Thunes to acquire payments platform Tilia LLC

[Love Zhaoying]

2 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

7 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Yeah, I'd have to watch again to catch this part. Not sure I care that much, since I'm barely impacted. Plus, "it could change".

He was pretty much beating around the bush when Strawberry asked about possible increasing costs and fees IMHO.
The next years will give the answers.

That's a shame, because they could have "baked into the deal" some stable costs which LL could use as a sweetener with users.

I thought I DID see something in the summary, or elsewhere in/around the video related to either "lower costs" or something..maybe I need to use more than 2 brain cells when listening.

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Sid Nagy said:

4 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I swear that I did not hear Oberwolf say anything like that. Weird!

 

He did though.

Not a great sales pitch if you're selling something. IJS.

[Alwin Alcott]

7 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

He was pretty much beating around the bush when Strawberry asked about possible increasing costs and fees IMHO.
The next years will give the answers.

a bit the same as where the money from the sale goes.... could be there, could be here, where i think it's best as CEO  ...
( not excluding the shareholders for sure, but didn't hear him say that)

[Love Zhaoying]

It's so refreshing to have a relatively drama-free thread, discussing the future of Second Life!

 

[Jaylinbridges]

8 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I swear that I did not hear Oberwolf say anything like that. Weird!

 

I am not surprised.  You might want to look at Qie's rough transcription of what Oberwolf said, above.  Seems we both heard the same thing.  I was not quoting Oberwolf exactly, of course.  Summarizing  comments is something reporters also do.

[Love Zhaoying]

2 minutes ago, Jaylinbridges said:

I am not surprised.  You might want to look at Qie's rough transcription of what Oberwolf said, above.  Seems we both heard the same thing.  I was not quoting Oberwolf exactly, of course.  Summarizing  comments is something reporters also do.

Sid already confirmed, so I believe you. I was probably listening more to his overall "attitude" and "tone" and missed some actual "words". Funny how that happens. 

Restarted: He seemed "positive" overall and it just seemed a negative statement at odds with how I perceived what was said. 🙂

 

[Luna Bliss]

28 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

There is a Lab Gab that can be watched.

noooo...I'm busy...and you are retired!   ;0

[Anna Salyx]

14 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

1. Earlier in this thread we were reminded that VRChat signed up as a Tilia customer, but per Oberwolf, Tilia was apparently back down to just SL as its sole customer. Some messy transcription:

(Could just be rhetorical rounding error though, because VRChat still talks about Tilia in its ToS.)

 

It sounded to me that while there might be a few customers signed on that they are not doing anything at scale and at the end of the day SL is effectively it's sole customer.

[Persephone Emerald]

On 4/23/2024 at 6:58 PM, Katherine Heartsong said:

Coming here to say exactly this as well.

It might not happen, but to assume it won't happen as a few have suggested here is being deliberately naive to how—in numerous past instances—VISA, Mastercard, and most banks look at porn-content and decide to not permit adult business to use their platforms for payment processing or even banking.

You think if they got wind of some of the content that is permitted on this platform they wouldn't have a freak out? If you do, I have a horse farm in SL to sell you

Might not happen. Might. I wouldn't bet any money on either outcome. I'm with @Sammy Huntsman here and will wait patiently. It'll be an interesting thing to watch.

FYI, one can use Visa and Mastercard to but Adult items, including porn, at least in California.

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Persephone Emerald said:

FYI, one can use Visa and Mastercard to but Adult items, including porn, at least in California.

Yeah, I never noticed a problem in Florida either, and we're "conservative" here.  Not that I buy "porn content" but what I DO buy is ALWAYS rather naughty and generally questionable. 

[Ineffable Mote]

10 minutes ago, Anna Salyx said:

It sounded to me that while there might be a few customers signed on that they are not doing anything at scale and at the end of the day SL is effectively it's sole customer.

Yeah I didn't take the "sole customer" comment too literally, either.

 

21 days seems pretty fast and there were other suitors, so must have been a pretty good fit. I'd be doubtful that  either company moved it along that fast out of desperation or anything

Edited April 26 by Ineffable Mote

[Love Zhaoying]

I suppose I heard Oberwolf's statement - paraphrased, that the cost of the product / exchange should not "go up" just like, if the place you buy your coffee changes their credit card processor (from "square" in the example), the cost of your coffee would not go up.  

And when I heard that, to me it meant "costs will not go up just because of the change".  

I GOTTA start using more than 2 brain cells to listen.

[Jaylinbridges]

He also said he won't increase fees unless LL's costs go up (paraphrasing).  I guess we can all hope for worldwide Deflation in the future.

 

Edited April 26 by Jaylinbridges

[sirhc DeSantis]

Oh another talking head thingy:) Gosh:) Will wait for the text version but - something for the forums to go on about for a friday night. Oh and Caturday morn. Mission accomplished I guess. Have a nice day.

