Predictions for 2010

I did lousy on my predictions last year, despite actually having ESP. (I have partial short-term ESP, which is nearly worthless. Really. For example, recently I was walking to meet a friend and I could see into the future a bit that this friend was going to get sick, and I reflected on the three or four solutions I'd try to solve the problem. I then met the friend, sure enough, she got sick, and I pondered the three or four solutions and none of them were very good, i.e. her husband wasn't there to pick her up, etc. etc. So all I got out of the ESP was an extra 30 minutes to think over an array of equally-bad solutions. Ridiculous. What good is ESP?!)

Let me tell you first what I got wrong:

o SL concurrency will get to 100,000 -- no, it is only at about 80,000, and mostly not

o bots will not be banned -- yet they were, and even an old JIRA proposal of mine was fulfilled, namely that they be labelled as bots or "scripted agents".

o traffic will be removed from search -- yet it wasn't, even if nerfed, and thank God for it.

o Philip will write a book -- well, he started a new company and a blog, does that count?

o Anshe Chung will leave SL -- no, she shrank, but didn't leave, possibly due to Linden incentives or bulk rates

o the Lindens will tinker with the LindEx and offer special rates for merchants -- no, they didn't, mercifully, although they did open up the closed store of SLE Work Marketplace and raise commissions on Xstreet

So, what did I get right?

o a senior Linden will leave -- and Robin Harper did leave and many others did too (less senior but still important)

And this, which I'll quote in full:

"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."

So I got that one all right in all details except the Neko Grunge EOW look, as they went Disney with the wizards, and Cybersex with the modern dick-in-a-box look as Crap calls it and of course Oriental, always a failsafe decision. Neko may be in Q1, however...

So gosh, that was a pretty lousy partial ESP performance, folks, what can I tell you. Let me see if I can do better now:

1. Not only will LL not opensource the server code it will put in a fairly stringent set of rules for third-party viewers that will make quite a few opensource freaks howl. Here's what Emerald will do: they will appear to cave on a few features that they don't care about, for example, they will concede to the Lindens' call for leaving people's privacy by not making visible the "hide my online status". They will also fudge the question of the inventory back-up -- it will not be resolved even when the criteria is released for registration, Emerald will offer to have a permissions query, LL will stall, and it will be left undone because the Lindens themselves want to own this feature.

In exchange, the Lindens will say that the ability to get avatar keys is a nothing, as "you can get it anyway" (not really true, but they will use the OS cynical approach on this) and they will say things like the ability to go up 4096 meters instantly to bother people in their skyboxes doesn't matter because said people can use security orbs. So it will be a partial compromise that the cynical Fractured Crystal will grab because he will get most of what he wants and gain "respectability" at the expense of a few extreme diehards whining.

HOWEVER, Emerald devs will continue their forking and closing of eyes to rogue use of their code and even indulge in criminal viewers themselves on alts with a grand sense of impunity, telling themselves that by outwardly conceding the Lindens' wishes "for form's sake" they've bought themselves the right to keep on doing what they want sub-rosa, which is something the Lindens have basically been looking the other way at for a long time already (remember how the former Rob Linden let Discrete Dreamscape's copybot patch remain on the JIRA for months).

2. Yet, not to leave their good deed unpunishing, the Lindens will also create a verified merchants' list that only those willing to give a RL name and address and TAX ID number as well as a pledge that all work is their own will get to be on. They will get more visibility on Xstreet, or some other perk (better rates to cash out?) and that will be an outrage, on top of other outrages suffered this year of this type yet the Lindens will press on  because their top content revenue generators will go for it. They aren't there to encourage the creation of a zillion amateur knock-offs of their superior creations.

3. The teen grid will be closed, and the Lindens will admit 17 years of age with parental permission, or possibly even younger and put it on the parents to maintain.

