SecondLife - How To Make Money In Second Life

The latest poll average at RealClearPolitics has Barack Obama up 2.5 points over John McCain in the tight race for the White House, at 48.1 percent to 45.6 percent. But if the election was being held today in Second Life, Obama would win in a landslide.

Researcher Andrew Mallon of the Social Research Foundation, known in avatar form as Andy Evans, polled over 1,000 Second Life residents about their usage of Linden’s virtual world. But while he had an audience, Mallon threw in another question:

In the upcoming election, who do you plan to vote for (USA Citizens), or prefer (International residents)?

Among American citizens, Obama beats McCain handily in the unscientific poll.

Among Second Life’s large population of non-American citizens, the preference for Obama is even stronger.

Mallon’s poll remains open to the public until September 30, at which point he’ll publish his data about Second Life usage. Second Life residents can take the poll by clicking here.

Original post by Eric Reuters

SECOND LIFE, Sept 11 (Reuters) - OpenSim remains in pre-release and the interoperability standards to allow avatars to travel between virtual worlds are still being drafted. But that’s not stopping entrepreneurs from creating a fledgling industry around what’s to come.

Enter Metaverse Ink, which its creators say is the first search engine to find objects on both the Second Life Grid and in OpenSim worlds.

The product presents both a vindication and challenge for Linden Lab. OpenSim-using startups demonstrate the enduring faith of many in Linden founder Philip Rosedale’s vision for virtual worlds. But Metaverse Ink is also a competitive threat. In a July interview with Reuters Linden VP Joe Miller named “search services” as a potential revenue stream for his company in the coming age of interoperability.

Traditionally within Second Life, as residents grow more adept at building content they form in-world businesses and sell their creations to other users. Linden Lab frequently touts the number of users with a positive currency inflow — over 61,000 according to the latest statistics — in its marketing.

But with OpenSim in the works, some of Second Life’s most talented programmers are beginning to form businesses that compete directly against Linden Lab.

“Linden Lab’s search is bad, it’s like AltaVista in the old days,” said Metaverse Ink co-founder William Cook (Second Life: Felix Wakmann), a computer science professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

Cook and co-founder Cristina Videira Lopes (Second Life: Diva Canto), a computer science professor at the University of California at Irvine, have designed a series of automated programs, called “bots,” to search through both Second Life and OpenSim. The results of their searches are indexed and made searchable to users, in much the same way Google does for the World Wide Web.

To date the MI database catalogs over two million virtual objects, spread over 100,000 regions.

Problems with Linden’s built-in search functionality have been ongoing, and this isn’t the first time a third party has tried to create an independent virtual worlds search engine. A similar attempt to index Second Life by the Electric Sheep Company last year was abandoned after a protest campaign by Second Life users over privacy concerns.

MI says their product respects user wishes. “We’re only publishing things marked ‘for search,’” Lopes said. “These bots can ’see’ everything, but not everything should be seen.”

Cook said his new company isn’t yet looking for venture capital, and is currently focusing on attracting users beyond MI’s current average of about 900 a day. A third MI partner from Techcoastworks, a California-based incubator, is helping to commercialize the product.

But Cook, a serial entrepreneur, has worked with VC firms in the past, having raised US$60 million for a previous start-up from sources including Benchmark Capital, which also funded Linden Lab.

Lopes said MI is the first company to be indexing OpenSim worlds for search. But how does she feel that Linden Lab has said search is an area it wants to explore in the future?

Lopes paused. “Well, we’re doing it already,” she said.

Original post by Eric Reuters

SECOND LIFE, Sept 7 (Reuters) - As they have every year for four years, the Second Life faithful tore themselves away from their computers for a weekend of real-life travel to celebrate Linden Lab’s virtual world at SLCC, the Second Life Community Convention.

But this year far fewer of them came out.

SLCC was in Tampa this year, and some said hurricane fears were keeping people at home. Others blamed a sluggish real-world economy and rising airfare prices. Event organizers said only 400 people attended SLCC this year, half of last year’s attendance in Chicago.

Notably absent from the conference were any real-world businesses from outside the virtual worlds industry, or the consulting firms that only last year built Second Life presences for real-world brands. “We invited the Electric Sheep Company and Rivers Run Red, but both apparently decided they didn’t want to attend,” said SLCC organizer Peter Lokke (Second Life: Crucial Armitrage).

“In terms of external business use of Second Life, what we see now isn’t marketing but businesses using Second Life for things like training and meetings,” said Linden Lab’s Glenn Fisher at a panel on SLCC’s sparsely-attended business track. Unlike last year’s conference in Chicago, most of the discussions revolved around issues of relevance only to in-world L$-based enterprises.

Fisher argued businesses were still using his company’s virtual world despite the lack of attendance at SLCC. “Businesses are keeping it quiet because they see being in Second Life as a competitive advantage.”

Second Life founder Philip Rosedale kicked off the event at a Saturday morning breakfast where he was received with warm but not ecstatic applause.

“Last year when I was here I had the ‘Missing Image’ T-shirt,” Rosedale said, alluding to his apology for bugs at SLCC 2007. “I think we made pretty good progress.”

The Second Life community has its own ideas. New Linden CEO Mark Kingdon followed Rosedale and asked the crowd: “We’re working hard to improve stability. Are you seeing that?” But Kingdon’s question was met with a stony silence from the crowd.

A handful of sessions about open source attracted large crowds with people sitting in the aisles and standing in the back of the room.

But the breakout star of SLCC was the burgeoning virtual world educational community. Second Life’s teachers ran three tracks simultaneously all weekend and held an extra full day of sessions on Friday before SLCC formally started. The educators had their own parties, programs, and event name (”SLEDcc”), acting as a conference-within-a-conference.

While the interest of real-world companies and the consulting firms catering to them has waned, most attendees weren’t bothered. Talks formal and informal ran all weekend, with attendees bragging to each other about scoring invites to the exclusive Linden Lab corporate party. And on Saturday night, Second Life dressed up for a night of kinky fun at Kevin Alderman’s (Second Life: Stroker Serpentine) annual “Leather & Lace Ball.”

But even Alderman’s masquerade ball reflected the more modest nature of SLCC this year. Fewer partygoers dressed up in costume than last year, and there was nary a furry in sight.

Nicolas Barrial (Second Life: Nick Rhodes) claims to have been among the first 1000 users of Second Life and the first French national with an avatar. He traveled 14 hours from Paris to Tampa for the event.

Barrial reveled in the chance to link with friends old and new. “First and foremost, SLCC is like a family gathering,” he said.

Original post by Eric Reuters

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