Time for the annual predictions again. You know, I do have the power of clairvoyancy, and I have to say, it's annoying, because people never believe me. I don't have a very *good* version of this power/gene, because I can't see much, or that far, but, what I get, I get. I find that in fact, seeing into the future isn't really seeing into the future, because, um, it didn't happen yet, but...it's more about paying *really good attention to the the present*. You know, like the Wizard of Oz reaching into Dorothy's basket and finding the picture of Auntie Em...
I did pretty well with my 2008 predictions. I said Linden Lab wouldn't open source it's server code -- and it didn't, and it won't, so I don't even really have to include that as this year's prediction, either. I was right that "shedloads" of VWs *did not* come to "unseat" Second Life, either. Google was Deadly, Twinity never got working for a lot of people, VastPark eternally stayed in Beta, Multiverse remained inscrutable, Sony's Home was a flop, and all those open sim SL clones were filled with badly-working code and dull drama (what a combo!) I said LL would announce "interoperability with some aspect of the avatars with another world" -- and that kinda sorta happened with that first hop by Zha Ewry, but...hmmm...
I think when I said LL would open up a second grid where some select few would get to advance their businesses, the fulfillment of that prediction was when Rivers Run Red got an exclusive contract to do a suite of office services with LL. I'm not sure that physically takes place on some stand-alone separate logged in grid, but...it's like a second grid, and may in time become one, so as to break free from the blinged central asset server. Like the Central Committee of the CPSU, I've always wondered why you can't just...have two of them. You know, *another* "central asset server* lol. Like, in...Tatarstan lol.
When I talked about a "blackout" in real life restoring the sense of fragility of virtual worlds, I should have crossed out that word and put "recession". Oh, well, too late now...I was sure right about mobile phones being more important, however.
But...like I said, the population kept growing and growing...As for the "suit for fraud" over banks, well, hmmm, that didn't happen, unless you call Intblubs absurd IPO to raise a war chest to sue LL over the openspaces, but...naah, I won't give myself a gimme on that one. No lawsuit on libel, either. Naaah, it's just too hard to do that. I was right that the lawsuits would ebb, though, and they have. No there there.
I thought something was going to happen with China. Hmm, boy, I was wrong about that. And...nope, still not getting anything on that for this year.
It was a no-brainer to say that big corporations would not be using SL as much.
I don't know what I was smoking when I said the more mainstream blogs would start integrating more with virtual worlds. That's simply not happening. Even with Daily Kos kinda sorta having some SL presence for their annual wingding. No, I guess I don't have clairvoyancy, duh.
Wrong also about age verification -- it went nowhere -- and Red Light District, which never caught on. I don't know why. I have met like one actual person who went there -- and then came back to SL.
My idea that advertisers would continue to flop, but that some would help the arts to "burgeon" -- you know, I should rename that blog to "Wishful Thinking" instead of "Predictions". Gaaah. And...SL strikebreakers for the Writers' Guild? Good Lord, what WAS I smoking? I should have changed it not to "Wishful Thinking" but "Fanciful Scenarios That Will Never Happen". I wonder what made me think they would. I guess it was seeing a few crossover campaigns...
Metaplace didn't open yet, it's still in beta, but so far, so good. He's doing all the right things, and even has Google sketch-up buildings loading now.
Uh, you know that idea I had in 2006 about how North Korea, the UN Secretary General and South Korea would meet in Second Life? Well, hold that thought...
So with less than 50 percent accuracy, why should you read further? Well, because it's...at least some 50 percent accuracy : )
1. Second Life will continue to grow, and will reach the 100,000 concurrency mark and pass it.
2. No, that won't be due to bots. Bots will continue to be permitted, will not be banned, and likely not even forced to have paid accounts. But Lindens will try to make a gesture toward the bot issue by merely making it possible to report them for "resource abuse" and such tickets will get a more kindly read, especially if on a parcel on a mainland sim where the other owners can't even come home to their own lots due to the camping. LL might deprecate the camping script, make it illegal, or make forced, lengthy log-ons without log-offs a TOS offense or a policy -- something. They'll do some little thing, but not ban bots, and some people will continue to use them en masse.
