[Technology Improvements for Q1 Including Raising Group Limit to 42]

Congrats on trying to fix the ONE thing in all of this that was really important: Sim crossings.

As for the rest of the "stuff" that requires viewer 2 to use, I just could care less. It's all money wasted. Glitter; no meat. I won't use Viewer 2 no matter what types of "new capabilities" you try to force into it in order to get us to switch. It's just that awful.

If LL had taken all the money they wasted on viewer 2 and it's voice morph,lag on a prim,group limit increases,display names..etc etc...and put it towards making SL work, this would be a fantastic place by now. Viewer 1.xx and the now Phoenix based on it, was and is simple elegance. I will never switch to the fail viewer 2 and no amount of marketing will change that. Display names, children on the grid, facebook links....SL has lost its way..and its identity.

[Linden Lab's New CEO]

Second Life is an immersive, pluralistic, international, New World virtual country. As such, it is 10 years ahead of the market. Think Windows 3.0 or Netscape Navigator or even cellphones. All were considered niche products when they first came out.

Because Linden Lab cannot grasp this concept, the company has been trying to convert Second Life into a 3D Facebook, a virtual Disneyland, a corporate conferencing system, a virtual schoolroom and now a teen chatroom. All attempts to turn an apple into an orange have failed. The apple is now starting to rot.

Rod this is the core problem that SL has suffered from as far back as I have been around. LL never understood that they were already successful, that they already won and beat out all competition. If you can understand this, if you can talk to early residents about the SL they joined, even as recently as Aug '07 when I created my first avi, you will find that SL was the future and over the years that future has been whittled away until most of us are leaving. It's sad; I found a place that was the embodiment of all the wonderful possibilities I wished the RL could be. Everywhere I went, people were being who and what they wanted and no one gave each other a hard time about it. I often commented how I wished the RL was more like SL.

But now I see the RL is encroaching on SL, the "moral majority" (vocal minority more like it) has threatened LL, the corporate clients have expressed their fear of a wild west environment not understanding the vast potential of representing themselves in it. Not to sell product or host virtual conferences (yet another losing idea from the brain trust that is LL) but in simply getting to know the customer, being more accessible. I am more likely to buy products form a company I can gain a personal connection to. And that is what SL is all about. Personal connections in a way that is not facebook, not chat, not the Sims. SL is a vital, real community of people interacting through avatars in a virtual world of their own creation. I will miss SL when it goes through its final sanitization and becomes just another MMORPG to be sold to the highest bidder. But by then I’ll have moved to another GRID and the money I would have been paying to LL will go elsewhere.

Rod, I hope you will shake up LL, teach them that customer service is important and restore SL to its glory days. Sure you will hear some who will say that SL is finally a wonderful place for the family, but the reality is, 99% of the people who came here don’t want a place for the family. We want our adult world and we are leaving because that is what LL is taking away. We want what was, not what is.

Oh and for crying out loud, I don’t want to have to buy a $5,000 gaming PC just to be in SL, let’s kill the over the top reflective water and dial the graphics back to say 2008. I remember the days of TPing to a sim and seeing it all appear on my screen in one or two seconds, not bloody minutes. Shoppers don’t want to have to stand in the landing zone waiting for the building and venders to rez, they want to get in, shop, and move on. May I suggest you get a 4 year old PC running Windows XP pro and log into SL. If you can move about without lagging every 5 seconds, if you can see all the sim as far as the draw distance can be set within seconds of landing, then SL is fine, if not, then you will know what half the world is experiencing on their older PC’s which they can’t afford to update yet. Remember your customers are not just here in the US, but also in the favelas of Brazil, the small towns of the Czech Republic, and the islands of the Philippians. I really don’t want to lose those people, they enrich my life in both ‘verses.

All my best to you and with that my hopes for the future of SL. Honestly I don't want to leave, please don't push me out the door.

Amen to all of that.

