SecondLife - How To Make Money In Second Life

A year ago at the Second Life Community Convention in Chicago, Reuters asked: What will the next year bring in Second Life?

Some of those predictions didn’t come true. Jeska Linden’s hope for open-sourced servers didn’t happen (although OpenSim is doing something very similar), and Izzy Linden’s prediction of 20 million avatars didn’t materialize (total registrations just topped 15 million). Other forecasts, like whether Second Life residents enjoy better sex or a more stable environment than they did a year ago, remain a matter of personal opinion.

But with an eye towards the future, once again Reuters asked SLCC: What will the next year bring in Second Life?

Philip Rosedale, founder of Second Life.

“More use of Second Life to support education and business collaboration.”

Dick Dillon (”Coughran Mayo”), Addiction Recovery Professional

“OpenSim is a reality which is coming. The Second Life Grid isn’t the only place avatars will hang out.”

Chadrick Baker, virtual worlds consultant, former Linden Lab employee

“It depends on what Linden does! I see Linden having some serious competition.”

“Phoenix Linden” (declined to give real-life name), Linden Lab employee

“We’ll go six months without a central server crash.”

Jason Bellino (”Tizzers Foxchase”), self-identified griefer, banned from Second Life

“The metaverse is a very good mirror of the old Web 1.0 world. Linden is like AOL or Prodigy, eventually no one company will have central control.”

Mike Lorrey (”Intlibber Brautigan”), Second Life land owner/entrepreneur

“Linden has to adjust to no longer being like AOL. They can be the central bank and patent office of the metaverse, or they can go by the wayside.”

Helen Mosher (”Helen Indigo”), New Media editor of Signal at AFCEA

“Second Life is emerging as a collaboration tool for government.”

Patrick Edwards-Daugherty, CEO of Pleiades Consulting

“We see virtual worlds going in the same direction the World Wide Web did. A company like Reuters will be able to host its own virtual world without relying on Second Life.”

Peter Lokke (”Crucial Armitage”), SLCC Chief Organizer

“There’s a lot more competition in-world. People aren’t going to be making as much money in Second Life as they used to.”

Chris Collins (”Fleep Tuque”), SL Education Track Organizer

“The development of the metaverse moves as slow as molasses. I don’t expect much change at all.”

Jason Giglio (”Gigs Taggart”), Open Metaverse Foundation

“OMF will make a bleeding-edge viewer Linden can’t currently do because they have to cater to the lowest common denominator.”

Kevin Alderman (”Stroker Serpentine”), Second Life sex magnate, host of SLCC “Leather & Lace Ball”

“Teledildonics is coming. We’ll have a new device that operates off of sound-activated vibrations.”

Tim Allen (”FlipperPA Peregrine”), SLCC Founder, Peregrine Salon

“Linden Lab has always been good at adjusting their business model every six months. They’ll do that at least twice over the next year.”

Original post by Eric Reuters

When a question was asked on Saturday about poor Second Life performance on the Apple Macintosh, Philip Rosedale leapt up from the SLCC audience and took the microphone.

“We’re serious about support for the Mac,” Rosedale said. “But we’ve had our problems with Apple.”

Linden employee “Phoenix Linden” joined in, saying Apple doesn’t release information about their proprietary video card drivers in a timely fashion, making it hard for Linden to keep the Mac version of the viewer running smoothly.

Rosedale said Linden had done a good job with the Mac viewer despite the difficulty working with Apple. “We have access to crash rates,” Rosedale said. “Crash rates on the Mac are the same as on the PC. Frame rates too.”

Original post by Eric Reuters

Linden Lab and OpenSim developers shared the stage at an SLCC panel called “Open Software For Open Worlds,” and said there was nothing in the works to support spending Linden dollars anywhere but on the Second Life Grid.

During Q&A, Mike Lorrey (Second Life: Intlibber Brautigan) told the panelists he thought Second Life’s “killer app” was money — Linden’s own virtual currency and residents’ ability to start a Second Life business and turn a profit.

