TikTok Deal Finalized, Complaints About New TOS & Posts Being Censored

 

For fans of TikTok in America who have been somewhat worried about the lingering threat of a potential ban in the United States, they no longer have to worry about that as a deal was made with American investors that satisfied the demands of the current administration. But, it may have come with a price that some users are not willing to bear.

More on the story in Extra. 

 

(finally up, sorry about the delay). 

Linden Buy Fees Reduced to One Cent Until Friday

 

 Just a few hours ago today, Linden Lab announced they are reducing the fee for purchasing Linden dollars to one US cent in their "One Penny Buy Fees" limited time offer.

 

Times are tough for a lot of people, so we've come up with one way to make things a little easier: Second Life is launching a special LindeX limited-time offer – a chance to make Linden Dollar (L$) Buy fees nearly disappear for a limited time! 

While the global economy wrestles with rising tariffs and tense trade talks, we’re responding with a bold, Resident-first promotion: we're charging just a penny for your LindeX buy fees for the next 2 days. We’re committed to you - our Residents - through these challenging times, and we will continue to stand by you as we have over the past 22 years. 

 

 

This limited time offer started at 12:30 PM SL time today, Wednesday April 16. It is scheduled to continue for fifty hours to 2:30 PM Sl time Friday April 18, at which time the one cent deal expires, "Compare that to the standard buy fee of 10%, with a minimum of $1.49 and a max of $14.99—this is an unprecedented cut designed to empower Residents, stimulate activity, and boost in-world trade. This is a one-time only opportunity that won’t come around again, so you’ll need to act fast if you want to stock up on Linden Dollars and save."

 

In theory, someone could buy up to $1999 worth of Linden dollars during the deal. If a Market Rate transaction takes longer than 2:30PM Friday, then the normal rate applies, not the deal.

 

Linden Lab has never done a one cent sale on it's transaction fees before.

 

For the blog post in full, Click Here. 

 

Lab Gab: Oberwolf Explains The Sale of Tilia

 

 

 In a special episode of Lab Gab on Friday April 26, Strawberry Linden interviewed Oberwolf Linden, the Executive Chairman of Linden Lab, about the recent announcement that Linden Lab was selling Tilia. 

So why is the Lab selling Tilia? In short, money. He explained it was "costing us millions and millions of dollars to run it." While bringing in other online places brought in some revenue, it wasn't enough to cover it's costs. So he was looking for someone to buy it, under some conditions, "The number one criteria was would they continue to support Second Life. ... That was more important than anything else I looked at. The second criteria was what could that company bring to Tilia that we could bring to Second Life." He was soon introduced to the CEO of Thunes, and in just twenty one days, "which is lightning fast and shows a few things," they were able to make a deal. It still needs Federal approval, which could take some time. 

More information is in the Youtube.

Bixyl Shuftan

 

 

More on Linden Lab's Deal With JP Morgan And Tilia (News and Commentary)

 

 On Tuesday, Linden Lab announced that Tilia had "secured a new strategic investment from J.P. Morgan." Also, "Tilia is also working with J.P. Morgan Payments to further enhance Tilia’s current capabilities throughout its processing platform including providing increased payment and payout methods, expanding pay-out currencies and support services." So just what does this mean?

 

Well, it's a little more complicated than to just call it a deal between Linden Lab and JP Morgan.

To begin with, Tilia was created over three years ago in 2019, announced in July and going active in August. The service had been created to avoid future problems with the US Government concerning changing Linden dollars for real-world currency. At first, only those cashing out Linden dollars into real world currency had to keep it in mind. In May 2020, it was expanded to cover both the buying and selling of Linden dollars. Following Linden Lab being bought up by the Waterfield group, Tilia would be involved with not just Second Life transactions, but other places online, "virtual worlds and metaverses, online games, and NFT marketplaces" such as Upland.

So why the deal? Well, the Waterfield Network's motivations are easy to understand: quick cash in exchange for sharing further profits. In the statement from Tilia, Brad Oberwager, whose position at the service was Executive Chairman, stated, "Virtual economies represent a huge financial opportunity particularly for game, app and virtual world developers. J.P. Morgan Payments, a worldwide leader and recognized innovator in payments, is the right partner as we continue to expand capabilities in line with these rapidly growing creator-based economies."

