Turn On The News

February 16, 2009 by 2 Comments

My blistering critique of the Second Life Herald obviously hit a nerve with its publishers, as less than a week later they have (re-)re-branded themselves as the Alphaville Herald and promised to eschew the tittle-tattle of Second Life in favour of consideration of serious issues in the wider metaverse.

Second Life Insider went down the same route more than a year ago, reinventing itself as Massively, again with a remit to cover all virtual worlds, though they seem to mostly concentrate on World of Warcraft.

There used to be five online publications that I read for news on Second Life – but now the Herald and the Insider have changed focus, and Reuters SL and the Ava Star have folded, leaving only New World Notes soldiering on (and lately they seem to have been running a lot of puff pieces about their business partners). There are still scores, if not hundreds, of individual bloggers documenting the grid of course – blogs I read at least semi-regularly include SL on SL, Gwyn’s Home, Metaversally Speaking and Your2ndPlace – but the scaling down of organised news-gathering specific to Second Life suggests to me that there is less confidence around about the platform’s future as a significant cultural phenomenon.

It might go the way of crop-circles; they were everywhere, now you never hear of them.

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Bandwagonesque

January 28, 2009 by Leave a comment

Since everyone else is doing it, we decided to get a Twitter feed too. Why not sign up to be our friend? Then you too can bask in the reflected glory of our exciting lives.

Talking of fanclubs…

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Laura

January 26, 2009 by Leave a comment

Looking at my Blog Stats page I’ve discovered that if you Google “Laura Palmer”, then look at the image results, the second photo along links to the tag/tv section of this site, even though there are no actual images of Laura Palmer anywhere in this blog, only a link to the picture in question, in this post.

I wish I could work out how this has happened, so that I could do the same thing with some more-frequently searched-for images, and thus boost my traffic a bit. Though luring people to a site under false pretences is perhaps not the best way to build a sustainable audience.

Anyway, it gives me an excuse to link to this video.

[Update: It’s stopped working now. So much for my career as a search engine optimisation consultant.]

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Virtual Monopoly

January 23, 2009 by 3 Comments

The buzz around the SL blogosphere this week is all about Linden Labs’ unexpected takeover of XStreet and OnRez, the two biggest and best known of the web-based Second Life marketplaces.

Blogger opinion seems fairly unanimous in regarding this development as A Bad Thing, though reaction varies from mildly disapproving to apoplectic.

Regular readers of SLS will know that we have long been sceptical of the idea that it is possible to make serious money through in-world commerce, but the existence of services like XStreet and OnRez presents a challenge to our doubts, since they provide a route by which cash can be extracted from the grid without showing up on the official Linden Lab statistics. Perhaps sellers in these marketplaces are turning over significant sums, enough to make a living comparable to having a real-life job. Even if this isn’t true, the markets themselves may be handling enough transactions that a commission of even a couple of L$ a time would be enough to make running them a lucrative business.

Does the fact that the Lindens have bought into the action provide any support for the theory that the web-based marketplaces were making money? One might speculate that L-Labs is worried about a fall-off in the subscriber base due to the recession, and is looking to secure other revenue streams. On the other hand, if XStreet and OnRez were profitable it seems strange that their developers would have sold out, unless the offer was irresistible. Throw in the fact that OnRez was owned by virtual world cheerleaders-turned-jeremiahs The Electric Sheep Company, and it begins to look like the picture wasn’t so rosy after all.

Linden Labs may well have taken advantage of the economic crisis to increase their stranglehold over Second Life commerce by snapping up two companies that, had they had time to develop further, may have grown to challenge L-Labs’ dominant position as the people who actually make money from the grid.

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Gigantic

January 22, 2009 by Leave a comment

Attentive readers will have noticed that staffing levels here at SLS have increased by 100% since the start of the year. Now that we are obliged to have editorial meetings we’ve been looking around for quiet places to hang out and talk.

