kanomi

Kanomi Pikajuna (2006-2012)

noreply@blogger.com (Kanomi) — Sun, 10 Jun 2012 19:51:00 +0000

Neverwas.

SLings and Arrows

noreply@blogger.com (Kanomi) — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 11:11:00 +0000

Hamlet talks New World Notes, negativity, and his next book.

I own a lot of books, but only two of them are about Second Life. One is about scripting, which was an incredibly poor purchase on my part, because even if I ever did get around to learning SL scripting, I would then have to tediously retype those obsolete scripts into my objects. The other book turned out to be far more noteworthy and entertaining: Wagner James Au’s The Making of Second Life, covering the early years of Linden Lab and the creation of SL.

Under his avatar name ‘Hamlet’, Au is also the blogger behind New World Notes, which has been a mainstay on the Second Life scene for an impressive eight years now, an impressive achievement in any online realm.

Second Life analyst Hamlet Au

When my article ‘Sell it to Us’ was recently featured on NWN, it was a pleasant surprise, and naturally I was quite happy about the broader exposure given to my idea. I was also surprised and dismayed at some of the negativity expressed towards him after that, in forums, in other blogs, even by some of my friends in chat. Isn’t linking to content what the web is all about?

With this in mind, last Thursday I asked Au if he’d do an interview for the Express, to touch on these and other topics, and he kindly consented. We met in his little mainland plot, beneath the imposing edifice of a Neal Stephenson Snow Crash book cover.

Kanomi: There's been some negativity lately towards New World Notes, more than usual. What's your reaction to these sometimes personal attacks?

Hamlet: Most of it was about what I was expecting. The nastiest personal attacks are directly proportionate to the degree with which the person making them doesn't understand Second Life's dire state and its waning relationship to the broader Internet trends, so their criticisms really seem beside the point. I definitely appreciate not only the folks who agree with me, but the few who disagree but civilly, while making some very valid points.

You were criticized for, at least in part, for linking to stuff. Is this normal for virtual world fandoms? As opposed to say, World of Warcraft or EVE Online or even IVMU?

Oh, most virtual communities have this level of drama. And it does seem related to avatar anonymity, unfortunately. There's not enough reputation invested in avatar identities for people not to act civil.

So you are in the camp of real life names, real life avatars? The Obama Administration has put together its trusted Internet identity idea!

No, I don't think real name linkage should be mandatory, it should be an option, albeit one with some additional rewards. Of course, I've always said it should only be an option, but no matter what, I'm sure to read some Resident yelling, "Hamlet wants to force us to reveal my RL name!"


"This Snow Crash thing, is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?"

Hamlet is forcing me to reveal my real life name right now. Just kidding. So you have written about Linden Lab and Second Life for a long time. Obviously you don’t have a crystal ball or insider access anymore, but given your experience, do you think they can be relevant in three years?

If they make some very bold moves and bring in a mass user base, yes, they'll still be relevant. But it's going to be touch and go for the next year or so. That's really why I wrote the post about hate and fear of change -- a warning to Residents that there's probably going to be a lot of changes, for survival's sake.

Yes, that was a fairly polarizing post, but people should remember your experience. When I think of people who have been covering SL thoroughly for a long time, there are Tateru, Pixaleen, you, a couple others. Do you think maybe because Lindens are so invisible and unresponsive in their blogs and forums, some backlash spills over onto external writers like you?

I don't think anyone's covering SL thoroughly, including me. I've only been able to write the blog part time for the last 2-3 years. But to your point, I don't know if that's true; backlash happens anywhere anyone even remotely related to Lindens (even former ones like me) pops their head up.

At the same time, I'd say the vast majority of my readers and Residents are positive and supportive. I didn't get any angry emails about those hate/fear posts, which is instructive.

Interesting. But speaking of your blogging, for a while there you were a Linden employee. And after that, I thought you had a freelance arrangement to write about their world? I would not think it was huge money.

No that's not correct. I was a contractor for Linden Lab from 2003-2006, never an employee, and that's the only time they paid me anything.

But after that, when you were blogging, they never paid you?

No. I don't have stock options either. They actually offered to hire me in 2004 or so, but I wanted to write my book and write it without having to disclose a financial relationship. Since March 2006, Linden Lab hasn't paid me anything.

So you’re doing OK as a freelance writer? Because I don’t think a lot of people understand the economics of that, it is very difficult to support yourself as an independent writer.

What's my income? Dude. I'm doing pretty well for a professional writer. But NWN is probably, oh, at most 10-20% of my direct income most years. And about half my revenue goes to paying Iris and my other freelancers.