3. Lindens will remove traffic from search results. This hugely undesirable and controversial action will be vigorously applauded by the claques on the JIRA and forums, but there will be enormous screaming in the land, and not from popular clubs (many of whom are in a bots arms race with other clubs merely to stay in the view, and will be secretly relieved if traffic is removed). No, the screaming will come from ordinary merchants with stores with traffic that isn't artificially boosted. The economy will take a huge, severe hit as the engine of sales -- search/places plus traffic sorts -- will be amputated. The Lindens won't care, however, as it will merely shake loose the smaller content creators, the people without sufficient funds to buy expensive classifieds or with sufficient market share or RL media coverage to get top word-of-mouth sales, and that's the sort of social Darwinism the Lindens like to see happen to prune their world.
In response, once both vendors and shoppers get the huge realization of what's just happened to the world, they will recreate their own traffic/search system. Various blogs, services, scripts, etc. will emerge to recreate the search/places/traffic ranking/sales formula. And the Lindens will justify their action by saying they encourage such resident monitoring or reporting on traffic, and they will leave traffic on the land menu to display. (And for extra geeky spiteful credit, they'll make that an option to turn off or on, so that big RL business embarassed by their poor traffic will instantly turn it off so it won't show, but inworld businesses proud of merited traffic will leave it on).
So picture some widget invented that will scrape visible traffic data and feed it to a website where it will be ranked...thereby keeping the motivation for botting...but various site owners will spotcheck or accept abuse reports and weed out bots. In any event, expect a lot of havoc and destruction with this one.
4. Lindens will continue to blur the distinction between mainland and private islands, and between themselves as platform providers and their residents as content and services providers, and roll out their first zoned sims. In order to fight the price jacking that occurs in the auction process, they will either roll out huge numbers of them, or make the buyable inworld for a fixed price, like First Land used to be, only by verified accounts, i.e. payment information on file, premium account, tied to an IP address and only one credit card. If that sounds like insufficient protection against farming fixed land accounts, you're right, but the Lindens will sic peer pressure on the problem and enable ARing of the farmers.
Lindens will come up with a theme that will be what I'm calling "Neko" these days, i.e. urban grunge, post-apocalypse, and furry lite (Nekos are basically furry lite). So they'll have a bombed-out end-of-the-world look, all kinds of bloggers will wittily talk about how it *is* the EOW and LL is desperate, but LL will laugh all the way to the bank because it will be a huge seller. This may or may not go hand in hand with a policy simply not to open up the Mainland auction ever again to whole sims or part new sims, but only used land or their own themed land. I'm betting they will not make a decision or policy about it, but just continue by inertia not to open up the Mainland auctions to full sims anymore.
5. At least one senior Linden manager will leave LL and go to some better virtual world or social media, and may take some residents with them.
6. Philip Linden will be writing a book, all throughout the year, that he will have a ghost-writer helper for...and that ghost-writer *might* be Daniel Terdiman. Or...hm...there are so many out-of-work journalists these days, let me keep thinking...
7. The Lindens are going to move closer to their goal of becoming a There-like platform that licenses third-party content to sell to users without going wild promoting amateur UGC by tinkering with the LindEx. Something new will be added to the LindEx. They will also move toward becoming "more like" the totalitarian economies of the Soviet Union and Red China which they emulate. So just as the Soviet Union had its "golden ruble" (the best exchange rate for large enterprises in other countries, etc.), its "petrodollar" (what its oil was selling at); it's beriozka rate for foreigners; it's black-market rate, etc. so the LindEx will develop different values for the Linden. Large, bulk buyers or sellers will get a special rate. Or, certain certified/licensed/chosen businesses will get a "merchants' rate". Or...something will happen in the direction we've already seen, with the rate moving up in value from 264 to 263 Lindens per US $1.00
8. Anshe Chung will finish leaving Second Life. This will be for various reasons -- attrition, the moving of people on to open spaces (yes, they will buy their own rather than paying ACS's overpriced rates), the moving on to Linden mainland zoned sims, or other rental empires with more service and better prices - and also because ACS will be losing money and find some place where money might be better made (IMVU), maybe even on their own virtual world somewhere. Of course, it's also possible that a Madoff-like-thing will be discovered behind the great empire.
9. The Lindens will raise mainland tier to $295. They will claim they can't have two classes of people. They will try to mollify irate mainland owners who actually have less features than islands by saying a) they've cleaned up ad farms and camping and provided better-looking sims and b) they will add the view of top scripts or some other token new feature. This will happen by the third quarter.
