Breaking News: Philip Rosedale Returns to Linden Lab

Good news to fans of Philip Rosedale, the founder of Linden Lab and Second Life. He's back at the Lab. There was an announcement today that High Fidelity, the company Rosedale would found after leaving Linden Lab, had "acquired an interest" in Linden Lab. Some people from High Fidelity will be joining the Lab, including Rosedale, whom is back as a "strategic advisor."

The transaction will help Second Life further scale its operations and strengthen its commitment to growing an innovative, inclusive, and diverse metaverse where its inhabitants’ ingenuity drives real-world value for themselves and others.

"No one has come close to building a virtual world like Second Life," says Second Life founder and High Fidelity co-founder, Philip Rosedale. “Big Tech giving away VR headsets and building a metaverse on their ad-driven, behavior-modification platforms isn’t going to create a magical, single digital utopia for everyone. Second Life has managed to create both a positive, enriching experience for its residents — with room for millions more to join — and built a thriving subscription-based business at the same time. Virtual worlds don’t need to be dystopias.”

“Since Philip started Second Life in 1999, its visionary approach has not only stood the test of time, but positioned it for the future,” says Brad Oberwager, chairman of Linden Lab. “He and the High Fidelity team have unmatched experience and I can’t wait to capitalize on the vast opportunity in front of us.”

The Lab would state both Philip and Overwolf Linden would appear on a special edition of "Lab Gab" in a couple weeks. Residents are invited to submit questions using (this Google doc), but have until Midnight Sunday January 16 to do so.

Click Here to go to the Press Release.

Click Here to go to the announcement in the Linden blog.
 

"A Message from our CEO: Coronavirus and Second Life Operations"

With the Coronovirus continuing to spread and make news, Ebbe Altberg/Ebbe Linden issued a statement yesterday on the issue. It was to state that measures were being taken to ensure the crisis would not disrupt service, and asking them to show patience, and welcome, to new and returning residents.

* * * * *

As concerns about the current coronavirus outbreak continue, we want to assure the community that we have taken steps to ensure that the Second Life operations stay steady while also helping our employees stay safe through this public health crisis. Our hearts and thoughts go out to those who have been affected by this unprecedented event. 

Second Life will continue to be available without interruption as we get through this tough time together. Due to our previous crisis contingency planning and the flexible nature of our distributed workforce, we are not expecting any changes to response times for support inquiries and payment processing. 

We know that Second Life serves a great purpose for our community as people seek ways to stay in touch with their friends and co-workers, as they grapple with new social distancing protocols, mandated remote work requirements, and other precautionary measures. 

With the closure of many universities and displaced conferences and events, Second Life also continues to be an option for disrupted organizations looking for new remote work, classroom or event solutions. To help, we recently implemented a reduction in pricing to a flat $99/month per region for qualified education and nonprofit organizations.

We are seeing an increase in new registrations and returning residents during this outbreak. Please be kind and welcoming to those who may just need a friendly conversation to escape from this crazy world for a moment or more. If you have a friend or colleague who is looking for a safe place to socialize online during these tough times, we encourage you to help them discover how Second Life can enable them to feel less isolated by connecting them to your favorite communities or experiences.

Like many companies across the globe, we’ve put into action new remote work policies for our employees to ensure that they can take care of themselves and their families while continuing to work from home. Prior to this incident, a large percentage of our company was already working from the “Moonlab” (that’s what we call remote employees’ locations), so we have been able to transition quickly and efficiently to a fully remote setup. 

For the past 17 years, Second Life has been a special place that brings people across the world together -- and we appreciate your trust and support as we get through this rough time together.

Ebbe and all the Lindens

Update on Mieville

Some good news for the residents, and fans, of the Mieville steampunk community. For several weeks, the people there have been worried about their landowner, Perryn Peterson, after he checked into a hospital and not a word was heard from him since. That is, until earlier today, when a resident spotted him online. Miss Mattie Puss (MatildaRigby Resident) would describe the encounter.

[11:29] Perryn Peterson wabes to da Kitteh hoping not to frighten her half to death.
[11:32] Perryn Peterson: I is back.  Sort of.  Not in the best of health but back.  You won't believe all that happened.  I hope to see you soonly.

HE HAS RETURNED! HE LOGGED IN FOR A SHORT TIME AND LEFT MESSAGES. HOPEFULLY HE WILL COME BACK LATER BUT HE WAS HERE!

Mieville chat was promptly full of comments, "Linden Labs prob called him up and said you know you got these people panicing and they wont leave us alone." "It's a Valentine miracle.  I can't wait to hear what happened.  Soooooooo relieved.  Wonderful news." Miss Mattie would add, "He left me a message and I cussed him. I love him and wanna smack him for being gone. ... hope he comes back on tonight so I can hug hims and bite hims for being gone and hugs him again."