What about Blue Mars? It seems pretty clear they paid you to talk about their world.

As far as Blue Mars goes, for the 3-4 months I was consulting for them last year, part of my role was to expand blog coverage on their company blog, so I don't think "paid you to talk about their world" is the most accurate way to say it, but it's definitely true it was part of my role.

The sky was the color of prims, tuned to a blue channel.

OK, fair enough. Then Blue Mars blew up. What happened?

It's not accurate to say it "blew up", but I'm still under NDA, so I can give out specifics. I will say people shouldn't assume they know all the details of why they changed direction. I didn't just consult for Blue Mars for the money; Jim Sink is a very smart guy and had a great vision. At the same time, I do think moving to an iOS focus is a really great idea.

I have seen some stats, the number of app reviews they have accumulated. Anyone can do the review to download math. So that's PR talk. :)

I wasn't speaking to the specific execution of Blue Mars for iOS, I was speaking to the broader industry trend toward iOS and tablet computing in general. Often the first mover wins, even if the first few iterations aren't great.

Fair enough. So, you have written one book about Second Life, about the early days. Do you think you would do another when it's all over - if it's all over some time?

Well I'll give you a mini-scoop, I'm writing another book right now that will include a lot about Second Life. So there's that.

Nice! What is the name of the book?

That's all I'm saying right now. :)

Doh! Ok. So where is SL in ten, twenty years? A bloated memory, like Woodstock? Or totally forgotten?

I don't think Second Life will ever go away completely, even if the worse scenario happens. I'm still a member of the WELL, the original virtual community which launched in '86 (I joined much later), and it's still running, just a much paler version of itself during the heyday IT was on the cover of Wired magazine.

My real hope is Second Life fulfills all the potential I know it has. I'm not really writing New World Notes for the money, it's a fraction of my total income nowadays. I'm still writing it in the hopes that the growth returns, and instead of just a few random people getting a chance to see it at its most transformative, millions do. There's still a chance that will happen, and as long as that remains a distinct possibility, I'm going to stay a part of it.

Thanks Hamlet!

(I should add that I wrote half a dozen freelance articles about in-world games for New World Notes in 2009, but since then have no connection with him or his site, other than making the occasionally intemperate remark in the comments section. :)

Sell It To Us!

noreply@blogger.com (Kanomi) — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 15:47:00 +0000

Actually, she's a 49ers fan...

OPINION

Community ownership as Second Life's endgame.

What can the Green Bay Packers teach us about Second Life?

Forget the dreary sports clichés about teamwork and giving 110%. What is instructive about the Packers is that they're a professional sports team able to compete and triumph at the highest levels in one of the most competitive arenas on the planet without the backing of a giant corporation or the wallet of a mercurial billionaire. They did, after all, just win the Super Bowl.

Unique amongst all professional sports teams in the US, and indeed much of the world, the Packers are a non-profit, community-owned enterprise. All profits are put back into fielding the best team it can. The Packers are owned by fans, run by fans, for the benefit of all fans. The team cannot realistically be sold or moved. As long as there is an NFL and a Green Bay, Wisconsin, there will be a Green Bay Packers.

So for those of us who worry or wonder about the future of Second Life, perhaps the brightest road for Linden Lab runs through Lambeau Field.

The Real Owners

Any discussion of the future of Linden Lab pretty much begins and ends with the ownership, because ultimately, they are the ones who will decide its fate. So let's be clear on who they are.

Regardless of how many sims you "own" in-world or many pixel panties you sell, you don't own actually own anything except whatever intellectual property you create in-world. And it's been a long time since anything of real value outside of SL was created within it, like Tringo. At best, you own some revenue streams which are utterly dependent on the continuance of Second Life.

So who really owns it? Linden Lab was founded by Philip Rosedale in 1999, so obviously he's in the mix. According to this Register article, the company received $20 million in venture capital money between 2003 and 2006, along with inputs from Amazon's Jeff Bezos, eBay's Pierre Omidyar, and the EFF's Mitch Kapor. This somewhat dated blog lists the vc firms Benchmark Capital, Globespan Capital Partners, and Catamount Ventures as investors, along with individuals such as Mitch Laskey, Cory Ondrejka, and others.

Regardless of the exact, current composition of the ownership group, it's safe to say these are not charities, and they expect a return on their investment, not the long-term erosion of principal.

What's it Worth?

Right now Linden Lab is worth roughly $220M USD, according to Sharepost, a Website that values venture capital-backed private companies. That may not be the most accurate number, but it's a reasonable enough number for this discussion.