And kids on the grid will destroy SL. It's already segregated. People have already turtled and found their own private place and put up walls. This decision to allow kiddies will finish SL off. Just wait.I know several people who REFUSE to answer ANY IM from any person they do not know to be a verified account/adult adn who refuse to ever go to PG land. TEENS ARE HERE NOW AS ALL NEW ACCOUNTS GO TO THE MAIN GRID.. I think new CEO or not, it will be bad business as usual from LL. Too much damage has been done.

[Linden Lab's New CEO]

Basic members. 80% of that population are alts for accounts that already exist as paying or unpaying members. The fasted and esiest way to get rid of them is to not allow a basic member to have retained inventory or rez an object anywhere but an SL sanbox.  No inventory, lower storage demand on the servers. No ability to rez anywhere and there is less debris scattered all across the grid and malicious scripted objects that take down sims drop by 90%. The simple truth is, and SL can verify this, if you are not a paying account with 30 days of coming here, you never will be.

--posted by galileo M

That attitude sir is the biggest danger to the survival of Second Life...more than any other..and it's flat out WRONG on all counts. Rod I hope you don't listen to people like this.

[Linden Lab's New CEO]

Welcome. One thing I hope you will do in your explorations is FLY AN AEROPLANE. Do some high speed descending turns at altitude and then pull the nose up slowly...and feel yourself suddenly sucked under the sea (or into outer space) as the server loses your vehicle and avatar. You will learn first hand about the hoplessness of sim crossings, lag, the mess that mainland is, and the other limitations of vehicle use in SL, which will also illuminate the basic things that are broken. FIX THE GRID. MAKE IT WORK.

Nobody asked for mesh, viewer 2, media on a prim, voice morphing, new marketplace...we do NOT want more REGRESSIVE features...but they were forced upon us. You have no idea how many will leave SL if the Viewer 2 UI becomes mandatory. Stop that train now before it crashes!

And kids on the grid....my my what a tangled web LL has woven for you...so many things have been Broken before you arrived....

SL's future is in danger. Don't believe the corporate hype they feed you. I hope you see that. I hope you save it.

I hope you take a lesson from the airlines. Present customers are more important than new ones. Losing them has a much more negative affect than gaining new ones. Keeping old ones costs LESS than finding new ones.

Good luck with it.

[Bringing Teens to Second Life’s Main Grid]

the Most stupid idea ever...the  end of SL

It very well may be the end of SL as you said. What kind of fun can adults now have when they are afraid to speak to anyone who IMs them? SL will become further compartmentalised and people will further isolate themselves. This will destroy the grid.

Yes, there are teens here now I speculate that have bypassed the rules; however, these teens do not present the legal risk to adults that the professed and legally present teens will.

It's over, unless you enjoy living locked in a cave on your own sim and never speaking to anyone new unless they are standing next to you.

Suspicion and paranoia, already way out of hand, will only increase exponentially. It is also the death knell for all PG sims and any business in those sims because adults will stop going there.

[Making Strides to Improve our Customer Support Services]

Ohhhhh look, someone else who thinks the ENTIRE second life economy revolves around LESS than 10% of the grid members.

The vast buik of the inflow of cash comes from the basic members like myself who co-own sims rented from other members.  Look at the majority of the big clothing manufacturers and builders...again, basic accounts.

Tell ya what, we'll just all leave, cause according to you, LL would survive just fine on premium members only...LMAO!

---victor

Great post Victor!!! ya beat me to it. Very tired of the elitists who think because they pay 72/year, that they are the financial backbone of SL. You don't have to be premium to contribute to the SL community in BIG ways, without which SL would be only a chat room, and from which LL benefits greatly.

As a creator, I was never premium. Why risk everything I'd created to some daftie in billing who accidentally forgot to hit "paid." You people are crazy.

Do you really think after the terrible support ..and grid performance..both of which have gotten worse, not better, that people will start paying now because you remove support options for basic accounts? No. They will just leave if something goes wrong you can not or will not fix..and never come back. Those people are consumers, and artists, and musicians, and artisans.......why am I even having to convince you guys? Sheeshh.