4. Linden Lab will sell itself. Note that I say "sell itself," and not "IPO". There is no IPO coming, not in this recession and post-VW boom climate. Instead, LL will become a "partner" to something bigger. Perhaps IBM will buy the Enterprise function and keep Lindens on as a content-creation studio, and they will keep that brand or even call themselves Nebraska or something equally stupid but they will all be Lindens. Or, possibly, some big entertainment company, not an obvious one like Sony but some other one will buy some part of SL that will be roped off (perhaps that's how they'll do the essential teen grid merger by putting it into a closed entertainment area owned by MTV or related to the movie Avatar or something). So the selling of LL will come in stages, something like Maxis and EA.com. It could be related to the i-phone, like enabling the mayors of Four Square to have a virtual city.

5. Community Partnership Program will quietly be retired or backburned, and instead Lindens will offer any community that can get the accounts to sign up and retain a $5 per recruitment fee if they join and remain more than 30 or 60 days, i.e. half the fee 30 days, half 60 days. They've already put in something like this essentially, they just need to attach it to existing communities.

6. A senior Linden will return to the fold (I admit having something more on ESP to go on here).

7. The Lindens will not only make an application for the i-Phone, which is "where it's at", they will get into the Augmented Reality business quick as that is clearly the Next Big Thing. So either they will have the API backward-looking, with RL achievements putting virtual stuff into your inventory, which will be compelling to existing customers, or, they will try to Second Lifeize real life by virtualizing or making some casual game or doing *something* that will bring some SL feature into RL. LL is going to be on shakey ground trying to get into the social media and AR biz, but that never stops them.

8. Augmented Reality will become the hugest thing, with everybody scrambling with zealous greed to create APIs and games and features and better phones. Tish of Ugotrade and others who have been wonkily beavering away at this stuff for ages will both be thrilled and repulsed, as it will take mass forms or commercial, non opensource forms that they loathe, but it will become more ubiquitous than certainly VWs or even MMORPs as suddenly, everybody will either be trying to get a free meal by being Mayor of their block on Four Square or trying to level up with enough sight-seeing credits to get a free castle in SL. Layar doesn't work very well now and Apple removed it but it will make a comeback.

9. Nothing will happen to Twitter. It will not be sold. It will continue as it has. It might make a few more deals to "become profitable" which is really a misleading statement because a few deals even with giants to scrape data isn't really a business model for long (unless they signed contracts for years?)

10. Blue Mars will only sputter along; Twinity and Near will not take off. For those who have a taste for virtual worlds, unless they can instantly manipulate their environment even as amateurs through building or decorating beyond their avatar, they will feel disengaged and bored. SL's ability to do this will seem more precious, even without all the bells and whistles the geeks want.

11. The Lindens will move land sales to a web interface like Xstreet -- and take a commission. They will sell this as a search improvement and help to first-time buyers who will find it more idiot-proof and either to search than the now-crippled land search menu inworld which is designed to foil land bots -- which it doesn't even foil because those with land bots can simply have an alt account do another search. The Lindens will try to mollify critics by leaving the ability still to shop by sight inworld by flying around turned on. By separating the new web interface clearly into island "rentals that appear as purchases" and "mainland that is more of a purchase but still ultimately a rental from LL" the Lindens will make more people happy. They will also make it an option to have an auction or to have a buy-it-now like ebay, possibly even using existing ebay code.

This will cause a bump up in land sales and more people will be able to unload mainland that has gone unsold, but of course...there's that Linden grab of yet another piece of what used to be our revenue stream. The system will also have bugs that make it not deliver sometimes. Ultimately, it will not be a good move because the web interface further controls the economy and further carves it up for the Lindens to grab -- and that means that after an initial boost, it will slump again and become as hard as Xstreet is to search through zillions of offerings by people now wanting to get rich quick with land flips. The XStreet real estate function will be removed/replaced with this new user-to-user auction/buy. 

12. Philip Rosedale's "Send Love" Love Machine concept will get venture capital funding and take off, after a fashion as it will be the first social media designed to actually work easily inside a company deliberately (not be nervously partly adapted by only some companies trying to be cool) -- and will be part of a wave of promoting "alternative work culture".

