Virtual Worlds, and Why the Long Tail is (partly) Wrong

There was an interesting discussion brewing about intellectual property, “copybot II” and content protection until the conversation suddenly veered off into protecting the blessed hand of Second Life® and I lost the trail of thought. I suppose it’s a lot more important to worry about the value of the inSL logo, whether Linden Labs is Linden Lab or Linden’s Labs or the Linden is a dollar or not.

It all made me feel a little like Rumpole, worrying about “The World Who Must Be Obeyed” and blundering about while my raincoat trails through the mud as I try to crack the code of open source. So it was in this sort of grumpy frumpy mood that I was reading The Long Tail by Chris Anderson which is perhaps why I started to feel annoyed, or was it that my Spidey senses were tingling (oh, sorry, Spidey Senses®, and that was probably Rumpole® while we’re at it).

Bear with me, maybe we’re on to something, otherwise we’ll head back shortly and storm the barricades (and continue to hit the refresh button awaiting clarification on the branding guidelines as promised Friday, or maybe Monday, but it’s coming, really).

The Long Tail: A Primer
Like all good Web 2.0 concepts take a little trip over to Wikipedia for a definition. There, you’ll find the deep science behind the Long Tail:

In “long-tailed” distributions a high-frequency or high-amplitude population is followed by a low-frequency or low-amplitude population which gradually “tails off” asymptotically. The events at the far end of the tail have a very low probability of occurrence.

Power law distributions or functions characterize an important number of behaviors from nature and human endeavor. This fact has given rise to a keen scientific and social interest in such distributions, and the relationships that create them. The observation of such a distribution often points to specific kinds of mechanisms, and can often indicate a deep connection with other, seemingly unrelated systems. Examples of behaviors that exhibit long-tailed distribution are the occurrence of certain words in a given language, the income distribution of a business or the intensity of earthquakes (see: Gutenberg-Richter law).

A Word from Our Sponsor

Second Life(r) Development: Progress Report

My own progress report is I still can’t figure out how to get the registration mark so I give up. Sue me. In the meantime, a progress report on developments in the World that Must Be Obeyed (am feeling very Rumpole-like these days).

Back in January I sifted through the various blogs and press interviews to come up with this schedule as promised by our friends in management:

February: Lightweight Client
Miller tells IW that the lightweight client will include text chat, instant messaging, and voice communications.
Progress: Not achieved

This Quarter: Mono Deployed
“In another architecture change, Linden Lab is deploying Mono as a foundation for running the Linden Scripting Language. LSL is the language used to control behavior of objects in-world. Mono is being deployed this quarter, starting on the beta grid. Mono will allow scripts to run up to 700 times faster than they now do, theoretically, although in practice performance has been 100 to 200 times faster than current rates, Miller said. The goal of the Mono deployment, as with the Havok 4.6 rollout, is to make Second Life more predictable and stable.”
Progress: Moving along

April: Open Source Server
Linden Lab said in April it plans to open-source the Second Life server.
Progress:
Backpedal
“There are a number of things about the architecture of our current server infrastructure that inhibit a source code release,” Director of Open Source Development Rob Lanphier told Linux.com. “There are a lot of cases of monolithic design and improper trust relationships between components that would need to be addressed.” (via Virtual World News)

May: HTML on a Prim
Rosedale promised the ability to display HTML Web pages on a prim by May when speaking with Reuters from Davos.
Progress: Well, you can DISPLAY them, but I thought he meant you could CLICK on them too. We’ll call it “in progress.

Critical Ongoing Issue: Customer Retention
And Linden Lab is working on several measures to improve customer retention. Currently, about 90% of people who try Second Life give up on it quickly. Anecdotally, that’s pretty similar to the retention rate for most Internet activities, but Linden Lab would like to do better. They have regular, weekly focus groups of average consumers brought in off the streets, to test Second Life usability, Miller said.
Progress: I leave it for you to judge….peak concurrency may be up but the bloggers ain’t happy.

Forbes Reports on ESL Learning

It’s nice to see a mainstream business outfit like Forbes - home of the annual Forbes 500, and a business person’s bible - give some column inches (is that the term for it on the Web? Or should it be “scroll depth?”) to SL education. This also shows that education in SL may actually be gaining some traction in the business establishment.