10. Open Sim and other opensource projects will continue to be for geeky insiders only, and continue to flop, big time, as they won't care about commerce, customers, community. They will be the Linux of Virtual Worlds. Like Linux, they will attract fierce and sectarian followers who bore everybody to death telling you how their system is vital to the whole sector and even purchased by, um, IBM or something, but everyone will continue to laugh because they will remain rude, clunky, counterintuitive, sectarian and unfriendly and everyone will keep walking around them.
I will have some social media predictions soon. Basically, I think all the services are going to crash, big-time. A few might be bought out by Google, i.e. Facebook, but nothing much exciting will happen in them. SL will look fabulous by comparison.
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Posted by: Zalary - TypePad Support | December 25, 2008 at 05:52 PM
My own predictions...
Concurrency will continue to grow in early '09 and then level off. Growth in concurrency will be entirely bot-related, but bot-supported businesses will begin to fold faster than they are formed. Concurrency will fall in the second half of the year. It will never hit 100K. By the end of the year it will be under 70K. Someone will do a study that says 60% of them are bots.
The grid shrinkage will slow a lot in early 09 as those bailing before or shortly after the first price increase leave. Shrinkage will pick up again as the second increase nears. Some will be surprised that the shrinkage continues after that, as it becomes apparent that full estates are shrinking, too.
LL will lower estate tier to $259. Sarah Nerd, having just gotten back into mainland in a big way, will be banned for three days for saying FU to the Lindens.
LL will create one new themed mainland area, and this will be all the new mainland regions that will come online. There will be some new tier structure or some other incentive for residents to consolidate their holdings into larger parcels in fewer regions. LL will make deals with some residents to entice them to move so they can consolidate abandoned land into full sims, which they'll auction off. Some residents will be forced to take these deals.
An additional resident group will be tapped to create "things to do". There will be promise of more, but mostly this will be an attempt to mollify as the real push becomes apparent: an external company will create some grand new "things to do" campaign.
A new premium package will be announced. It will include more free tier. Premiums numbers will continue to drop. LL will later drop the requirement of premium for mainland ownership, and then do away with premium.
Anshe will get into content creation in a big way, and assert more control over XstreetSL. Her estate business will shrink dramatically. She'll come up with some new entertainment outlet as "what to do" becomes the new mantra to save SL.
shop.onrez.com will fold. A new external shopping site will gain traction. XstreetSL will begin to fade.
Three new opensim grids will appear. Four will fold. One will gain traction and become a viable business, but there will be no real resident business. This will be a geek playground. It will be called by its proponents "the new SL" or "the real SL", and it will still suck.
M Linden will leave LL. Philip will take his place "temporarily". He'll start to wear black turtlenecks.
A few new resident-created things-to-do and best-of-SL tools will appear and be actually useful, but not being part of the viewer they won't amount to much in '09. They will begin to clump residents into fewer, larger groups, though, and already-popular stores will thrive.
Posted by: anna gulaev | December 25, 2008 at 07:55 PM
I don't see any tier hike on the Mainland happening, and not just because I would leave Second Life entirely if it were to pass.
The Mainland represents the starting block for all new Second Life residents and we as Premiums shoulder that burden. The insanely few regions the Lindens host themselves do next to nothing to keep new residents occupied. In those first few hours when the new resident didn't come in at the behest of another there is wandering and interaction with the residents closest to their starting point. In order for these places to continue to exist, and serve the non-teleporting, non-searching new resident, the price should go down or at least stay the same. When I argue the cost of maintaining servers and bandwidth I repeatedly point to the reality of computing: prices go down, not up. Given current costs of the hardware and pipes necessary, full region (processor) tier at $75 a month would still produce a profit, and $95 would be acceptable. $195 is an insult, and $295 a crime.
The one other factor that I believe is the most likely reason Mainland tier won't rise is the reality of it: unlike islands, Mainland can't realistically "disappear". When a private island is no longer needed, its disappearance doesn't leave a hole in the grid. A 50% rise in Mainland tier would produce an equal if not greater abandonment of land in Second Life as it has in the OpenSpace debacle. Now with over 3,000 islands lost imagine the Mainland: nearly its entirety owned by Governor Linden and paid for off the top by the Lab as they can't just delete the regions. They can't afford the exodus of the hobbyist and less-discretionary-income user.
On a personal note, I continued to pay the current horrendous tier during my over-a-year absence both because of sincere obligation, belief that someday I might check in again (as I have) and the fact that honestly a couple hundred bucks didn't mean much. I may not have been happy paying twice what I thought was fair in terms of value, but I will not pay three times the cost of what I am getting.