JP Morgan's motivations? As a bank, obviously their motivation is to make money, in this case over the long term. But considering Second Life's golden age was over a decade ago, why would they be interested in this kind of deal now? In the statement from Tilia, the representative from JP Morgan stated, “We believe that contextualized commerce - such as virtual economies within games and virtual worlds - is an area perfectly positioned for innovative payments solutions to play a critical role in the coming years." He would call Tilia, "a market leading provider of software gaming payments tools, to develop solutions for these new and exciting marketplaces.”

In the Second Life forums, there was a thread with two news articles about the deal on the first page, from Forbes and Venturebeat. The Forbes article called Oberwager the acting CEO of Linden Lab. The Venturebeat one stated that Tilia would no longer be under Linden Lab, but now it's own company under the Waterfield Network. Tilia would use the money from JP Morgan "to expand its business and go into new markets." So it seems Linden Lab probably won't be getting much of the money, at least not directly. The article would say the deal took about a year to negotiate. Oberwager was quoted as saying, “They invested in us and they solidified a really big partnership. We’re like the tip of the spear for the metaverse. They’re a good partner with a lot of credibility.”

He would go on to say, “This is a good thing when creators can make money. There are people around the world who make their living by building things in Second Life. ... Here’s why I think it’s so important,” Oberwager said. “These universes are social economies. If you don’t allow people to make money, if you don’t allow this economy to happen, if you don’t support creators, you’re going to have to rely on an advertising model to make your world work. That is a disaster. That would be the worst thing that could hit our society — an advertising-based metaverse.” He felt such a virtual universe would operate on companies tracking people so they could better target ads, "That's not a world we want to live in."

There is some irony in the Tilia deal. It was a year ago that Facebook announced it was going to make a major effort into virtual worlds, saying it would become the "Metaverse," even changing it's name to Meta. It's owner Mark Zuckerberg was acting like Second Life never existed. Since then, things have not gone well for Facebook/Meta. The company has lost a LOT of money and investor confidence shaky, "some analysts say that they aren’t even sure what Facebook’s core business is anymore — or if it even has one." Horizon has also performed far short of expectations. Despite Facebook's huge base of users, a Wall Street Journal article reported the number of people using Horizon has been much smaller than Second Life, with a smaller ratio of women to men, with reports of some of the men behaving badly despite the lack of legs on avatars (while in SL about 80% of the entrepreneurs are women according to Oberwager), and most areas never being visited by anyone other than their creators.

With Horizons and Facebook/Meta faltering while Second Life is flourishing and indirectly attracting attention of the largest bank in America through Tilia, Linden Lab has proven not only can it outdo Zuckerberg with virtual worlds, but also on attracting big money investors. While "The Zuck" can pretend our virtual world doesn't exist, in private he sure can't deny we do.

Sources: Forbes, Venturebeat, Petapixel, Ryan Schulta/Wall Street Journal
 

Bixyl Shuftan

Lab Announces Deal With JP Morgan, "Strategic Investment" On Tilia

 

In the Second Life blog yesterday, Tuesday October 18, Linden Lab announced a business deal concerning JP Morgan. 

We’re excited to share with the Second Life community some news about Tilia LLC, the all-in-one payments platform that powers the metaverse. Tilia  was originally built and continues to support the Second Life economy.

Tilia today announced that it has secured a new strategic investment from J.P. Morgan Payments. In addition to the investment, Tilia is also working with J.P. Morgan Payments to further enhance Tilia’s current capabilities throughout its processing platform including providing increased payment and payout methods, expanding pay-out currencies and support services.
Read the full announcement at Tilia.io

Wikipedia lists JP Morgan as the largest bank in the United States and the largest bank in the world "by market capitalization." 

More on this story later.

Bixyl Shuftan

 

Linden Lab Partners With Speedlight Mobile Viewer, Offering Premium Plus Benefit

 

 For years, there's been talk about accessing Second Life through a mobile viewer. Linden Lab never had one of it's own, but there were third-party clients. Years ago, the best was probably Lumiya, but for some time it hasn't been updated and presumably has become unusable. A few years ago, Linden Lab started working on a mobile-capable platform. But last October, it announced it was pausing development. Development had reportedly been "stagnant" for months, presumably on trying to resolve technical issues.

Another mobile client available is Speedlight. It's been around at least since early 2020. Earlier this week, Linden Lab announced they were partnering with Speedlight, offering unlimited time on the mobile viewer as part of it's Premium Plus perks.

The Speedlight mobile app is already popular with many of our community members since it enables Residents to stay connected with Second Life while on the go, and now Premium Plus subscribers get access to additional Speedlight benefits: no online time limitations along with prioritised online support. Now you can enjoy Second Life on your mobile devices (or in a web browser) with the freedom to stay connected as long as you like! To get these benefits, all you need to do is access Second Life using SpeedLight with your Premium Plus account.