A co-leader of a school in Germany has set up “Second Life English” and since February, the site has had upwards of 75 visitors per day. The island is an ESL resource center for both students and teachers.

“The richness and multitudes of environments seemed to offer fantastic opportunities for exposure to language,” said the teacher, Kip Boahn.

Boahn both creates holodecks with a variety of learnings within them, and also has used role-playing to teach ESL students new language skills - though the one example he cites does seem a tad silly:

“I once dressed up as a pirate, had a ship and everything. I was kind of rough on the students,” he admits. “I put some of them in cages, and had them confront language in a shock-and-awe kind of way. They seemed to like it, and they learned all sorts of new words, like ‘loot’ and ‘booty.”

The article also includes a somewhat interesting sidebar that Forbes (it has to be a list at Forbes, doesn’t it?) calls the Top 10 Life Lessons From Gaming.

College Prof Turns to SL

You’re a post-secondary English prof, and your students are bored stiff with the same old 500-750 word essay assignments. Not to mention, you are bored stiff teaching composition to freshmen. You toss around new ideas: group collaborations? Re-workings of classics of literature? Field trips? What does one do?

Well, an enterprising professor at Macon State College in Georgia has decided to add some zing to his first-year composition class by having students write for SL.

According to Dr. Gerard Lucas, “Second Life al­lows us to look at issues like identity, identity building, gender, sexuality and race. It brings all these ideas to the forefront in a way that students can engag…”

First-year students can be a fickle, distracted bunch. So, Lucas was impressed with the 3D nature of SL, saying that the program’s interactivity appeals to his students.

Interestingly, Dr. Lucas uses his own Web site as a teaching tool for his classes, where one can read about his intentions using SL in his class. He’s even setup a student wiki, and has a companion Web site where he writes as Jerry Lucas, exploring, critiquing and reporting on science fiction.

The report, written in the Macon State College paper student paper, neglects to hear comment from administrators at the school, which would be pretty interesting. On an academic level, how does learning composition in a 3D environment track within a more traditional liberal education? I mean, we’re not talking about studying Nietszche or Marshall McLuhan here, but teaching in an entirely new medium. I wonder what the dean thinks of it all…

Shut Down the Blogs and Head for the Exits

Further addendum: Am I the only one infuriated that Catherine Linden threw in her two cents only ONCE in the comments that followed the posting of this issue? These people need to take communication classes - preferably from Sidewinder Linden. Ignoring all other comments and the hundred that followed, Catherine instead responded only to Ciaran (kudos! woot!):

“Hey Ciaran, in answer to your specific question about timing, we are actually providing plenty of time — 90 days — to get your questions answered and let the community start using the inSL logo. We anticipate there will be lots of questions and we’ll do our best to answer Thanks for the comments everyone.”

90 days notice to undo, um, how many YEARS of having guidelines that a community of fans was following? Give me a break.

Linden Labs sent out a Trojan horse into the community - a spiffy (and useless) new logo, perhaps thinking bloggers, content creators, educators and businesses wouldn’t notice the fine print which many are speculating is all prelude to an IPO.

I find myself increasingly furious. I suppose Philip is way too busy interviewing new CEOs to take the time to review substantial policy changes and branding decisions, but if that’s true then WHO IS MAKING THESE DECISIONS?

Didn’t they have any idea that following all the speculation on Philip’s vacating the CEO position that tightening up trademark issues right on the heels of the announcement is a sure-fire way to fuel speculation that the company is either priming to go public, or is currently in its own DUE DILIGENCE in preparation for a sale?

Did they think through any of the implications to companies who, often without any profit motive at all, or without teams of editors and designers will need to redirect domains, proof blogs, add disclaimers - the list goes on.

Now, the bloggers are either brushing off the latest policy change as yet another misguided effort by its lawyers to plug loopholes (which will later be generally ignored by front-line staffers, with different divisions doing different things, a la age verification)…or as a slap in the face to the community.

If the former, it’s just another misguided attempt by Linden to get its house in order for the outside legal and venture folks, while Philip whistles quietly to himself in the corner, dreaming of a metaverse nirvana while becoming increasingly disconnected and obscure.