For the time being we’ve settled on the Grey Hare Coffee Shop on Adelebsen Isle:

ed_meeting01

Adelebsen Isle seems to be a centre of Tiny culture; the only other residents we’ve seen around are delightful little fellows like this:

tiny01

We’ve tried talking with the small folk, but they tend to just scurry away. I don’t know if they are naturally timid, or if they just don’t deign to converse with anyone over 50 centimetres tall.

Our other favourite place is the Loki Absinthe Bar in New Babbage, but we tend not to get a lot of work done when we’re there:

ed_meeting02

Here’s today’s song, which is a bit tangential, but I think both title and artist are at least marginally relevant.

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Poetic Truths

January 15, 2009 by Leave a comment

I was feeling that I had slightly overdone the negativity in my last post, so I decided to check out the reports on Gwen Bell‘s “Chicks who Click 09” conference, which took place last week. I figured that a gender-based discussion of virtual interaction was bound to be quite interesting, and I was sure that I could find something positive to say about it.

The list of speakers wasn’t too promising however; mostly marketing people and motivational gurus rather than serious academics. Then there was the fact that one whole day out of a two day meeting was devoted to skiing and networking, which suggested that the organisers were perhaps aiming for a less intellectually rigorous ambience.

The formal proceedings of the meeting haven’t been published yet, so all I have to go on is the tweets exchanged by the participants. The medium doesn’t really lend itself to deep and meaningful discussion, but even so the conversations were pretty vacuous.

Some of the comments were almost archetypal in their pseudo-profundity, like “We’re moving from an era of fear-based branding to one of hope, thanks to @barackobama.” It’s like there’s a formula they teach you in Inspirational Writing 101; [Fatuous Generalisation]+[Imaginary Transition]*[Zeitgeisty Buzzword]=[Comment that sounds Meaningful so long as you don’t think about it for more than two seconds].

There was one contribution that I thought made some sort of sense, though perhaps not in the way its author intended. “Twitter is your canary in the coal mine” wrote zenawiest, and I couldn’t agree more. When the “Social Media” industry curls up and dies I’ll know that it’s time to sell my Google shares.

Well, I did start this post with the best of intentions, but I’ve ended up serving another dish of cheerless cynicism, with a side helping of intellectual snobbery and a schadenfreude garnish. I should maybe take up Twittering, it might help me lighten up a bit.

[Update: Read a more balanced review of the event from someone who was actually there.]

Here’s today’s tune. I had thought that the lyrics would be a suitably obscure reference to the content of the post, but of course several bloggers got there before me. All their blogs seem to be defunct, one, poignantly, after just one post; I think that this one is the best.

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Modern Romance

January 9, 2009 by Leave a comment

Now and again I come across something on the internet that reminds me how disconnected I am from the world of the young. (Actually for “now and again” read “every 20 minutes or so”).

Occasionally though I read a piece that doesn’t just make me feel old and out of the loop, but cynical and misanthropic as well, and not in a good way. The latest example of this is Gwen Bell’s blog, and specifically this post: “A Guide to Falling in Love + Growing a Modern Romance Online“.

Gwen feels qualified to write about this because she met her boyfriend Joel, who is now her fiancé, via Twitter. The story is rather sweet in its own way, especially the bit where her beloved proposes by making an elaborate sign and hanging it up in their favourite coffee shop. They are due to wed later this year; you can follow the build up to the nuptials on their joint website, as well as on Gwen’s Twitter feed.

So why does this happy tale awaken my inner curmudgeon? “A bad-tempered, difficult, cantankerous person” sums up my personality pretty well at the best of times I guess, but the sort of unselfconscious narcissism that drives people to use a service like Twitter, or to write “A Guide to Falling in Love + Growing a Modern Romance Online” based on their own personal experience of doing so once, is something of a bête noire for me.

(I know that I am the author of a blog which deals mainly with my random thoughts, so we’re deep within “pot, kettle, black” territory here, but, come on, Twitter? Like even your closest friends are so interested in what you are doing right at this minute that they need a constant update on your mundane daily activity? RandomTweets.com, a site dedicated to finding anything on Twitter “humorous, weird, inspiring, newsworthy or just plain cool”, hasn’t been updated since July 15th, presumably the day the webmaster went insane after reading “I’m shopping!!!” once too often).