 

 

While most of Speedlight's features are free to use, there's only a limited time one can use it per month. For more time, one either had to buy it or subscribe to a gold account. And now there's the option of signing up for Premium Plus. But how much of a perk is this?

 

Trying it out with an alt on my webbrowser, the viewer did allow you to check where your avatar was, as well as who was around it. You could also check one's friend list to see who was on and groups, as well as nearby chat. There is also a 3D view, but it's considerably less detailed than regular SL viewers, unlike what the picture with the Lab's announcement suggests. Surroundings are simplified, and one's avatar appears as a stick figure. One can move around and jump, but there's no sound or music, and one may get stuck at a sim crossing.

In a thread in the official forums, comments were somewhat mixed, overall favorable. The one big complaint was that the picture in the announcement was misleading. A few commented the perk would probably be of best use to merchants, who could use it when away from their computer to check up on business.

The partnership between Linden Lab and Speedlight marks the second time in a month the Lab as made a deal with someone offering an SL product not owned by them. Speedlight was developed by Glaznah Gassner. 

Source: Modem World

Bixyl Shuftan

Microsoft Announces It's Buying Activision/Blizzard

 

In what would be the biggest computer gaming business acquisition in business history, yesterday on Tuesday January 18 Microsoft announced it was buying Activision/Blizzard. The deal would be at 68.7 billion US dollars, or about $95 a share.

“Gaming is the most dynamic and exciting category in entertainment across all platforms today and will play a key role in the development of metaverse platforms,” Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella would state, “We’re investing deeply in world-class content, community and the cloud to usher in a new era of gaming that puts players and creators first and makes gaming safe, inclusive and accessible to all.”

Activision/Blizzard is best known for the well-known MMORPG World of Warcraft. But has also been successful in games such as Overwatch, Hearthstone, Diablo, Starcraft, and Call of Duty.

Microsoft had already been a company heavily invested in gaming such as with it's X-Box and having acquired the popular Minecraft some years ago. The deal would make it the third largest gaming company. It is notable that while Minecraft's maker Majong was acquired while both the game and company were doing well, in recent months Activision/Blizzard has suffered a series of blows, most notably a rash of sexual harassment allegations. It's stocks have sunk more than 37% since it's high last year. Activision/Blizzard's CEO Robert Kotick would continue for now, though is expected to step down once the deal closes, which may take as long as a year and a half to complete.

Sources: Microsoft, Reuters, The Verge

Bixyl Shuftan
 

Linden Lab's Buyout Now Official, Second Life Listed As Part Of Waterfield Network

 
Almost unnoticed at the end of Linden Lab's announcement that the move of Second Life's data to Cloud servers was now complete was an announcement of another kind. When the Lab announced the agreement with a group of investors to be acquired in July, it was mentioned the deal required the approval of the US Government. At the end of Tuesday's announcement, it was stated the approval was finally granted after a review. The big reason for the approval was Linden Lab's money service Tilia.

 Another noteworthy development for the new year is that Linden Lab has new owners! As announced in mid-2020, an investment group led by Randy Waterfield and Brad Oberwager signed an agreement to acquire the company subject to regulatory approval by financial regulators in the U.S. related to Tilia Inc.’s status as a licensed money transmitter as well as other customary closing conditions. We are pleased to share that the regulatory review has been completed and Linden Lab is now under new ownership.  

On the Waterfield Holdings webpage, Second Life was listed as part of the Waterfield Network, alongside other companies such as Goldman Sachs.

And what does this mean for Second Life and it's residents? For now, not much. It was earlier stated that the investors plans were to pretty much let Linden Lab continue to run Second Life as they see fit. In this latest announcement, they hinted the investors would be sending over some money.

While the owners may be new, things are “business as usual” in Second Life. Last year saw strong growth for our virtual world and, as a result of this acquisition we expect even more resources in 2021 to further improve and grow Second Life in the future.  

Hamlet Au in New World Notes would have a few things to say on the topic. Among them, that over time Waterfield would likely send the Lab some directives over time to keep it's profit margin. This likely includes higher fees and more incentives to go Premium.

Hat Tip: Hamlet Au

Bixyl Shuftan

Accessorize Bollywood Style

Syndra's back with another Fashion article. This time she writes on a Bollywood-themed desingers' show at Wulf Creek. What she found didn't disappoint.