Could the Linden Dollar ever come to OpenSim worlds? Linden’s director of open source development Rob Lanphier said he had no idea how to make that work.

“We’re not going to pretend we know how to export that in a way that protects Second Life’s economy,” Lanphier said. “I can’t project a timeline.”

Leading OpenSim developer Adam Frisby disagreed with Lorrey on the importance of virtual currency to the Second Life experience.

“Money doesn’t belong in the core [OpenSim] product build,” Frisby said. “Better to ask again in six or nine months.”

Original post by Eric Reuters

So what has Second Life founder Philip Rosedale been up to since handing over control of Linden Lab to new CEO Mark Kingdon four months ago?

Hanging out, mostly. “I’ve had a really relaxing summer,” a broadly smiling Rosedale told Reuters.

Rosedale had just come out of the morning breakfast at the Second Life Community Convention in Tampa, where he praised Kingdon’s leadership of the company he started. But Rosedale was quick to add he wasn’t done with Second Life or Linden Lab. These days, he’s concentrating on two projects: Working on improving Second Life’s user interface, and efforts to spread Second Life technology to developing nations.

But Second Life fans shouldn’t expect interface problems to be solved soon. “Look at Lively or Vivaty, they’re dealing with the same thing. This is a hard problem,” Rosedale said. “If there was a trivial solution, we would have done it already.”

Original post by Eric Reuters

So what has Second Life founder Philip Rosedale been up to since handing over control of Linden Lab to new CEO Mark Kingdon four months ago?

Hanging out, mostly. “I’ve had a really relaxing summer,” a broadly smiling Rosedale told Reuters.

Rosedale had just come out of the morning breakfast at the Second Life Community Convention in Tampa, where he praised Kingdon’s leadership of the company he started. But Rosedale was quick to add he wasn’t done with Second Life or Linden Lab. These days, he’s concentrating on two projects: Working on improving Second Life’s user interface, and efforts to spread Second Life technology to developing nations.

But Second Life fans shouldn’t expect interface problems to be solved soon. “Look at Lively or Vivaty, they’re dealing with the same thing. This is a hard problem,” Rosedale said. “If there was a trivial solution, we would have done it already.”

Original post by Eric Reuters

SECOND LIFE, Sept 3 (Reuters) - Second Life users who frequently access the Internet from consumer-grade computers and laptops are about to find keeping touch with other avatars a lot easier.

Yesterday Linden Lab announced the launch of “SLim,” pronounced “slim,” an instant-messaging client that allows users to communicate with users inside Linden’s virtual world without running Second Life.

“When you’re running a system that doesn’t have a 3D card, SLim allows you to take your friends list with you,” said Linden VP Joe Miller. “Visually it looks a lot like other IM apps.”

Second Life only runs well on high-end gaming machines. On many computers, particularly laptops, the Second Life viewer software runs so slowly even typing can be difficult. Miller said SLim was designed to tackle that problem.

The software will tie to an avatar’s friends list of contacts, and users inside Second Life will be able to see who’s on SLim but not in 3D virtual space.

In addition to sending text messages in and out of Second Life (or to other SLim users) like AOL’s AIM or Google’s Gtalk, the SLim client will support voice-over-IP calls in a manner similar to eBay’s Skype.

One notable feature of SLim will be support for VoIP voicemail. Users who register for the service will be able to set up a voicemail greeting and accept VoIP messages of up to five minutes in length while offline, Miller said. Linden’s servers will email the voice message to its recipient as an MP3 file.

Miller said the service is expected to debut in a “First Look” version of the Second Life client software next week. Participation in SLim and voicemail will be on an opt-in basis, and users can set the destination email address for voicemail to a different address than the payment contact for their secondlife.com account.

The service will be available on all platforms which support Second Life, including Windows, Macintosh, and Linux environments.

Original post by Eric Reuters