That two hundred million sounds like a lot, but compared to younger, hipper social media properties like Twitter ($4.1 billion), Zynga ($6.2 billion USD), or Facebook ($54 billion), it is a pittance.

It's also a significant plunge from July 2009, when it was valued at roughly $675M USD. That is a precipitous erosion of investor value. Ownership cannot be pleased, which is probably one reason we have a new CEO. It also explains all the ham-handed jamming of social media all over their Website instead of fixing the in-world tools, but that's another discussion.

Now taking $20 million in venture capital and building something worth $200 million is actually a significant accomplishment. The problem now is stagnation and decline. From a venture capitalist point of view, it is time to take the profits and put that money to work where it will grow again, like some Twitter-based game company or whatever.

Four Roads Forward

So Linden Lab's owners have roughly four options - shutting down, continuing along, going public, or selling out.

Apart from some feckless Web 2.0 pundits and your usual videogame forum ignorami, nobody actually wants Linden Lab to simply shut down. More to the point, shutting down is not an option for the real owners of and investors in Linden Lab. The reason you invest in something is to get a return on your capital, not to throw the principal away.

Continuing along as a privately held company is viable. CCP Games, with EVE Online, has been around for a while and looks to stay too. Being a mid-sized player in virtual worlds that is able to consistently turn a profit and keep the enterprise going is not on its own, a bad place to be.

The problem is that with every passing year, if Second Life's user base remains stagnant and technology elsewhere on the Web continues to evolve, the value of the property will continue to decline, ultimately to nothing. Again, this is not viable for the employees and residents, let alone the owners and investors. The relentless logic of capitalism dictates putting money to work where it will get the most return.

Going public is a dubious proposition. We are in a global recession or worse. Second Life is not a hot ticket like Twitter or Facebook, so prospects for an IPO at this point are grim. Even worse, once you are a public company, you are legally beholden to your shareholders - not your employees, not your customers - to maximize profits, especially in the short-term.

I could make a longer case why an IPO is a Bad Idea, but suffice it to say heavy-handed attempts to monetize the user base while cutting expenses and outsourcing customer service to China would kill the world faster than puttering along with stripped-down viewers and unnavigable forums. A publicly-traded Linden Lab would be a short-seller's dream.

That leaves selling to a third party as the most realistic exit plan for the investors to lock in their current profits. The problem is, to whom?

The Perils of Being Pwned

Ever since I joined SL back in 2005, there have been rumors about Linden Lab being bought out by another company. For many of the same reasons why an IPO could be a disaster, I think apart from a couple of cases, this is a bad idea.

Being acquired by a big, publicly-traded company means being just another product in their portfolio. Big, publicly-traded companies are notorious for changing business plans whenever the markets or the management changes.

Activision dumped their whole Guitar Hero franchise recently after milking it for all it was worth. EA closed The Sims Online many ages ago. Google? They shut down their virtual world after five months. The list of virtual worlds and MMO games that have bit the dust is a long and gory one.

Being part of Microsoft, Sony, Disney or any other company like that would mean being subject to a never-ending series of stupid decisions by managers who know even less about the world than Linden Lab does, before the inevitable reorganization closes the world for good.

Actually, the EA option is an interesting one, given their investment in the Sims franchise, the failure of their earlier Sims MMO, the obvious parallels - content creation and avatars - between the Sims and Second Life, as well as the new CEO's background at EA and specifically with the Sims franchise. Of all the potential deals I can think of, that is the best fit, but it still suffers from the same perils described above.

Financially it may make sense for the owners of Linden Lab to unload their white elephant onto a deep pockets media player, but it's certainly not in the best interests of the residents and it would be a dismal end to the pioneering virtual world that is Second Life.

There is another way.

The Public Option

Selling Second Life to its residents - to the Green Bay Packers fans - may seem like a pipe dream, but let's look at the numbers.

Let's say Linden Lab continues along for another year or two, and the value of the company erodes further, down to $100 million. If Second Life has about 750,000 active users in a month, and around 50,000 logged in at one time, let us say the seriously committed user base might be around 10,000.

Ten thousand users for $100 million works out to about $10,000 each. That number is way more than what the vast majority of people are going to come up with, but if we reduce the price of a share to $1,000 each - that's about what a sim owner pays in a year, anyway. Now we are getting towards some more realistic numbers.

There are also educational institutions, which see the value of SL as a teaching tool, could also be major shareholders, potentially putting as much as $100,000 apiece into actual ownership. Government and corporate entities would also be eligible for ownership. These kind of groups were rather annoyed when the Enterprise initiative failed; having a say in the future of SL will certainly make their commitment more permanent.

