What a Week

It’s been quite a time for us at Second Life Newser, dealing with not just one, but two major events on our hands. One mainly for us, the other felt by just about every resident I met.

The first was, well, the paper we used to work for closing, and Second Life Newser beginning as it folded. Starting up a new media company would be no easy task. Thankfully, people have again and again expressed their well wishes, as well as expressing their thanks there will be a new paper to read. Thank you very much for the kind words, and your support. It meant a lot.

And so, on with our mission, to bring you the readers the news across the grid big and small. From the mega-events such as SL7 and Burning Life to the personal experiences of various residents. We will soon be introducing new sections to the paper to keep the front page from becoming too cluttered, especially on busy days. The newspaper site will also be tweaked a bit to be easier to read.

We are also in the process of getting an office for a physical location in Second Life. Once everything is all set, the address will be posted online.

It's been a promising beginning.

Even before the dust was beginning to settle, wham! The heavy hand of M Linden struck again as it never had before, with about a third of the staff up and dismissed. In a press release, even in an e-mail released to the residents, M Linden insisted Linden Labs was healthy and this was necessary streamlining. But as has been mentioned in various commentaries, such as here and here, this kind of cutback is not a sign of a company prospering.

There has been plenty of speculation about what this might mean, notably as it comes alongside the news of Linden Lab developing a browser-based client. Among them, that this was done to prepare Second Life for being sold. Others wonder if the Metaverse is going to be downscaled in graphics and flexibility, turned into a primitive version of itself, in order to become “Yoville2.” Somehow, the joke I made on April 1 in the old newspaper about the Lindens selling Second Life to China to concentrate on making a “Farmvile” sequel doesn’t seem so funny now.

One Columnist in Computerworld didn’t think Second Life was about to be sold or made into a graphical shadow of what it once was, but he did feel the best days of the Metaverse were behind it as Linden Labs takes it into “maintenance mode” to try and keep residents from slowly leaving. Goodbye to the hopes that it could find a mainstream audience, and heading for a slow decline.

In my opinion, Second Life can reverse this downward course and rise in numbers again. But as long as M Linden is in charge, Linden Labs’ history of bumbling and stumbling will continue.

Bixyl Shuftan