linden lab - ReadWriteWeb

New CEO for Second Life as Linden Lab Names EA Gaming Vet to Head Company

Audrey Watters — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 10:30:37 -0800

Linden Lab, the maker of the virtual world Second Life, announced its new CEO today: Rod Humble, a former Electronic Arts executive. Humble will replace Philip Rosedale, who had been acting as the company's interim CEO.

2010 was hardly a banner year for Second Life, and Linden Lab says it hopes that a new CEO at the helm will bring "fresh perspective, renewed energy, and creativity" to the new year.

]]> Some 30% of Linden Lab were laid off in June, and shortly afterwards, CEO Mark Kingdom stepped down. Rosedale, the creator of Second Life, returned briefly to the head of the company, but the bad news seemed to continue: the closing of the Teen Grid, the elimination of discounted land purchases for schools and non-profits.

Second Life describes itself has "leading 3D virtual world," but virtual worlds have never quite taken off. Second Life does offer an immersive, user-created world and boasts a strong virtual economy, and it still has a devoted user base - over 750,000 unique Residents spent morre than 105 million hours "in world" in the third quarter of this year alone. Nonetheless, Second Life has a notoriously steep learning curve and substantial hardware requirements - perhaps limiting a more widespread adoption.

By selecting Rod Humble to lead the company, Linden Lab has chosen someone who knows popular gaming. Most recently, Humble headed the EA Play label, which includes the best-selling PC game franchise of all time, The Sims. Prior to working at Electronic Arts, Humble served as VP of Product Development for the MMO EverQuest. With a strong background in gaming, it will be interesting to see how Humble's direction shapes Second Life, something that fans often insist is "not a game."

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Second Life Parent to Lay Off 30%

Curt Hopkins — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 18:30:00 -0800

According to an announcement issued today by Linden Lab, the company that controls the Second Life virtual environment, changes are afoot. Thirty percent of the company's employees will be laid off as the company consolidates and closes its bureaus outside North America.

Linden Lab intends to move the Second Life environment to a browser- and mobile-based platform, obviating the need to download software. It will combine its product and engineering divisions. Future plans include migration to social networks, like Facebook.

]]> In previous coverage, Tom Hale, chief product officer for Linden Lab, said user-to-user transactions in the immersive world spiked 30% over last year to $160 million, breaking all previous company records. Clearly this was not enough for Linden to feel comfortable with the future. Its assertion that it is restructuring to "generate efficiencies" (?) doesn't really answer the question of why.

PaidContent pointed out that Linden Lab, "hasn't raised outside cash since 2006. At least two of its backers have sold their stakes."

Massively reported that the company's Singapore office is being shut and its Germany head is leaving.

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Second Life Finds Gaining Residents as Simple as Redesigning Home Page

Rick Turoczy — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 22:27:18 -0800

Sometimes, no matter how compelling your service, it all comes down to the basics. When the buzz begins to die down, you have to resort to compelling content to sell your site and services. This goes for every site. Even Second Life, who recently discovered that their existing home page design wasn't doing the site justice. Now, after testing a new design for their landing page, they're going live with a new design and the Lindens are hoping that it will continue to motivate more residents to join the Second Life community.

]]> This year was a rocky one for virtual worlds. They continued to move out of the spotlight as media darlings and found, instead, more taciturn media and struggling communities. Second Life dealt with stagnant numbers and Google decided to pull the plug on Lively.

Now, the shot in the arm for Second Life seems to be as simple as a redesign that emphasizes the benefits of the community to would-be users and encourages them to register to try the service for themselves. Plus, they've thrown some Cooliris-like panning interactivity in there for good measure.

After testing the new design for one week, Linden Lab is convinced the new design is doing a better job than its current home page:

"Over the past week we've been comparing the core metrics (traffic, registrations, logins, economic and inworld activity) of the new page with our existing new user home page. The data is encouraging: the new design performed better in almost all aspects, so we are moving full steam ahead with launching the redesigned page."

And so it seems that finding new life - or a Second Life - could be as simple as communicating more effectively. It will be interesting to see if this return to basics makes 2009 a better year for Linden Lab and the residents of its community.

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