On Thursday Sept. 23rd, Linden Lab announced through emails and its blog that they would be closing down their “Avatars United” social networking website.Today, we have made the difficult decision to discontinue Avatars United and will be taking down the site on September 29, 2010. Over the next week, we encourage you to save any pieces of content (such as pictures, friend’s names, etc.) that you want to keep. We will also soon update you on your AU Coin refund, if you have an account balance. Over the two and a half years since launching Avatars United, we have welcomed avatars from many virtual worlds and MMOs to connect on our platform as the only social network catering to the needs of virtual identities. We are proud to have served those needs and honored to have shared this journey with you all.
Checking a few discussion boards, few Second Life residents expressed any sorrow for Avatars United being slated for the chopping block. And many of those who did were thinking of the effort the Lindens spent there that could have been put to use elsewhere, or those in AU there for reasons other than Second Life, as it has been originally created for avatars across virtual worlds, and had been used mostly by MMO players such as World of Warcraft. The opinion most seemed to have was that it was another Linden blunder that they finally admitted would not fly.
I myself got an account to see what it was like just after Linden Labs got it at the beginning of the year. But after a few weeks, didn’t use it much. It seems Second Life residents preferred to go on more popular social networking sites such as “Facebook.” And now, Linden Labs is folding what some called their answer to Facebook.
To see the whole blog post, and comments, go Here.
Bixyl Shuftan
What I don't get is why LL doesn't just go back to Enemy Unknown and say "hey, would you like to buy AU back cheap? Say, 25% of what we paid you for it? Then you'd keep most of our money and keep AU at the same time."
ReplyDeleteBut instead LL is taking a 100% loss at a time when they are so strapped for cash that they laid off 1/3 of their workforce. Even if they only sold it for 1$, that's 1$ more than LL had before. Plus incidents like this where they buy and destroy things over and over again is leading lots of folks to believe LL suffers from Corporate ADD, a usually fatal condition for businesses.
My only comment is "What the heck is Avatars United"? I had never heard of it before this article, which is probably why it has failed.
ReplyDeletethis is unbelievable
ReplyDelete