Worlds for Windows or How the Tech Press *and* the SLogosphere Got Played

I was thrilled when I heard the rumour that Microsoft might buy out Second Life, although it didn't seem like much of a match made in Metaversal Heaven, but it would at long last realize my long-held dream of Worlds for Windows, a merging of documents and worlds that might at long last make virtuality ubiquitous. What I was really hopeful about was not technology, however, but *governance*. *Normalcy*.

It was even more hilarious to see not so much how the mutually-masturbating Silicon Valley and Alley tech press echoed and reiterated the rumours, but how the SLogosphere, starting with the notorious Herald, got played, too, with their own smug assurance that the tech press was only getting trolled by Woodbury Worker-in-Chief Tizzers Foxchase. ("Every Leninist must have a cube in their home...")

That's because it was Tizzers -- and the Herald and Ciaran -- that got played most likely by an outgoing Linden, Spike Linden, whose last day at the unscientific Lab was yesterday -- or more likely still, that Spike got played by an still-remaining Linden actually talking about a real deal and using this method to leak it to buy time for LL to ask for more. That's all. Pretty simple.

Spike was one of those Lindens who was always too close to the griefers for comfort -- I'll never forget how he stood by laughing during a Concierge party a few years ago when first Alyx Stoklitsky, another WU operative, and then some former Intlib janitor with a name like Malodorous Figree, stood on my head and stalked me around the sim. When Spike contacted me recently to comment further on a case I had intervened in, I recalled this incident to him, and like Pathfinder, who infamously said he was "only human" (and that explains why he deliberately incited the IRC channel thugs to massively AR me and get me banned), Spike said he was "new then" and "didn't realize it" (He was a year old; I had asked him to do something at the time and he declined).

I'd like to believe in Spike. I really would. But...I remember when Spike first arrived on my lawn in Wakeley to follow up on massive griefing attacks, and my heart sunk at the name of the Linden I was expecting to do the job of governance for me -- he loooked and sounded like some punk kid out of Clockwork Orange (he was in the UK office). I was protesting the making of some 20 accounts, all with the first name "Prokofy," all designed to harass me in various ways -- and he was lib-Lindening me about how they couldn't be sure if they weren't just other legitimate people. The accounts of that day remain to this day, although other Prokofy grief accounts have been removed. That's Spike's little present to me for evermore, I guess.

Over time, I appreciated that Spike was helpful and did his job, but I know that he simply resonated with the griefers in ways that normal law-abiding citizens do not. Proof of that was his goodbye party yesterday, a secretive affair where the invitation said that "at Spike's request" (!) a "griefing area" had been set aside on the sim where his party was to take place. Spike, good luck getting a job in the real world, what can I tell you.

As his last act of charity, that might compensate for his griefer-tropic sins, Spike re-opened my long-languishing appeal of my ban from the Concierge Group over the spasms of some other Linden with a girlfriend among the land barons in Concierge who prodded him to nail me -- for my critique of yet another geeky Linden who put out an jargony and incomprehensible notecard on script limits. I'm not going to be holding my breath.

But...whereas Spike Linden (or Tofu Linden or Aimee Linden, others being canned from the UK office) might have decided to start this rumour, like a lot of rumours, it had legs because of in fact some noises from MSFT.

And here's where they ALL have been played thoroughly, starting with Pixeleen who apparently is now so suffering from middle-aged male menopause that he can no longer read more than a paragraph of an article: professional tech media, as distinct from blogs with names like "Tom's Hardware" (that's a cute name, sounds fun) or "Tech Eye" (you are all destined for death, according to Loren Feldman, ever since the AOL TechCrunch takeover, do you read me?!) -- namely Zdnet.com (which will survive) *actually contacted Microsoft*.

I''m amazed that the SL bloggers missed this, from Mary-Jo Foley yesterday:

Microsoft isn’t commenting on the Linden Lab report, but I’ve been asking around and hear from my sources that Microsoft may have made overtures not only toward Linden Lab, but other social-gaming vendors lately. The word from my sources is the Softies are not simply talking partnerships; they’re talking outright purchase.

Microsoft has been working to expand its gaming franchise beyond first-person shooter games. And wouldn’t 3D social games make a nice addition to the Xbox Live Dashboard and/or as a way to expand the potential user base for Kinect, Microsoft’s Xbox sensor that is launching in early November?

