Results from SL Economy Poll

[Rene Erlanger]

It's going to be extremely hard to reverse the fortunes of Second Life.

3 years of bad management decisions, wrong strategies, not looking after it's existing customer base......and critically not spending money on external Marketing & Advertising ....has left it a lame duck without growth! 

Then there's the trust issues between customers and owners moving forward.

[Madeliefste Oh]

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Snickers Snook wrote:

The bottom line for me in any discussion about SL is retention and LL has really done nothing to address that over the last two years. They are infected with feature-itis as if that will cure the problems. I think it's the natural response of engineers. It can all be solved through code.

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What you say here, and what Chelsea said before that SL wasn't planned to be what it became, hits the nail right on the head. I think it is the underlaying problem why LL could not bring SL to the next level.  

It started all with a group of geeks putting code together, and when they ran out of money before the product they had in mind was finished, there was a solution found to still be able to release the product at this stage.  Let's just sell the  world itself and let users provide any content they want:  "Your world, your imagination".

And it became a succes bigger then they had ever dreamed about. From their point of view this succes was archieved by making code. And of course, without the code it would never have been there. But that what made SL such a succes is something beyond the code. It is SL became a playing field where technology and imagination come together.

Now what LL all that time didn't get, in my opinion, is that this playing field is the living heart of their product and the core of their succes.

LL looks towards SL from a very small perspective, the code perspective. Like we as residents also look towards SL also each from our own small perspective. For this resident it is a paradise where he can realise all of his sexual fantasies and beyond, for the other is a gallery where he can show his art to a larger audience then he was ever able to reach in rl, and for the next is a platform to make money with this skills. What binds us all together is this big container 'imagination'.

As long as LL is not able to understand and sell the power of collective imagination, they have created nothing but  a Frankenstein Monster. To get SL to the next level they rather need an anthropologist, an economist and a psychologist to make them understand the power of their product, then 10 new  engineers.

[Medhue Simoni]

Considering the discussion going on here, I wonder if any of you have seen this post by a prominent ex Linden. It's quite telling.

http://blog.ginsudo.com/2011/12/31/too-early-in-the-game/

I do not really agree with the notion that SL did not succeed. Ultimately, succeeding is surviving. The sign up numbers and the lasting power of SL shows what a success it is. I've never been 1 for the spot light, so SL not being FB is fine with me. In the world that so many early Lindens were in, owning the spotlight and losing it is truely a failure. The funny part is, half those companies that made it to the spotlight, weren't even profitable. The only reason they have any money is trading the stock and investors. There are still tech companies out there today that say they are worth 20 million dollars, yet they don't even have a product.