Potential SL owner ponders her long-term fate.

Even so, SL residents aren't going to magically summon up this kind of money overnight, but if a serious plan to transition to a non-profit, publicly-owned company was put into place, steps could be put into place towards ownership. For example, those paying tier could have their payments used as a sort of down payment plan on eventual pieces of the company.

Maybe SL isn't worth even $100 million. Ultimately it's worth whatever someone is willing to pay. If nobody else wants to buy it, and the residents can come up with $40 million or even $20 million in commitment with a three to five-year buy-in plan, that's a better return on investment than simply pulling the plug.

For the Residents

Sim owners and prim merchants, who have a great deal invested in the world already, in many cases many years and tens of thousands of dollars, would be given the opportunity to actually own something tangible that can never be taken away, just because a Vice President at Electronic Arts or Google or Microsoft decides to pull the plug to focus on the latest resume-building buzzword.

Even less invested residents would still have the benefit of knowing their Second Life will always be there, and over time this kind of permanence in a fluid and very impermanent online metropolis could be enticed into a deeper connection with the world.

There is also a whole wealth of knowledge out there in the user base in such things as governance, technical innovation, scripting, and helping. There is a deep desire to help others among some residents, and volunteer programs could return. One could go on at great lengths about how much more involved and passionate the residents would be if they felt they had a genuine stake in the community, rather than being dependent on Linden Lab.

Outlook for Employees

Just because Linden Lab and Second Life changes from a private company to a community-owned non-profit doesn't mean there wouldn't be permanent staff still in place. Far from it. The Green Bay Packers hardly throw their draft choices on a JIRA forum and let the fans decide. They have elections, they have a board, they have bylaws, and they hire professional coaches and managers to do what needs to be done.

For some staff, being part of a non-profit may not be appealing, and they may choose to move on to a start-up or something trendier. But for some older, married staff, having the long-term security of a job that isn't going anywhere could be more appealing than the current fluid situation. Regardless, in this job market, people can be hired to administer things.

A Long, Painful Process

Clearly this idea is just that, an idea, and a thousand devils would be born in the details. Hundreds of objections, questions, and issues will spring up if this avenue was ever considered seriously:

Would community shareholders have more rights than non-shareholders? Would their avatars be marked in some way? How should elections be handled? How are financials handled? Privacy? Security?

I don't know. It's something to talk about.

What's unique about Second Life is the passion, intelligence, and diversity of its users would be able to work it out. They would have to. Again to steal from the Green Bay example, shareholders in the team aren't even guaranteed tickets, only a voice in the governance of the team. For the vast majority of users, who would not be owners in a Second Life Community Corporation, virtual life would be a little more secure, but otherwise the same.

Conclusion

Whatever the end game for Second Life's owners may be, I hope the community option is something that is considered.

I do care about SL and its long-term viability. As I said, I don't think a sale to some other technology, media or game company is the panacea. Neither is an IPO. Commercial decisions are by definition, by fiduciary law, anathema to community interests. They cannot and never will value what has been created here over the last eight years by the residents.

And to me, that's where the true value of Second Life lies - in its long and colorful history, in its complex web of relationships and friendships, its rivalries and feuds, its personalities and controversies, its creativity and its spark - in short, in its community.

Nothing lasts forever, in worlds of real or make-believe, but community ownership is one path to something more enduring and meaningful.

From SL Griefer to Spokesman for Anon

noreply@blogger.com (Kanomi) — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 22:14:00 +0000

Had to share this story on D Magazine about a heroin addicted writer named Barrett Brown, who seems to have graduated from griefing Second Life to becoming the spokesman for the Anonymous group of hackers:

Brown was part of what he calls “an elite team of pranksters” that did whatever they could to make people miserable on Second Life. They developed a weapon that propagated giant Marios until certain areas of the online universe crashed. They would go into a concert and produce a loud screaming that no one could stop. They went into nightclubs for furries, people who get off by wearing animal costumes, and hassled them.

But Anonymous, with a capital “A,” didn’t coalesce into a recognizable phenomenon until 2008, when the Church of Scientology tried to remove an embarrassing YouTube video of a wild-eyed Tom Cruise talking about how awesome Scientology is.

His griefer affiliation in SL was most likely with the Patriotic Nigras or one of its off-shoots, sects that originated on the 4chan and used a lot of the same terminology you hear from Anonymous in news reports today. Brown says as much in the article, that it was on Encyclopedia Dramatica and 4chan's /b/ board that he hooked up with Anonymous; he may well have co-authored such articles as "On the Nature of Guerrilla Operations in a Metaverse Environment" which glorified and codified various SL takedowns.