Gwyneth Llewelyn has taken up the mantle and is threatening a blog boycott and shut-down unless Linden provides clarification (I’d direct link to the posting, but it seems to redirect back on itself or something):

“We would thus kindly request that you clarify your position regarding the usage of the trademarks Second Life® and the logo on all fansites, blogs, forums, or other 3rd party websites offering products and services related to Second Life®. This clarification should be as easy to follow as your previous policies on the usage of those trademarks. They should make clear that all people intending to promote your product and raise your brand awareness are not facing lawsuits because they have faithfully used your trademarks using the old policy, and wish to continue to do so in the future.

We consider that an appropriate response should be forthcoming in the next few days, or we will be forced to shut down our own blogs, websites, forums, community portals, and other 3rd party sites to avoid litigation — and thus deprieving Linden Lab® from the traffic generated by millions of direct links and millions of viewers that learn first about Second Life® through all those sites.

This is a broader issue than just protecting the Linden trademarks. It’s an issue of communication and synching itself to its ecosystem of users, creators, and partners.

As it happens, I read ESC’s blog this morning, which basically seems to be their acknowledgment that they are (mostly) throwing in the towel on Second Life, and while my initial reaction was negative, I’m now quickly sliding over to strongly agreeing based on this latest fiasco:

Perhaps it is very self-serving but I have always believed that Linden Lab’s strength would lie in enabling a deep and wide ecosystem of 3rd party developers. This requires both fostering that ecosystem and creating a robust and open technical platform for those developers to work upon. Linden Lab has been well-meaning with the former, but has fallen down on the latter. It has moved in inches, rather than miles, and been afraid to cannibalize its existing community and economy. Not surprisingly, many 3rd party developers have lost patience and shifted to OpenSim and Multiverse or shifted back to Flash and the Web browser. I would think that once OpenSim is able to create its own viewer from scratch and break free from the SL GPL license, it too will split from Second Life compatibility.

Fostering the ecosystem includes that of the bloggers, content creators, companies, and the community of users.

I may not be out the door yet, but I’ve got my coat on.

60,000L Tribal Contest Ends Soon

For those interested in a chance to win 60,000L for the design of jewelry, the deadline approaches. This has been such a fun approach to collaboration and giving the amazing content developers a chance to shine. I’ve been really excited to see entries coming in, and just wanted to post a quick little reminder for those who may have missed the original post.

My New Business Cards

So I was thinking through adding the new inSL logo to my business cards.

Then started playing through handing it out to one of my RL clients (is RL trademarked? Make note to check).

(Handing card to prospective client)

Client: Thanks. Hey, geez, that’s cheeky.
DW: Huh?
Client: (Looking more closely). Oh, sorry, I thought that said inSLT. Dunno how I saw a “T” at the end of it.
DW: (Awkward chuckle)
Client: Um, what’s it mean?
DW: inSL? It means In Second Life.
Client: In Second Life what?
DW: Oh, it means our company is in Second Life. Well, not JUST in it. But sort of.
Client: Second Life? It’s some sort of product?
DW: Um, no, it’s a platform. A virtual world for collaboration, education, immersion and branding.
Client: Oh. That box made me think it was software or something.
DW: Ah, no. I mean, yes. Second Life does run on software. But it’s a virtual world.
Client: In a box?
DW: Um, no. I mean, well sure, it runs on boxes, like servers. But it’s a world.
Client: Then what does the box mean?
DW: I guess it’s meant to be a prim.
Client: Prim?
DW: Um, yeah, the world is made up of primitives. The building blocks. It’s kinda complicated.
Client: So it’s a world made up of boxes?
DW: Well, yes, but I’d really need to show you, it’s amazing what you can do with a bunch of boxes.
Client: Haha…you always told me we needed to think outside the box.
DW: (More nervous laughter). Well, you do. It’s just in this case you’d use boxes to, um, think outside the box.
Client: So it’s boxes inside a world which is hosted on boxes?
DW: Um, it’s really so much more. I need to show you. Besides, as you can see in the logo, “inSL” is kind of um, outside the box.
Client: So when you’re “in” SL it means you’re outside of the box, but the box represents all the boxes which make up this thing that isn’t boxed like a product. So you get out of the box by using all these little boxes, and when you do that then you’re inside this place.
DW: Um. Yeah. Listen. Maybe we should rethink the idea of just doing a simple print piece.
Client: Nods.