But it will have a funny unintended consequence. As more normal adapters use it (i.e. not the Linden Lab geeky hippies who originated it), people will use it more sparingly, and with less inflation, to praise actual accomplishments of their fellow workers more realistically, which will cause some of them to realize they aren't as wonderful as imagined but also create that realistic snapshot of the company's progress that Philip says he is going for, making his invention actually quite "disruptive". So, you will get sent love, but it will be a more understated love that you expected. So instead of "hey, that was a fabulous concept that you invented in the staff meeting" as it would be done at the Lab, people will get "thanks for boosting web traffic .02 percent this month with that coupon offer".

For example, I looked over everything Philip was doing and sent him love "for making a new to-do list". The old to-do list didn't have everything done on it but that's ok, he made a new one. Look, inventiveness is about having the ego and enthusiasm to project yourself over the precipice and the abyss over and over again and tuning out negativity. Besides, some things don't make sense. Why hire an office manager, an old-fashioned concept from his previous to-do list, when you are going to be nomads going from one temp office to another as a way of also marketing your concept, and where your home base is in a virtual world? A bot can manage that kind of office...

I speak as someone who has taken a year to get through some of my to-do list, but it's an irreplaceable feeling of accomplishment when you do.

Comments

[Darien Caldwell]

Wow. When someone mentioned the other day that Phillip's new company was for making the Love Machine, I certainly thought they were joking and being snarky. I can't believe he dropped SL for *that*.

Good luck with your list this year. If predicting the future was easy, everyone would be doing it.

[cube inada]

Love machines: I think of John Chiat and Chait/Day in the late 80s.

The second to last episode of the tv show "Thirtysomething" had the lead character offered a job in CA at a hip agency "filmed at chiat /days LA office". He was told that they "loved him" as the comeon sales pitch.

This Office was "lauded" as the next great thing, all digital, no desks assigned, no cubicles assigned, nomadic and connected and full of ca meta love:)

it failed by most accounts greatly though Frank Gehry got future gigs from his work making cool interior clubhouse spaces for it.

Machine methods are meant to be cause and effect built, thus easily gamed. as mechanisms for human managament, they fail just about all the time.

You'd get better results with ESP;)

The best real companies-offices are those that allow a person to learn, grow and become rewarded over time with actual respect and new skills and abilities.

trickets and free jolt cola reward coupons ( how the laove machine will HAVE to monetize-btw) are just northern CA cultish stuff that usally just employees scared to leave H1 B's and post interns;).

[Prokofy Neva]

Even better predictions than mind, a whole bundle, see Adam Zaius' claims:

http://danielvoyagerblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/30/other-second-life-predictions-for-2010/

[Prokofy Neva]

Gah, I used to watch Thirtysomething and it jumped the shark for me when Gary died.

I just think Philip will achieve something with his enthusiasm and boyish good looks.

[cube inada]

1.their boss was great...Miles Drenntel.--- so simply black and white and grey.

2.well duh, hes already done that;) but what is personal achievment if it stunts so many others..?

I predict:- whoa- i dont do this..lol but alas SL will be smaller next year, a smaller but paying audience, not much differnt than what Activeworlds or any website finds after their few years of metanews from "the" ever changing FIC hypsters of those businesses. And yes, probably a IBM or media comp FOX. like or edu buyout of SLE which is what i suggested would end up happening to the SL tech a few years ago when questioned about the endgame.

id love to see the server open sourced, but i dont think so.

then again, if your esp is on pay, and its corey whos coming back to make a new engine, etc.. than i see that possibilty and how it would play out in the next 5 years.

upgrade beta or obsolete and sell it to old media.... and do it before any of your medias content makers can buy you out...the motto of the modern tech company....

[melponeme_k]

#11 is already happening. I'm seeing new options popping up. LL is offering the option to rent mainland in small plots or whole sims. Mainland won't be what it is now in the next few months. Even with blight, this was a golden age for smaller land owners.

