FireSabre and Friends

Several growth indicators (See also the ‘Key Metrics’ link.) for Second Life retreated in the latter half of 2007, though the last couple of months, they have all been trending upwards again. There are several possible causes: the aforementioned technical problems, the gambling ban, the imposition of VAT on European users, and the predictable boom/backlash cycle in the industry press. None of these are necessarily persistent problems.

Some of the three ‘majors’ in SL content creation, have had some problems; partly because they were overextended, and partly because the ‘if you build it, they will come’ model of marketing in SL has been a bust.

But we’ve never been in that kind of work ourselves, and our own business, both educational and commercial, is growing rapidly. (We recently helped arrange an event for an educational conference that included streaming a performance from the Austin City Limits studio at KLRU-TV to the in-world event.)

In terms of overall feature set, SL is still the one to beat. SL does have its technical limitations, though several changes now being beta tested — WindLight, Havok 4, and the Mono scripting engine — are likely to help out with both stability and scalability.

Linden openness is a big part too. The content controls some see as essential, we see as barriers to entry, are likely to hinder the growth of a virtual world that depends on user-created content. Because SL is so open, because there are few content controls — and none of the bureaucracy, fee-paying, and deal-making that go with them — SL is uniquely hospitable to cottage industry, and to amateur creators looking to go pro. That also means a huge marketplace of subcontractors for businesses such as ours.

Closed standards like AOL and Compuserve didn’t win on the 2d web. Open will win in 3d too.

Our new educational project is officially unveiled: Virtual World Campus. It’s a way for educators with small projects, such as schools just beginning to dip their toes into the water of the virtual world, to set up a complete educational project on a reasonable budget. By buying a part of a sim managed by FireSabre, and thus dividing the cost of the region with other schools, educators can keep some budget in reserve for building and administrative services (which we are happy to provide).

More information at the Virtual World Campus FAQ page.

I missed this year’s Open Source Convention (grumble, grumble). I had even more reason than usual to want to go this year, because of the keynote address by Philip Rosedale (aka Philip Linden) [video link].

One interesting thing that Philip mentions: apparently a Teen grid user from the UK has developed a limited-function browser-based client, so that she can log into SL, and can chat, IM, teleport, etc., from within Firefox, without downloading an official client (or any client, apparently).