game-like content to overcome the huge loss of new users through onboarding failure.

After reading that book, I went over to "WelcomeHub" (no space) yesterday, to see how new users were faring. It's not going well.

When WelcomeHub first opened, they had maybe five "mentors" standing around. Yesterday, zero. Yes, it's a US holiday.

There were about a dozen new users in the welcome hub. A few were willing and able to talk. One was struggling with lag, and using an under-powered MacBook. I told her how to turn down the performance slider, which got her unstuck. One had clothing questions, and I told her how to save her current outfit with "Save As" so she could quickly recover from wardrobe malfunctions. Couldn't help her with Lelutka vs Legacy, but she was far enough along to ask that question, and will work it out. One new user came in completely nude and teleported out quickly. Two were stuck in "pink cloud" mode for over 10 minutes. (Other users saw the same users stuck in "pink cloud" mode. This may be a server side problem.) One user, new but well-dressed, was "Away". One user had found the laser tag arena and had a gun. He'd had fun with laser tag and was looking for the next thing to do. I suggested some combat regions. Four avatars had lower case name which seemed to be composed of two concatenated random words. Those users never moved or talked. Those may be new bots.

Nobody was having fun.

That's the new, improved onboarding.

Edited July 4, 2023 by animats

[Katherine Heartsong]

[Randall Ahren]

16 hours ago, animats said:

"Second Life is an extreme example of how you can develop a very happy group of customers, and still fail miserably at reaching a wider audience."

The author should add a chapter about how  you can turn satisfied customers into angry ex-customers by raising prices every year, while providing the same crappy service without any significant improvements.

[Perrie Juran]

11 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I found Wagner James Au's recent articles on Second Life are a bit misleading - leaving out bits, de-emphasizing bits, over-emphasing bits.  Written for the audience, instead of for "truth".

I am afraid his book would just p!ss me off.

Let me know if anyone reads it, if it actually seems "fair and balanced", or if it white-washes / sugarcoats / is obviously biased.

Yes, I know he is a pillar of our community, and is essentially a "founder" in some ways (as someone who wrote officially FOR LL).

 

Not just his recent articles. I have read him on and off since 2007 and everything he writes has always been tainted and slanted by his personal opinions.

While he has been around a long time I would not use the phrase "pillar of our community" to describe him.

I may have a go at reading his book but like you I suspect it will piss me off also.

[Perrie Juran]

7 hours ago, animats said:

After reading that book, I went over to "WelcomeHub" (no space) yesterday, to see how new users were faring. It's not going well.

When WelcomeHub first opened, they had maybe five "mentors" standing around. Yesterday, zero. Yes, it's a US holiday.

If LL gets the new mentor program right it should make a huge difference. They also need the boldness to clean out the riff raff that hang round some of the welcome center. There should be zero tolerance for these idiots.

I do think there is a factor that comes into play for new people. Their success in starting out is proportional to their curiosity. I am not sure exactly what prompted me to do this but when I first arrived at Ahern one of the first things I asked one of the first people I met was, "Show me your favorite place."  And that set the tone for my early days in SL despite the fact I owned a brick for a computer at the time. I learned quickly and had an enjoyable start.

 

eta:puncuation

Edited July 5, 2023 by Perrie Juran

[Love Zhaoying]

14 minutes ago, Perrie Juran said:

Not just his recent articles. I have read him on and off since 2007 and everything he writes has always been tainted and slanted by his personal opinions.

While he has been around a long time I would not use the phrase "pillar of our community" to describe him.

I may have a go at reading his book but like you I suspect it will piss me off also.

When I read something that hinted he had written FOR LL at one point, my thought was, "they PAID for this?".

[Fauve Aeon]

2 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

When I read something that hinted he had written FOR LL at one point, my thought was, "they PAID for this?".

Hinted? He was a contractor writing for the Lab for 2-3 years. Hamlet Linden.

I’ll read it before I have anything to say about it. I have been warm/cold with his writing. Sometimes I read and enjoy it, other times it doesn’t suit me. 

Edited July 5, 2023 by Fauve Aeon

[Chic Aeon]

15 hours ago, Ceka Cianci said:

I honestly think that for a metaverse to have such a huge draw in the kind of success that they are looking for.. The world would have to go through some major changes to where more people than there are now are willing to stop what they are doing in the RL for a virtual one.