[Istelathis]

I wonder if crypto currency will be under the payment options now.  

[Love Zhaoying]

2 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

I wonder if crypto currency will be under the payment options now.  

If he mentioned that, Oberwolf was pretty..cryptic.

[Jaylinbridges]

10 minutes ago, sirhc DeSantis said:

Oh another talking head thingy:) Gosh:) Will wait for the text version but - something for the forums to go on about for a friday night. Oh and Caturday morn. Mission accomplished I guess. Have a nice day.

We should be good now until at least Monday morning, when a moderator closes the thread for drifting back to AP.

[Jaylinbridges]

Nothing said about Paypal fees, going in or out either.  Or cheaper alternatives.  I suspect nothing will change until Thune takes over in 2025, after all regulatory approvals.

Edited April 26 by Jaylinbridges

[Vanity Fair]

5 hours ago, Anna Salyx said:

But the real kickers is is that we as residents really don't know what the balance sheets for Linden Lab are in regards this IP nor what projects they are piggy backing off of Second LIfe.  For example, they are developing a new voice service to bring that tech in house and using Second Life as the test bed for it. That project may end up getting packaged up and sold to other interested parties down the line. So while for the residents Second Life is an online social platform, for Linden Lab, it that and maybe a little or a lot more.  Whatever their plans are, keeping it as a test bed, keeping as just a virtual social space, or selling it off to a third party, so long as it's paying it's way and making someone money somewhere, I really don't see it going away for a long time.

Wait, Second Life is moving away from Vivox? I must have missed that news.

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Vanity Fair said:

Wait, Second Life is moving away from Vivox? I must have missed that news.

I remembered something so googled it. (I don't use voice, so doesn't really impact me. One can hope it "works better".)

Edited April 26 by Love Zhaoying

[Nika Talaj]

I thought it was pretty admirable for oberwolf to admit that from LL's point of view, Tilia was a failure. In my experience, most CEOs are not emotionally adult enough to baldly admit failure.

I was also impressed by his willingness to frame sustaining SL as a 'moral " commitment. I believe that he said flat out that he feels that SL is good for the world. 

The sense that I got about fees is that no fee hikes for current services are planned, they are simply expected to work faster and more globally .  He was not willing to commit that Fees will always remain the same, nor did he mention anything about new financial services that thunes may offer, which would presumably incur their own fees.

He did not mention anything about adult content, probably because that issue is completely irrelevant to this acquisition.  IMHO, that was one of the points of the square analogy.

I'm going to have to go back some time and listen to what he said about where he might invest in SL 

[Love Zhaoying]

Some transcript for you:

Strawberry, ending at 0:54: "..We've already had lots of questions from the community. I've looked through several platforms to pull out some of the most common ones, and as of this recording there were about 16 pages on our official Forums alone.."

Yay! That's us!!!

Oberwolf, ending at 4:31: "..Well Tilia is pretty expensive to run, and if we could distribute that expense across multiple companies, that would make it less expensive for us to run it at a time where it was costing us millions and millions of dollars to run it.

That didn't work. Tilia wasn't overly successful in bringing on these other clients, and so effectively while it brought some on, they're not doing a ton of business and so Tilia was back to having Second Life as its only customer.  Back, thinking about that again, that detracts from Second Life because money that Linden makes was going to go into Tilia.

And so, I was left with this decision: Do I want to control Tilia and have a lot of money that could otherwise go into Second Life, or could we find someone to acquire Tilia under some guidelines and take on that expense, because they would be able to make it profitable.."

 

[Love Zhaoying]

19 minutes ago, Nika Talaj said:

I thought it was pretty admirable for oberwolf to admit that from LL's point of view, Tilia was a failure.

I finally went back and listened closely, and transcribed this part in my post above.  (Good thing YT has captioning, it helped.)

[Alwin Alcott]

39 minutes ago, Jaylinbridges said:

Nothing said about Paypal fees, going in or out either.  Or cheaper alternatives.  I suspect nothing will change until Thune takes over in 2025, after all regulatory approvals.

LL has no influence on paypal fees, only at their own.

[Ineffable Mote]

33 minutes ago, Nika Talaj said:

I thought it was pretty admirable for oberwolf to admit that from LL's point of view, Tilia was a failure.

I had been thinking earlier how LL has kind of had a string of those where they try to branch out, Patterns game under Rod and I vaguely recall a gaming platform and a couple other little things they sold/let go of that LL were working on, then Sansar of course under Ebbe too (could probably count Philip's side projects as well, fairly or not)

 

I still don't see SL lasting more than another 3-4 years, partly due to external factors(economies etc being where they are presently) but 25-ish years is still all well and good for a stand alone gem. SL doesn't have the relevancy to be an SNL.

Edited April 26 by Ineffable Mote