Talking to Assistant Mayor Wyvern Dryke (Wyvvy), he told me couldn't give me 100% confirmation the emergency was over, but "It's safe to assume he's paying his tier.  I don't think you would be going out on a limb for saying that."

So it would seem Mieville's crisis is coming to a close.

Bixyl Shuftan

Reader Submitted: Netera Landar's Chat Lounge Returns, to OpenSim

In an effort to inform, entertain and simply have a great time, I'm booting up my virtual world chat. But this time, I'm going to involve those of the open sim community.

I've been doing a lot of hyper jumping and have landed on a few interesting grids. One of which is run by Bill Blight and is called opensim life.com. I'm not leaving SL, my friends and partner are here. I merely want to introduce talented builders, content creators, authors and performers to what lies beyond. Open to guests that can speak on various topics: real life or virtual.

Those interested in being my guest, IM me here or email me at Netera@aol.com, Create an account on opensim life.com and IM me there. It will be a voice chat in a large build owned by an SL musician.

Hope to hear from you soon,
Netera Landar

Is Second Life Experiencing an "Oldbie" Resurgence?

On the Second Life section of Reddit, a "Neuromancer72" posted on Wednesday September 20 that after dropping out from the Grid around 2010, he had returned last year, and come across "many people" who had done the same. Which left him wondering, how many residents who had dropped out were coming back?

Mine is a familiar story - very active in SL from 2006 to maybe 2009-10, then dropped off for years only to return in the last year or so. I've met many people since my return who followed a similar route - left years ago and have now come back. Posts to this sub show others doing the same. I can't help but wonder if this is really a widespread thing, or if I've just been more aware of it because of similarities to my own history. If it is a thing, any ideas what might be driving people to give SL another go?

There were several responses, including one by "Jadziyah":

I think a majority of residents take long 'breaks' at one point. Why we all come back is harder to nail down. Linden Labs has actually had several positive changes lately such as land prim increases and the addition of bento bones, so those generated a lot of excitement. And there will always be the social aspect.

Hamlet Au thought that this very well could be the case, suggesting "if a few thousand oldbies are jumping onto the grid more regularly, it might not show up in the data, but still be significant." He felt there were two reasons for such a probable resurgence, One was social media, as many Second Life residents use Facebook and former residents would continue to keep their former virtual neighbors and friends on their friend list and continue to communicate with them, and hear about new content and goings on. He also felt the talk about Sansar would get former residents wondering "Whatever happened with Second Life" and come back to see what's been going on here.

So what do you the readers think? Have you seen numbers of former residents returning? Or perhaps you are someone who left and returned? What's getting people to come back?

Bixyl Shuftan

KONA Radio is Back

Good news for fans of GoSpeed Racer and KONA radio. The "cleverly named" DJ recently informed the Newser that her radio stream is back in business. "We are now affiliated with SONIXCAST.com out of Canada," she told us, "They pay royalties to SOCAN which is the entity that collects and distributes royalties in Canada. The station is now free of many restrictions including not having to run ad breaks. Also, more good news. We are now listed in iTunes under the '70s Retro category."

For GoSpeed Racer, this is the best news in months. In January, facing skyrocketing "insane" royalty fees, she made a deal with Radionomy to keep broadcasting, But as she stated in the KONA blog, it "hasn’t been a fun ride to say the least" with server outages and poor communications. Finally a lawsuit by Sony resulted in Radionomy blocking it's stream to a number of countries where KONA had listeners. So GoSpeed reluctantly made the decision to close KONA as a station. But it was just days later she made a deal with Sonixcast, "They are a Canadian based company that provides streams and royalty coverage. It’s not a free service but the monthly cost are very reasonable compared to the other alternatives. We are looking forward to spending many productive years with them and keep sharing the music!"

For more information, or to just hear the tunes, check http://www.konastream.com/.

Bixyl Shuftan

Events This Week Is Back

After weeks of inaction, the "Events this Week" Section is back. But things will be a little different. Before, it had been one large entry of various events every Tuesday. This time, it will be one or more much smaller entries every week, notably of the Newser's home community of the Sunweaver Estates. This is to allow the Newser to be able to devote time and effort to various news happenings across Second Life, and to avoid making guesses about locations that delay or have ceased making announcements about their events. We also may not announce updates in the main section if they are small ones.

We may make further changes later on. Though for now hopefully this will benefit the community where the Newser office makes it's home.

Read about the events of the Sunweaver clubs in Events this Week.

Tuna Oddfellow to Resume Performances in Second Life

For most of Second Life's history, Tuna Oddfellow has been performing his unique "Odd Ball" performance. Last September, he and his close friend Shava Suntzu closed down their act in Second Life citing Linden Lab's new Terms of Service in regards to content creators. For several months, one had to travel to the InWorldz grid to see their events. Earlier this week, Tuna announced his artistic exile would soon end, and the Odd Ball would be resuming in Second Life.

Read more in Extra.