I'm going to bet her sources aren't goofball griefers like Tizzers or exiting Lindens like Spike or the exasperating Tateru, who keeps citing these Linden Lab employees who leak to her all the time, but *her own sources separate from all this sillyness* within Microsoft.

And, to make it even more persuasive, as it turns out, not only as the Mighty M looking at SL, but other games, as she explains.

So while Uri is cackling that this is one for the Hall of Mirrors Which is the Interwebs, it's actually just a case of all of them tripping over their own dicks again.

IBM and possibly Cisco for a short time might have been looked at as possible buyers of LL because at least they network machines together and run servers. Microsoft runs software and platforms that are on servers, but they don't seem like the leaders of the cloud pack (but I am not informed). Microsoft knows how to do something better, however, and that is to BE geeky (can you get more quintessentially geeky than Bill Gates?) and have evangelists like Scoble (who left some years ago but was emblematic of geekitude) and yet not ACT GEEKY and be overrun by script kiddies and opensource thugs. They are grownups, and they are a powerful counterweight to all the technocommunism and anarcho-capitalism which is merely geek state capitalism on the web.

That has got to be the best news EVER for Second Life. Getting rid of the extremists and insular assholes who can't make the interface usable and who keep sidetracking on stupid obstructive toys like Windlight or Mesh or Display Names would be a Good Thing (although some of the tekkies say that these hastily-implemented features were all about LL decorating its ass better for takeover).

Ann Otoole always invokes this vision, which in my amateur's mind has grown to be even more of a fantasy. That involves serious, grown-up geeks who aren't snivelling sandbox foxes with crew-cuts and polo shirts with their names stiched on them coming into the grid room (er, that section of the giant happy *barn* that is the open-plan LL office) and making all these losers shape up or ship out -- frog-marching some of them to the curb after they first freeze them offsides somewhere and go through and close off all the backdoors they created to spy on or exploit user and other information and best of all, taking over the JIRA from the junta that has squatted on there for years.

Lindens spying on customers? Well, we don't *know* that they do that, except...I believe they do. I base this on the infamous time that Jauni Wu, who was hired by his Linden friend Ben Linden to build the German castle in the welcome area, told me that Ben had informed him that my account was overdue, information he got by peeking into my account. Of course, I don't *have* to believe that, as I have no evidence, and Jauani is a liar; he also claimed that he had information I was "collecting alimony and welfare" -- and neither have ever been true.

Microsoft employees may not be above spying on users, either -- look how a Google engineer got caught spying on teens he had befriended in real life. Creepy! Probably lots more of this goes on than we know, but at least a mature and large company like MSFT would have all kinds of policies and procedures in place, and would haven't, at once time, made up a third of their staff with fanboyz out of the user base, the way LL has.

Ann has a notion that Lindens or anyone associated with SL is now unemployable. That seems unfair, as several top Lindens have gone on to get perfectly respectable jobs at other virtual worlds (like Sony or V-side) and we just read that an LL biggie got a big job somewhere (I have to go Google this) and of course there's Blue Linden, once author of the Eureka travel blog, who has gotten a job at...a travel agency.

OK, maybe Ann has a point, but I wonder if mergers and takeovers really work this way.

What is more worrisome is what Microsoft would do with the "commuuuunity" or the disperate actual communities of SL which amounts to the still-lingering educators as well as everything from soup to nuts, furries to Zindra. Somehow, I can't imagine Microsoft handling issues like resolving whether Lian Leandros has once again crazily muscled in on some caper involving Lindens and other competing divas for a sex fair in Zindra, or mediating the wild disputes on the forums such as over Mesh, or changes to SL Metaplace. I have a feeling the method a giant company might use to deal with all that...microtranscaction stuff, despite having the word "Micro" in its name, would be simply to delete and remove and ban without question.

And speaking of names, I would hope one good thing MSFT could do would be to help Soft Linden pack his boxes, not only because of brand confusion and encroachment, but because of extremism and Randism perpetrated on the JIRA -- which means also on the servers. Servers should not be coded and run by extremists, but by normal people with reasonable relationship to customer requirements.

Comments

[Darien Caldwell]

Microsoft would have be really dumb to buy Second Life. It's reputation for sex alone is like sunlight to the vampire that is Microsoft. It would ruin their reputation of a family friendly company. This doesn't even factor in the fact that SL has no appeal to most people, etc.