Still, it's a long way from crashing sims to bringing down the websites of multinational financial institutions. Next along the way, Anonymous first attacked Scientology. By 2010, the group was openly supporting WikiLeaks and attacking sites like PayPal and MasterCard which had begun refusing donations for the group. That's when private security contractors like HB Gary Federal got involved, with the firm's Aaron Barr stalking the group through social media and bragging to the Financial Times he knew their core leadership.

That's when Anonymous struck back, crashing HB Gary's servers, breaking into their email, taking over social media accounts, and vandalizing their web servers, and from what we can glean from the article, Barrett was at least quite aware of the hack of HB Gary Federal after it went down, even going so far as to call HB Gary's Aaron Barr on the phone right after.

It is through this hack that all of the HB Gary Federal emails were leaked onto torrents, including the apparent plot to collude with Bank of America and the Chamber of Congress to stalk and harass political opponents, bloggers, and WikiLeaks donaters, as well as their bizarrely improbable scheme to use Second Life as a propaganda platform on behalf of the US Military's SOCOM, or special operations command.

So there's a nugget of irony for you; it's thanks to former grid crashers that we find out about even darker plots. Strange days all around.

Spooks in Second Life

noreply@blogger.com (Kanomi) — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 19:45:00 +0000

Private Security Contractor Pitched Second Life PsyOps Campaign to US Military

In mid-2010, private security firm and defense contractor HBGary Federal proposed a psychological operations campaign to the United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM) that would take place within the virtual world of Second Life.

SOCOM is the arm of the military that oversees "covert and clandestine missions", according to Wikipedia.

The Second Life PsyOps proposal appears in an Ars Technica story by Nate Anderson and based on more than 40,000 e-mails taken from HBGary Federal’s email server. The company’s emails were seized by the hacker group ‘Anonymous’ and released on Torrent sites, in retaliation for an HBGary Federal employee’s attempts to infiltrate their group through social engineering.

In Anderson’s article about the emails, which describes at length the various root-kits, back doors and other hacking tools the firm was developing for corporate, government, and military clients, is an unusual description of a psychological operation to be launched within Second Life.

The firm’s proposal stated: “HBGary personnel have experience creating political cartoons that leverage current events to seize the target audience's attention and propagate the desired messages and themes.”

It uses a cartoon of Iranian president Ahmadinejad controlling an ayatollah on a puppet string as an example of the kind of desired message they could promulgate.

Messages could be spread through Second Life via "an in-world advertising company, securing small plots of virtual land in attractive locations, which can be used to promote themes using billboards, autonomous virtual robots, audio, video, and 3D presentations,” according to the document examined by Ars Technica.

They even proposed modifying the Second Life client to more efficiently track the dispersion of their message, according to the report, though it’s not entirely clear what is meant by altering the client to produce: "valuable usage metrics, enabling detailed measures of effects,” as quoted in the report.

While Ars Technica notes that there’s no evidence the proposal was accepted by the government, and the Second Life PsyOps scheme is just a footnote in the larger story of Anonymous vs. HBGary Federal, the fact that such a proposal was put together with Second Life in mind does raise questions about the vulnerability of SL to other such operations, and whether or not Linden Lab itself is aware of any other psychological warfare or propaganda efforts which have been deployed in world.

Another issue it raises is user privacy and the integrity of third-party clients, given that HBGary proposed modifying an SL client and has experience with phising, creating rootkits and other forms of espionage, as the Ars Technica piece details.

Linden Labs’ new CEO has spoken recently about his commitment to user privacy, telling Dusan Writer: “People don’t want other people to connect the dots from their avatar to their real life person – or even, for that matter, to an alt. One of the ethical obligations we have is to protect people’s privacy.”

Given that firms like HBGary are, as Forbes' Andy Greenberg notes, involved in: “cyberattacks and misinformation campaigns, phishing emails and fake social networking profiles, pressuring journalists and intimidating the financial donors to clients' enemies including WikiLeaks, unions and non-profits" a statement from Linden Lab and new CEO regarding the HBGary Federal PsyOps proposal and related issues would probably be welcome at this time.

I contacted Linden Lab's press office regarding this, and received this official response from Peter Linden, PR Manager of Linden Lab:

Hi Kanomi,

Thank you for your email. While we appreciate the opportunity, we will not be offering comment on this proposed use of the Second Life platform.

Best,

Peter

-kp