Linden Lab to Educators: Our Foot Is Bleeding

Am I being harsh in the title? Well, not compared to this tweet:
@john_carter Linden Lab to Educators: Drop Dead. Well, back atcha, guys. "

Kate Miranda posts a good explanation on her Music Island blog about why Linden Lab is acting stupidly in removing educator discounts. I commented, but I'll repeat my thoughts here, because I believe education is one of the strongest use cases for virtual worlds, and I hate to see a major player like Second Life snub the educator community.

People Continue To Use Software They Learned In School

But there's an even better reason why it is a bad move to remove the educator discount: Educational discounts is a standard in the software industry, and for good reason. Why is Microsoft interested in getting Office into students' hands, and Adobe getting Photoshop, etc? Because the alternative is that schools use Open Office and Gimp. And because humans are creatures of habit; if we learn on one piece of software, we like to stick with it.

So, as the kids these days say, "epic fail" to Linden Lab, who by the traffic on the Second Life educators' mailing list, are going to be dealing with students learning on OpenSim platforms.


Here's how Kate Miranda puts it:

"I don't have any research but anecdotally most of the interesting builds ... are all educational or non-profit sims."

"Despite the occasional platitude, all [Linden Lab's] actions seem to betray a firm mindset that Second Life's attraction and retention rate is solely or primarily the result of what Linden Lab has developed, Linden marketing and orientation of new avatars. What would Second Life be like without the user-created content?"

The logic being:
You lose educators, you lose most of the good content, and thus, you lose the community.

Or the expanded version:

Premise 1: What makes Second Life special is the community.
Premise 2: The community stays because of the people and because there are interesting things to see and do.
Conclusion 1: Lose the interesting things to see and do, and Second Life is less unique and thus open to its competitors. This is one of my key points in my last blog post, and Linden Lab's announcement yesterday seems to make me, and those with similar viewpoints, look prophetic.
Premise 3: The education and non-profit areas of Second Life are a significant portion of the interesting content in Second Life.
Premise 4: Linden Lab doesn't value educator content, based on the announcement of the rate hikes.
Conclusion 2: Based on 3 and 4, Linden Lab does not see *or* does not care that educators and non-profits provide a significant portion of the interesting content in Second Life.
Conclusion 3a: IF Linden Lab does not see the value in educators in Second Life, then they have a naive idea of where the value of their communities are. (As I mentioned in the last article, they apparently think it's in vampires.)
Conclusion 3b: IF Linden Lab does see the value in educators in Second Life, then the only possible reason I can draw from it is that they are grooming themselves for acquisition.

Is Linden Lab for Sale?

Funny I should mention that, that's what the rumors say, too. According to sources inside Linden Lab, there was an offer made to buy Linden Lab, but it wasn't Microsoft, and it was too low.

And why wouldn't Linden Lab try to be acquired? In 2006 they hired John Zdanowski, fresh off the sale of HouseValues.com. (Zdanowski left last year to go to Avatar Reality working on Blue Mars) Investors to Linden Lab have been in it upwards of 10 years, and the major venture for 5 or 6. After claiming to be unsuccessful in the Enterprise marketplace**, and laying off more than a third of the staff, "going back to basics" is hardly a growth plan. But, as Tateru points out her article, by all appearances Linden Lab's slimming down points to making itself more desirable for buyers.

And if I'm right in my last post, that Linden Lab doesn't have an apparent business plan, then this would make sense - their plan is to slim, sell out, and cash out.

Philip's Legacy

Many may have forgotten, but in 2005 at the first Second Life Community Convention, Linden Lab's founder Philip Rosedale said they weren't looking to sell the company. They have taken venture money since then, and with it goes some of / most of the control of a company. Would Philip allow a sale? Here's a clear utopian - he's "building a new country" as he's famously quoted. In his interviews for documentaries you always see him flying a plane or walking through a park, talking about how Second Life is changing the world. Why would he let that go?

Here's why. The open source of the viewer, and Philip's personal involvement in the project with SnowGlobe, has led to a proliferation of Second Life variant worlds based on OpenSim. And while I was in a wait-and-see stance a few years ago, OpenSim has come a long way. There are now a variety of solid virtual world service providers (VWSP - going to coin this if it hasn't been, already.) that are built off of the OpenSim platform that provide fairly stable environments with improved tool-sets and administrative abilities.

Rosedale's legacy is safe. Even if Linden Lab collapses, what Second Life has done for virtual worlds is clear, and be it called OpenSim or Second Life or whatnot - the shaping of how we use virtual worlds is permanently changed due to Linden Lab and Rosedale's efforts.

Dusan Writer, Metanomics founder and blogger who I agree with ... oh ... 65% of the time, disagrees with Tateru and me. I present a rebuttal in his comments of his latest blog. Which I've just linked here, because it's only fair you hear another perspective from a different outsider.

** (I will say this again: I still am unconvinced that they weren't making numbers - Linden Lab has not released sales goals and actual sales numbers for SL Enterprise.)

Special Disclaimer: The views I express are my own, and no one else's. I am not representing any company or organization. Additionally, I have previously contracted with Linden Lab under a previous company. I currently work with Second Life as a development platform and with other virtual world platforms.