With the hideous new front page pointing again to the more "social" aspects of Second Life's use, a raise in price to provide space for those activities is unwarranted and evil.
Posted by: Clubside Granville | December 25, 2008 at 11:04 PM
What I *have* to say Clubside, each time this argument comes up about "cost of servers comes down, not up" is that Second Life is not about the cost of servers. If anything, you and others should have realized that by now. Constantly focusing narrowly and obsessively on the cost of racks as you know them in real life, which house one-dimensional or two-dimensional data, text and images that are by and large not as bandwidth intensive, is not the cost of a virtual world.
The cost of a virtual world is software-as-service -- and more. I don't know what the received geek wisdom on the costs of SAS "should" be, but along with this raw server cost and the cost of computing, there is the cost of maintaining the billing, administration, content-production, governance, community management, etc. etc. that the Lindens do. That is pricey. That price does not go down, but goes up, as the cost of human labour doing things like this always does.
Geeks were always arguing that computers and the Internet would "save money". You "wouldn't have mailing costs". You could crunch numbers automatically that used to take rooms full of people. Except, now, every single household and every single office has a huge, expensive, non-sustainable budget now to struggle with, called their "IT budget". Whatever the cost of a hand-duplication by copier and bulk mailing in 1980, it was dwarfed overall for me by 2000 given the cost of purchase of PCs, networking, and most of all, *network administrator* who is the most expensive piece of the entire pie (and the one constantly telling you that you'll "save money" -- the way we are hearing now about virtual worlds -- because they don't factor in the cost of *themselves*).
This incredibly myopic view is simply not arguable. It is not how you reflect the cost of a VW. And the Lindens, who have alternately crashed and jacked their prices, have not overcome this myopia, either. One day they perceive Second Life as "the cost of servers which should go down as all technology costs go down"; the next day, they look over their vast mob of 300 workers where only yesterday there were 30, and say, "OMG, the cost of labour on virtual worlds has gone UP UP UP."
$295 isn't a crime; $195 isn't either. $295 is about what it costs to make themed continents, fill them with themed content, and administer them from griefing. Advertising also is a factor. In fact, $295 is a bargain.
The Lindens will likely combine the increase in mainland tier with a reduction in island tier -- perhaps Anna is right. They might make islands $250, and mainland $250, and get some islanders to displace to mainland (they will remove the grandfather on islands, too).
Well, as I sometimes have to say to my customers: prims have to come from somewhere; they do not come out of my ass; they have to be paid for by me, and that means you.
The cost of 300 Lindens has to come from somewhere. Even if you could prune some of them here and there, basically, they are sustaining the 1.5 million log-ons and 9 million try-mes, and that's not trivial.
As for the idea that raising mainland tier leaves holes, well, sure, we've seen holes before, that sit on the auction and don't get bids, but by and large, auctions of recycled land get snapped up. They might stage this as follows:
o no new mainland full sim auctions
o a delay in rolling out any new themed community that will go on the auctions
o announcement that increase in tier will take place in 3 months, which will be the longest lead-in they've ever had, along with some new advantage to premiums, i.e. 1024 of "free" tier instead of 512
o announcement of de-grandfathering as "only fair" because "we can't have" two classes of residents under socialism -- and the mainland will get some new aspect to its features (some little thing)
The Lindens don't care if you or I can't pay for our mainland, just as they didn't care if people could not pay for their OS sims. They have bigger fish to fry getting long-term, bulk purchase contracts from business, government, education, and they will steadily build that.
The management of 3,000 sims out of more than 30,000 is not something the Lindens can justify beyond a certain point.
Your certitude that newbies will always land on the Mainland, and there will "alway be an England" is touching. I used to think that, too. Not anymore. The distinction between island and mainland is now blurred and blurring more with the USS Sea of FIC project, and soon, newbies will land on patches that are in fact islands, where they get flat prices and the land is set a zillion minutes autoreturn to automatically clear them after 7 or 14 or 30 days. Desmond's idea is brilliant, they'll copy that.
Posted by: Prokofy | December 26, 2008 at 04:43 AM
One of my alts has 1024 sq m of free tier rather than 512. Darned if I know why... I don't think she has ever even talked to a Linden, let alone ingratiated herself with one. (I take that back: she did get a L$69 tip once from a guest at the Galaxy, whose profile hinted that he/she was a Linden Lab employee's alt.)