Read Syndra's article in Fashion.

The Indulgence Fair

Syndra's search for deals in fashion took her on the wilder side of Second Life recently. Her destination, the Indulgence Fair. There, she found deals from designers such as "Pervette" that are financial temptations, as well as sensual ones.

Read Syndra's review in Fashion.

DrFran’s Alt Goes Shopping – Autumn Hunts & Gacha Madness

DrFran Babcock, or rather her alt, has been on the shopping scene again. She checks out two hunts, Autumn Effect and PURE Perfection, and the Arcade Gatcha. She found some great freebies at the hunts, and special deals at the Gatcha.

Read DrFran's article in Fashion.

Linden Lab Offering "New Limited Time Deals on Amazon"

Today is the last day that Second Life residents in the US can "take advantage of a couple of great sales for Second Life packs" on Amazon. The three offers are a "Premium Vehicle Pack - which includes L$4000, an exclusive hoverboard, deluxe sail boat, and premium dune buggy" at "30% off" for $24.95 US dollars, a "Hoverboard Bonus Pack," and a "Pet Pack."

More details are on the Linden Blog (Here).

New Sim Available at Sunweaver Estates

Looking for a place to call home?  Looking for a place to setup shop?  Sunweaver Bay is new and open for business.  You can either setup residence, stores, or both. Come take a look and pick out your lots.  Just pay the rental boxes on the lots you want.

Contact Nydia Tungsten or Rita Mariner.

Universal Studios to Allow “Battlestar Galactica” Groups and Content in Second Life

In November, Universal Studios pressured Linden Labs to take down items and sims with names related to the “Battlestar Galactica” television show, of which the studio owns the copyrights. Various groups began renaming places and objects while trying to contact Universal to make a deal.

Recently the Harrisburg Examiner announced a deal had been reached. Ntanel Swordthain of the International Federation of Trekers acted as a go-between with Universal’s intellectual property licensing office and various groups of Second Life’s Battlestar Galactica community. The Examiner stated that eventually, Universal issued a statement:


Thank you for your patience. After some internal discussion regarding Second Life BSG and the use of our owned intellectual property, we are happy to inform you that users may continue to create and interact with each other as BSG fans, so long as such interaction does not include the creation and sales of unlicensed of real-life or virtual items featuring our intellectual property.

We hope BSG fans will continue to enjoy the franchise in all its iterations, including Second Life.


The Examiner stated several Battlestar Galactica sims were forced to close before a deal was finally reached.

For other fanbased roleplay groups whom have operated with the ever-present threat of a DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) takedown notice from the owners of the story their activity in Second Life is based on, this development is good news.

Second Life Newser tried to contact Ntanel and one of the group leaders. Neither one responded to our requests to discuss the agreement.

Sources: Harrisburg Examiner, New World Notes

Bixyl Shuftan

*Note* Following the publishing of this article, Ntanel Swordthain messaged us saying he could talk to us on the matter at a later date.

Live in Sunweaver Islands: A Bargin Home in Second Life

Finding a place to live in Second Life for an affordable price can be a challenge. Sign up for Premium Membership to get a “free” Linden home, one will be paying $9.95 US dollars a month. One can rent land, allowing one to stay a free resident and skip the fee, but the prices for rental land and homes can be high, a thousand Lindens a week or more.

How about a place in Second Life where you pay not a thousand Lindens per week, but per month?

At the Sunweaver Islands, 1000L will get you for four weeks, a rate of 250L a week, a 512 square meter plot, 16m x 32m in size, with a 117 prim limit. One can rent as many lots as are available, and the staff will join them into a larger lot if possible, so one can build the house of one’s dreams.

The Sunweaver Islands have both public islands and private islands available:

Public Islands allow one the Flexibility of having either a house, store or both. As the name suggests, they are fully open to the public.

Private Islands allow one greater privacy, but are restricted to residents of Sunweaver Islands only. One is allowed to build stuff for sale, but no selling is allowed here. Control over who gets on the islands and behavior is enforced.

For more information on rental space in the Sunweaver Islands, please contact one of the rental managers: Nydia Tungsten, Wensleydale Dinkins, Shockwave Yareach, and Rita Mariner.

Also ask what move-in specials are available. As of now, the first month is half-off the normal price for new renters. In addition, thirteen lots have recently become available for rent in the public Sunweaver Air sim, twelve in one single lot, “So if you are interested, or know someone who is, now is the time to come shopping. This much land doesn’t open up often, especially all in one nice big place.”