#3 Definitely. All the past changes in regards to age restriction have been moving towards this opening of the grid. But the age to play will be a lot lower than 17. Most teen rated games allow 13 or 14 year olds to play. The onus to behave will be off SL's back an on to ours. Still, I can't say it wouldn't be nice to have my niece visit me in world instead of her being sent to a baby gulag.

[Prokofy Neva]

Are you saying that the Lindens themselves will go into the mainland rental business? That would be truly awful. Or do you see them *already* doing this?

[melponeme_k]

I think they are going to do it. Which I take it to mean, that they can make more money owning their land outright and just farming it out on an as the customer needs basis. Rather than depend on a land market. Which has always bothered them.

What is your interpretation of this new option?

http://secondlife.com/land/rentals.php?lang=en-US

[Prokofy Neva]

They've always had a system for short-term rentals, which is what this is, for 3 days. They undercut the market with these prices, I think, but I don't know how much demand there is for short-term rentals.

[Liquidator Neximus]

"Emerald will offer to have a permissions query" - this was done a long long time ago.

[Anna Gulaev]

Let's see how I did (I made my predictions in the comments to your post)...

o Concurrency will continue to grow in early '09 and...fall in the second half of the year...By the end of the year it will be under 70K. -- Pretty close.

o ...Some will be surprised that the [grid] shrinkage continues after [the price increase], as it becomes apparent that full estates are shrinking, too. -- Fail.

o LL will lower estate tier to $259 -- Fail.

o LL will create one new themed mainland area, and this will be all the new mainland regions that will come online -- Pretty close. Zindra. I'm gonna say the LL home thingy is too late in the year and too pre-release to count, and blake sea not really open for regular use. That leaves Zindra as the only new mainland available for residents.

o LL will make deals with some residents to entice them to move...Some residents will be forced to take these deals. -- I'm calling this good. I thought there'd be forced consolidation on mainland, but forced movement to Zindra is close enough. Nobody else thought there'd be forced relocation anywhere.

o An additional resident group will be tapped to create "things to do" [ala blake sea]. -- I'm not following SL close enough to know if this happened. Did it?

o an external company will create some grand new "things to do" campaign. -- I'm pretty sure this didn't happen. Fail.

o 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. --Fail. Except the premium drop. Probably happened.

o Anshe will get into content creation in a big way... -- Fail.

o shop.onrez.com will fold. A new external shopping site will gain traction. XstreetSL will begin to fade. -- I'm taking credit for this one. Onrez? Gone. SLX? GOM'd, and about to be taxed. Slapt.me? Gaining traction may be too much credit, but I'll take it.

o ...opensim grids... -- No damned clue. Haven't heard a word about opensim grids this year.

o M Linden will leave LL. Philip will take his place "temporarily". He'll start to wear black turtlenecks. -- Fail, but I'm repeating this prediction for 2010.

o A few new resident-created things-to-do and best-of-SL tools will appear -- Okay, I admit I planned to be the one to do this, but it didn't get done. Probably won't, either. I'm pretty much done with SL.

[Press Secretary]

What would you think could be the impact of the Court of Justice of Virtual Worlds on residents life in 2010?

http://court-of-justice-of-virtual-worlds.blogspot.com/

[Prokofy Neva]

I don't think anything of a Court that is appointed merely by some self-appointed princess. Real justice comes from real democracy that starts with a constituent assembly, which then elects or even appoints judges, but you don't have a justify system just spring full-blown out of a royal head and exist without the other two branches of government.

[PocoLoco Darwin]

As one might imagine I can't stand being in agreement w/Prok (sorry Prok, I couldn't resist the ribbing. Been needing to vent some lingering vexation)
This so called "Court of Justice of Virtual Worlds" neither has jurisdiction nor even an understanding of jurisdiction.
The site looks to be some kind of back-story resource for role play activity. I bet you get plenty of hits though. This blog is widely read and I'm sure you spammed the link in other places.