Changing Business and Economy in Second Life: Linden Lab CEO Mark Kindon Inverview
Cnet recently interviewed Linden Lab CEO Mark Kindon. The interview covered many topics including the hype of SecondLife, business use, and more.
Although concurrent users are on the rise the hype and media attention surrounding Second Life seems to be decreasing. Kingdon points out increased Lindex trading activity and says “there’s no credit crunch in Second Life”.
Yet Second Life is increasing fees. Is this a good time to be raising fees? Kingdon claims that businesses are investing in Second Life real estate more than ever despite other major companies such as Coca Cola and AOL pulling out of Second Life.
Kingdon does acknowledge a change in business use from marketing to recruitment fairs and product demonstrations as well as online meetings.
The price increase comes at the worst possible time. I feel that Linden Labs is sending the wrong message and partially alienating the very people who are making thier platform strong.
The reason the big names left is they saw no advantages of remaining in Second Life. Since I am both proffesional and creative, I am almost 100% certain that this is because the companies that created the presence for them in world were large agencys, business people, and not people who have the real creativity and skills to make the brands fun and exciting.
By raising the prices so dramatically, these small creative groups are being pushed out.. and so the big companies will leave also, as their chances of actually getting effective marketing will leave to find other worlds to create and populate.
I love Second Life but I worry about the way Linden Labs is currently managing it.