I think that is way off in the future.. I think the internet makes things look more populated than they really are.. Look at second life for instance.. We know our population isn't really as big as the numbers show..

We have alts and bots and then the real population buffing the numbers.. Social medias are flooded with bots.. now AI is entering the picture..

I think there is still way more people interested in many other things out in the real world, than sitting in a virtual world for long periods of time..

While I don't do "mobile" or " social media" I think the new mobile ap which is looking very PRETTY (gold stars) will make a huge difference around 2025.  I honestly don't understand why so very many folks are glued (with the permanent variety) to their phones == but they are. So the current and next generations will likely be a part of the community that way. I am guessing that sort of rules out things like creation, but who knows.    

[elleevelyn]

21 hours ago, animats said:

Wagner James Au, ... quotes an analyst from 2010: "Second Life is an extreme example of how you can develop a very happy group of customers, and still fail miserably at reaching a wider audience."

on this

there is a thing called "Escape From Freedom vs Escape To Freedom" which a number of people have written about. Not least of who was Erich Fromm circa 1941. Most papers are written with the human real world in mind. However the concept is applicable to the online realm as the online players are also human

most online multi-player games are modeled on Escape From Freedom. Where the play is designed to gain rewards. Gaining rewards (determined by the game) is the goal. Unlike Escape To Freedom games in which the rewards (if any) are determined by the player. Second Life in the main, is modeled on Escape To Freedom (historically anyways)

the issue for Linden is that the number of Escape To Freedom players (in the universe of all players) is a whole lot less than the number of Escape From Freedom players. This ratio is also true is the real world

a recent Escape From Freedom example is Bellisaria, where traditional mainland is the counter Escape To Freedom. In Bellisaria, freedom to build is curtailed. The result of which is the goal - the reward - (imposed by the game) of a pleasant environment and neighbours who are curtailed in what they can build there

i think present-day Linden is well aware that Escape From Freedom is where Second Life has to go if resident numbers are to grow, beyond the limited number of Escape To Freedom people in the real world

[Fauve Aeon]

I guess it also depends on if they are going to target more broadly across ‘the market for social media users’ or concentrate on a ‘minimum viable audience’ model in several existing First Life niches to build up those types of communities in SL.  

[animats]

1 hour ago, elleevelyn said:

on this

there is a thing called "Escape From Freedom vs Escape To Freedom" which a number of people have written about. ...most online multi-player games are modeled on Escape From Freedom. ... i think present-day Linden is well aware that Escape From Freedom is where Second Life has to go if resident numbers are to grow, beyond the limited number of Escape To Freedom people in the real world

Yes. That's very much a theme of the book, repeated at least four times. It's something Rosedale disagreed with, but the book author thinks he's coming around. The author points out that all the virtual worlds with ongoing growth have a sizable game component.

LL is trying. "WelcomeHub" (no space, and I'd love to know if that's a typo or a design decision) has a laser tag area. So, at last, new users have something to shoot at. I'd suggest a racetrack in the welcome regions as the next game.

[diamond Marchant]

I tried to buy the Kindle version and it was not available.

[Sid Nagy]

3 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

While I don't do "mobile" or " social media" I think the new mobile ap which is looking very PRETTY (gold stars) will make a huge difference around 2025.  I honestly don't understand why so very many folks are glued (with the permanent variety) to their phones == but they are. So the current and next generations will likely be a part of the community that way. I am guessing that sort of rules out things like creation, but who knows.    

Bringing in the smartphones doesn't mean that SL is cut lose from the lap- and desktops in the future.
Creators have to create most part for SL outside of SL already, so no real differences with the current situation.

[rasterscan]

6 hours ago, Perrie Juran said:

They also need the boldness to clean out the riff raff that hang round some of the welcome center. There should be zero tolerance for these idiots.

That's a great, and important point.

[Sid Nagy]

1 hour ago, diamond Marchant said:

I tried to buy the Kindle version and it was not available.

Strange, there is an E-book version for sale in NL already.

[Sid Nagy]

6 hours ago, Perrie Juran said:

If LL gets the new mentor program right it should make a huge difference. They also need the boldness to clean out the riff raff that hang round some of the welcome center. There should be zero tolerance for these idiots.

To moderate the welcome hub strictly will take a lot of extra Linden employers to have someone 24/7 on duty.
I don't think it is a good idea to give volunteers the right to ban people. They can get in unwanted positions (griefers etc) with their accounts IMHO.