Gwen’s “Guide” contains so much that feels completely alien to my concept of “Romance” that it’s hard to pick out examples. You really have read the whole thing to appreciate it. This is my favourite bit though (with Gwen’s emphasis):

Joel and I have shared a calendar for about 6 months now. We each had our own Gcalendars (free) associated with our Gmail accounts, and then we set up a joint calendar for shared events. Once a week we go over the details of the week together. We roll over events that we missed.
Most important, we associate a time and date to things so that we get a reminder sent to our phones before it’s time for it to start. Believe it or not, this seemingly small point is a crucial ingredient to the success of our relationship.

This is how the kids live these days? A boy can be so overwhelmed by information that he will forget he has a date with his inamorata unless a computer phones him up to remind him?

If I’m honest though, I have to admit that I’m the one with the problem here, not Gwen. She has the confidence of youth, and I have what Socrates called True Wisdom, that which “comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us”. I could never write a “Guide to Love”, not because I haven’t been around that particular block more than a few times, but because the experience I have had has convinced me that, when it comes to affairs of the human heart, we all have to make our own way. So good luck to Gwen and Joel, may they have many happy years together, and avoid True Wisdom for as long as they can.

[Socrates also said “Enjoy yourself — it’s later than you think”, so from now on I’m going to try to lighten up some of my more dour posts by ending with a link to the song that inspired the post title. Though, come to think of it, this one is a bit of a downer.]

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Ninja Tool

January 4, 2009 by Leave a comment

Looking at my blog stats I discovered an incoming link from “The Samurai Factory Official Website” which, as far as I can tell, is a Japanese record label. That’s more than a little impressive, in my book anyhow, but what’s really cool is that SLS is listed in their “Ninja Tools” section. Obviously no black-clad assassin can contemplate going on a killing spree without first getting armed with some sharp cultural commentary.

Since I read no Japanese it is possible that I’ve completely misinterpreted the site, and that they are in fact mercilessly mocking my writing rather than likening it to the keen edge of a samurai blade, or, perhaps more likely, that they have co-opted SLS into some sort of search engine optimisation scam. Perhaps a reader with the requisite language skills will be good enough to translate the Samurai Factory site and enlighten me.

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A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall

December 26, 2008 by 4 Comments

What is there to do on Boxing Day except sit around eating, drinking and randomly surfing the net? Lots of things probably, like spending quality time with my loved ones, or taking some exercise, or doing something socially useful by serving turkey to vagrants at the homeless shelter, but I fearlessly embraced the crisps/lager/web option, so that I would have something to post about.

I did try to stay on-topic by browsing through Second Life-themed blogs. Amongst the numerous posts on various pressing issues in the world of SL fashion, there were contrasting views on what the future holds for the grid.

There are definite signs that SL residents are feeling a chill from the cold financial winds that are blowing through the real world. “The Quiet”, an iconic piece of SL sculpture, is due to disappear next month, as its creators can’t keep up with the rent. More generally, hundreds of sims are being abandoned, after Linden Labs increased the tier fees and decreased the prim allowance on the class of land known as “Openspace”. The flight of corporate investment is an old story, though you don’t read about it so much now that Reuters have closed their SL bureau. Even The Electric Sheep Company, who pioneered SL marketing for RL companies, are talking gloomily about a virtual recession.

Not everyone is downbeat though. Dennis wants to convince us (and perhaps himself) that the virtual economy is likely to grow in 2009. Perhaps not coincidentally, Dennis is in the business of organising virtual trade shows.

My own view is that Second Life will survive, since there does seem to be a critical mass of users who are willing to pay a few dollars a month to play out their various fantasies, or at least watch whilst others do so, but nobody except L-Labs is going to be making any serious money.

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I’ve got an iPhone and I’m gonna use it

December 25, 2008 by Leave a comment

There was a time, before I got myself a 3G phone, when posting a blog entry on Christmas Day would have made me feel like a terminally sad, internet-obsessed loser. But now, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I can post from the comfort of my fireside armchair, and I merely feel like a moderately sad, internet-obsessed loser.

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