Even if by some bizarre twist of fate Microsoft seriously did buy Second Life, it wouldn't be good news. They would at worst close it and gut it for it's technology, or only marginally better, turn it into a shell of it's former self, with everything dumbed down and cleaned up until it's worthless.

Microsoft's version of SL:

- wouldn't allow sex.
- wouldn't allow activism.
- wouldn't allow user creation.

It would be some lame thing like Playstation @ Home.

Pray that Microsoft doesn't get it's fangs into SL. There will be nothing of value left if they do.

[cube inada]

History Check:

1. Rumours, played, etc.. well it's the medium not the players anymore. Ask any old newsman.

2. MS has bought up and buried 3D tech/vr companies and assets for a decade.

- MS killed their 3D chrome- which spawned SUMO Alex St.John.

- MS bought Caligari and then shuttered it --first shared web3d tool and server solution product--

- MS bought the remnants/people/persons of Vivaty, another web3d "something" mismanaged into the abyss.

- MS also bought and dumped HALOS developer/creator after the first game and its "hype" for Xbox was accomplished.

So dont hope that MS is your answer to a "consumer" massified product service too quickly. Their history dosent suggest that youll have a freindly rela estate agent keeping you in good virtual hands, anytime soon...

at best, the tech, and whomever is currently "managing" it..will be behind a wall, in a cubicle, spinning 3d wheels, while MS tries to keep its current buisness from being lost to any new interface paradigms.Maybe just maybe, some code will be absorbed into silverlight 2020.

anyhow.

[Juanita Deharo]

What's to buy? Servers are easy, staff are easy, the code is open source. Marketplace? The only valuable thing LL has is the customer base. Why would you buy that?

[cube inada]

lol.. the value of tin foil.

i see mary jo foley, hammy. and other "jounalists" cough cough...

are all reporting today, "researched" web3d facts about MS... and surprisingly the "new" expertise they ad...is all from my above post...

vivaty- check
bungie- check
bury web3d tech - check

the folley of ham...

[cube inada]

Note- I owe grace an apology about the "nelson" thing....they "did" say they got imspiration from mandela for the naming..

BUT i wonder whos playing who with the "hyperlinking" ipad book video done by IDEO, that is supposed to actaully be named after Nelson- Mandela and NOT Ted Nelson....

layers of lies.. or ignorance...either one dosnet bode well for the supposed better digital gadget augmented googleborg humans.:)

sorry grace- but you still should be asking questions in the face of such "odd" statements before you post them.;)

[cube inada]

http://mediabastard.wordpress.com/2010/10/03/land-of-illusion-the-motion-picture/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EpeF1fcji0 for direct video without any me.

now i owe grace a thanks... i hadnt heard of this guy.... but he's been busy putting things i agree with into the forms that the literates can grok.;)

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

While I wouldn't personally be much "worried" if Microsoft would really buy Linden Lab, I think you're far too optimistic about what Microsoft might do in terms of governance :)

It would be far more likely that they'd simply get rid of all drama-inducing things in SL instead of dealing with them. That would mean definitely no more adult content, no user-generated content (except for pre-approved "Microsoft Virtual World Developers"), filters on chat, no more forums/blogs, no Office Hours, no Town Halls (although generic Microsoft developer conferences would continue to be held, with no feedback from the public, of course), no third-party viewers but also no third-party currency exchanges (and very likely, the LindeX wouldn't hand *out* money; it would just allow L$ to be bought straight from Microsoft), and so forth. In fact, Second Life would become a more powerful version of Vivaty.

Oh wait. That failed, didn't it?

Nevertheless there is *one* thing that might make the sale to Microsoft worthwhile: it would give Second Life access to Microsoft's vast marketing network and its ad network, adCenter, and be promoted world-wide far more agressively than IMVU currently is. This does *not* mean that SL would become a consumer, mass-market product. It just means that a few more people, who still haven't heard about SL but might be interested in it, would finally learn about SL and might join — specially because of the perceived comfort and security of dealing with one of the leading software developers of the world, instead of a strangely named Silicon Valley start-up...

[Darien Caldwell]

More people would hear about it, but it would no longer be anything worth being heard about. :)

[Aminom Marvin]

Prokofy Neva trying to talk about who got played and who got game.

NES protip: who are the mathematicians in Second Life? who among the outgoing Lindens were mathematicians?

you got no game if you don't know the game theory, and the memetic metagame.

Prok, you are a _noob._