Dear Ebbe: My wish list for Second Life

I started to make this part of my post about Ebbe Altberg's tweeted reply to Marianne McCann but changed my mind. It's better off on it's own.

We all have our personal lists of gripes about Second Life itself. Mine include:

• Fix Group chat (IMs). Huge issue. It often makes groups useless for long stretches.
• Fix avatar rez issues (gray cloud). Major frustration for new users AND those who don't know all the arcane hoops you have to go through to fix it.
• Fix teleport issues. Either you get stuck in a SIM or you get logged out trying to leave one.
• Fix SIM crossings. Uggh. My car just sticks when I cross a sim.
• Improve tier and pricing structures to encourage new development and land purchase. People are tiering down and abandoning land. Help them KEEP it.
• Improve the base avatar mesh for more detail (long term goal). Some areas are so lacking in detail that it's painful.
• Restore some semblance of HELP for new users! Seriously. The new user experience is miserable. Even the old self-guided "get the torch" system was much better than the current "rez the n00b and leave him/her in the hands of lurking trolls" thing that happens now. Heck, with a few tweaks, you could turn the entire new user experience over to Caledon Oxbridge* as far as I'm concerned.
• Bring back Linden Lab office hours. Communications with thought leaders in the SL community will go along way toward restoring trust.
• Respond to griefing problems quickly. It took 4 days to get an identified griefing object removed from the land next door to hers. That's unacceptable because it was hurting her inworld sales.
• A fair process for DMCA infringement. Huge concern for merchants. Some people are allowed to keep clearly infringing or copybotted items up for sale on the SL Marketplace while others get their non-infringing items taken down without cause or comment.
• Reduce lag and improve concurrency. Even with fewer people actively in Second Life at any one time, it seems this problem has gotten worse over the last year.
• Open the JIRA back up. Let us ALL see and help Linden Lab evaluate it options and priorities. 
• Make us feel better about privacy. MOST residents do not choose to expose their real life information to Second Life for a variety of (generally) very good reasons. Yet, Linden Lab seems to keep wandering in the direction of connecting the two. STOP IT. Keep pushing the issue and I'd bet you'd lose 1/2 or more of your customers.

So those are some of my personal hot buttons that come to mind. I'd appreciate hearing yours since I'm seriously thinking of doing a poll to see how people rank their own issues.

*Edited to remove reference to Desmond Shang.

More from Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg

This is a blog post about a blog post about two twitter posts which were about another blog post.

So we start with Wagner James Au's blog post which basically collects two Tweets and expands on them.

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2014/02/ebbe-altberg-linden-lab-second-life-3.html

It is cool to see Ebbe Altberg read Second Life commentaries and actually respond to them. And here's Mari's original blog post that kicked that interchange off:

http://marianne.secondlifekid.com/2014/02/25/dear-ebbe/

Just an off-hand comment first on something Mr. Au said. "Responsiveness to JIRA support tickets" isn't the issue. It's that the JIRA was completely closed so only the person who filed the original issue could see it. Clearly perceived by Second Life residents as wayyy secretive as opposed to de facto non-responsive.

I really do hope Ebbe Altberg CAN restore that feeling of community that Second Life USED to have. Open and honest communications between Linden Lab and Second Life citizens / residents / avatars / customers are at the heart of that.

Ebbe Altberg / Ebbe Linden introduces himself

Pretty good start I think. Certainly a lot more engaging and humble than the previous non-humble Humble guy.

Hello from Linden Lab's New CEO

Ebbe Altberg aka Ebbe Linden

Looks like it's official now! Darn and I was so hoping for something more creative like Alt Linden.

Ebbe Altberg Joins Linden Lab as CEO

My first thought was, wow an ALT is now running Linden Lab. Certainly can't be much worse than Mister Invisible himself, Rod Humble. From the Linden Blog post:

Most recently prior to joining Linden Lab, Altberg was COO of BranchOut. Prior to that, he was part of the executive team at Yahoo!, most recently as SVP of Media Products. His more than 25 years of experience managing teams that create world-class products and services also includes leadership roles at Ingenio (acquired by at&t Interactive) and Microsoft. 

“We remain committed to world-changing innovation from Linden Lab,” said Jed Smith of the company’s Board of Directors. “We’re keenly focused on providing incredible experiences for all of our customers, and Ebbe is the perfect person to help lead our team as we continue to serve and grow our global audience of active users."

So what does this mean? Who the hell knows? Linden Lab has been such an exercise in musical chairs lately that any direction other random will be a change.

I think we should have a contest for Ebbe Altberg's Linden name. We can start with:

• Yahoo Linden
• Ebil Linden
• NotRodvik Linden
• Alt Linden

Your thoughts?

Preppy punk purple from Inga Wind - "Demi"

How's that for alliterations in a headline? :D

Seriously, this latest effort from Inga Wind is way adorkable! Who'da thunk you could wear a polo shirt with punkish motorcycle pants and boots? I guess she does. But it totally works! (Especially in SL.)

I'm not going to bother taking my own photos of it because it looks EXACTLY like you see here. Even on me lol.

Mesh everything so make sure you're on a viewer that supports it.

Sizes from XS to XL Comes with HUD resizer for the boots! Price is $220L with a 10% discount for group members. Demi is also available in khaki, sand (yellow & brown really) and red.

As usual, here's a linky to Inga's store inworld: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Pitreavie/167/187/408