Location: Town Hall Meeting

HoJo Kilda is right; growing pains have come to Second Life.  After Linden Lab began offering free membership in 2006, membership and commerce steadily increased. The day is odd indeed when peak load on Linden Lab’s servers is not 35,000.

Problems crop up with this heavy usage, and Linden Lab admits that their environment has trouble after 40,000 users are online. Wagner James Au has covered this “plateau” in detail. Money and items are lost, transactions go uncompleted, and movement gets restricted. 

HoJo noted that she has a lot of cash invested in her club, as do thousands of other virtual entrepreneurs who cannot afford to have SL crash or perform oddly. Spurred on by these troubles and a perceived lack of response, hundreds of residents signed an open letter to Linden Lab (this writer was a signatory) asking for a response to ongoing problems.

Hundreds of avatars attended a virtual Town Hall with all of the heavy-hitters from Linden Lab; the Lindens answered questions and promised improvements before a crowd that grew surly at times.  A rather technical transcript of the Town Hall can be found in many spots online.

I even had trouble getting into the stadium; my photos (including a few comic mishaps) are at my Web site. Indeed, the Town Hall itself suffered from the problem of too many users in too small a space.

A good metaphor for Second Life now would be a very crowded ship under full sail, running before the wind, yet needing constant repairs.  Taking it out of the water for a month is not an option.  Switching to a new ship in the middle of the voyage is also out of the question. Other companies are building virtual worlds, and they need not accommodate an existing user-base.  Perhaps a recently announced age-verification system, which would block minors from adult content, is a sign that SL is about to grow up. 

Or sell out?  Go corporate?  What do readers think? And what do you think Linden Labs needs to do to make the SL experience worthwhile, in the long run?

I don’t know much about adult content on the Web, either; I’ve not looked at much of it since most of it became for-pay stuff.

But one point you make that surprises me is how much MORE personal info. Linden Lab is asking for, compared to other sites w/ adult content.  The only thing that reassures me is that an outside provider will handle the verification. I don’t trust LL with my SSN!

Now why is that that case?  Has someone behind the scenes put lots of pressure on LL to do this?

I just realized that I posed my thoughts on age verification on the completely wrong post… /me blushes… it’s been a long month.

Sorry it took me so long to comment on this rather pressing matter in SL, but RL has had me in quite a tizzy. Well age verification is on everyone’s lips these days and to be quite honest, when I forked over my credit card to register my account, I thought that was verification of my age. While I feel that without a doubt, minors should be restricted from viewing adult content, where else in the internet are people asked for their SS#‘s and/or government IDs in order to view it??? So the thought behind it, while noble, I feel is a bit wrong-headed and more then a little intrusive, especially considering Linden Labs not so stellar record concerning account security.

As an adult business owner, we’ll have to see how this pans out. I cater to a sophisticated, niche audience, so I don’t feel like I will be hurt by this. I have no intention of closing shop, nor do I have any intention of checking for this new form of verification as it now stands either. I assume that if you are in SL, you are over 18 (isn’t there a teen grid?). As for the kiddie stuff, I find it distasteful to say the least and I do not allow underage looking avatars in my club. Do RL adult clubs allow kids? Exactly… Just as in the real world, child abuse in any form is a horrible thing, but also like in the real world, those that engage in it are a tiny minority that seem to garner more press then they really deserve - Global warming? Genocide? They don’t sell papers, but Jon Benet Ramsey does.

Until the virtual cops come to slap the cuffs on me, I press on with my plans and party like it’s 2099.

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