Posted by: Tammy Nowotny | December 26, 2008 at 11:41 AM
1. Oh yes. Definitely. That's a prediction everyone will continue to make and to meet :) Even if the ratio of new users might flatten out (as it has for several months), the total number of residents grows; hours-per-user grow; active users grow; and concurrency will grow, too, probably quicker than we imagine, specially if LL is in for a big overhaul of their servers and network bandwith (something which many — myself included — believe is one of the reasons why concurrency grows so much slower than anything else).
2. Very good idea on "robot abuse report for overusage of resources"! In fact, it ties neatly into M & Jack Linden's ideas that resources might be tied to parcels and land. No wait. That's actually *your* idea, from early 2005 ;)
3. Yes, Prok, I've heard that argument of yours from the local Mom & Pop groceries complaining how Government never does anything to prevent the megamalls to completely wipe out the small businesses...
Grow or die will be the next motto for SL. This means that SL, *if you wish to compete grid-wide* (and this is the key point here!), will only allow the big and powerful to manage a *global* presence.
But... don't forget the small, local, neighbourhood shops. The major reason they don't go away iRL is because it's far easier to cross the street to buy something there (specially if it's high-quality items) instead of driving to the next megamall. Also, very few "big merchants" in SL think about the international market: speak English, or go away. As we have learned from our Japanese friends, Japanese SL residents mostly go to their ultra-sophisticated shops (where you sometimes don't even get a clue of what is being offered for sale), and my, their content is *awesome* — and there haven't been any complaints from Japanese merchants, not yet at least.
So removing traffic will "hurt" SL's economy as allowing megamalls iRL to "hurt" RL's economy. What will cease to happen is artificial bloating of tiny shops crammed full with 'bots and selling useless, low-quality, or copybotted content... but they will *still* make sales from their neighbourhoods.
In fact, *if* LL gets rid of traffic, it *might* give rise to the birth of a new concept: "neighbourhoods" (not communities) where residents "shop around". This always existed to a degree, specially on the international communities, but it might just grow. In a sense, this might come close (but never *that* close) as SL during the telehub days...
4. Totally agree.
5. We'll see. LL is big enough that some rotativity of their loyal employees will naturally occur. It's hard to keep *30* employees happy all the time for years and years, and 300 is next to impossible.
6. That would be a quite good idea! Publishers, get on the queue and start making bids ;) Hammie actually writes books better than articles, IMHO, I hope Philip picks him as ghost writer ;) I can even suggest a name-catching title: "My Life — Biography of a Metaverse Architect" ;)
7. I don't see the "why" for that change, since all the other exchanges put together are just a fraction of the volume going through LindeX. The reason? The LindeX is *built-in* in the client. Granted, I could see LL allowing access to the client's in-built link to the LindeX (say, for international markets, where LL still persists in have limited options; did you see how they basically dropped PayPal support on the Teen Grid and thus totally prevented the Teen Grid to get new users outside of the US?). For 2010, it might make sense to integrate the LindeX with other OpenSim grid's currencies using your suggested approach but mmmh I think it's a bit too early for 2009.
8. It's possible. With the resources Anshe has, I'd just focus on the Chinese market, and compete with HiPiHi using OpenSim ;)
9. That's not compatible with 4. If they wish people to get back to the mainland, the mainland has to be *cheaper* than private islands, *and* have the same tools (preferably *more*). So, no, I don't think that will happen at all. Unless, of course, they're dropping the whole concept of private islands (ie. not connected in any way to the mainland) and lose 20,000 of them by the third quarter... ;)
10. LOL on Linux :) Remember, 60% of the world's Internet servers run open source software, and that number grows every month so I'm afraid your theories are not quite in tune with the reality :) but are just wishful thinking (oh yes, Google, Yahoo, and Facebook all use some sort of open-source software to run their servers — frankly, they had no choice). Oh, btw, Typepad also uses open source software to deliver your blog to thousands of readers every day — as reliably as 9 out of 10 of the most reliable web hosting companies in the world. I guess you should switch to Microsoft's Live blogging system instead, since it's the only provider of blogging software that does not use some sort of open source software...
Posted by: Gwyneth Llewelyn | January 05, 2009 at 03:55 PM
References for my article (eaten up by Typepad):
On the number of Internet servers running open source software:
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2008/12/24/december_2008_web_server_survey.html
On reliability:
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2009/01/02/new_york_internet_and_westhost_are_the_most_reliable_hosting_companies_in_december_2008.html
Posted by: Gwyneth Llewelyn | January 05, 2009 at 04:06 PM