Coming Soon…The Good Ol’ Days!

[2009-02-25 @ 11:10 AM PST] The new blogs are UP NOW! blogs.secondlife.com (note the extra “s”, the singular will also redirect to the new blogs soon).

[11 AM PST] WE’RE SO CLOSE!

[8 AM PST] Pardon the mess, it’s temporary. We’re upgrading to our new blogs! Stay tuned… -Torley

UPDATE – Due to some last minute technical naughtiness, the launch of the new blogs has been delayed to early next week.

I’m disappointed about the delay of course, as I can’t wait to get started blogging in earnest.  If you are disappointed as well, I apologize.  But you know the old saying:  When life gives you lemmings, make lemmingade! And so without further ado…

Welcome to BLUE’S TOLD-YOU-SO COMPETITION where you can turn snark into valuable prizes!  The game is simple.  Just come up with the ultimate told-you-so to go with any event, whether it’s the delay of the new blogs, McCain losing the election, or your boyfriend getting towed for parking in a handicapped spot…it’s up to you.  I’ll even get you started with an example:

Yoz:  Hey Blue, we have to delay launch due to some technical issues.

Blue:  Told ya we shouldn’t be using that Commodore64.

The best comeback wins one lucky resident a dream date with me, your pal Blue, to an exciting inworld location as part of my SL Travel Blog.  Yes you heard right.  Immortalized…on a BLOG.  How can you resist?  Just write your comeback on a notecard with the title TOLD YOU SO and drop a copy on me inworld.   Even if you don’t win, a witty dis is its own reward!

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The Second Life Blog was once a place where the Lindens talked casually with you about policy, their projects, recent news, the future of SL, etc.  Residents regularly told us that they loved having access to such broad insight into the company and frequent communication with the full range of Lindens.  And Lindens loved the ongoing dialog with residents.

Over time however, as more Lindens came to participate, the blog got a bit manic. Some of you complained that reports of temporary performance issues would eclipse larger conversations related to long term plans and features while others believed that tutorials and opinion pieces were distracting them from the hard news of inworld issues they needed to know about in order to run their businesses.

In other words, we outgrew our single channel blog.  It was no longer serving people’s individual needs. Perhaps worse was that the signal to noise ratio in comments had gotten bad enough that Lindens weren’t able to depend on them as a way to clearly hear the range of needs and desires of the community.  As such we had to limit blog participation to a smaller number of Lindens on certain types of topics and move extended discussion to the forums.

We knew it was important to get back to using the blog as a key means of constructive two way conversation with the community, so we put together a shopping list of must-haves for a new blog suite which included…

• Individual channels of communication for each subject
• Numerous means of accessing channels (including RSS and email subscription)
• Discussion format sub-blogs for extended conversations with threading, voting etc…
• Private sub-blogs for communities working in Second Life (like educators and Solution Providers)

After comparing options, we believe we’ve found one that will best suit our ongoing needs. We expect that it will allow us to get back to the days when any and all Lindens could participate freely and hope that it will provide a convenient way for you to engage us on a wide variety of topics.

So we hope that you’ll join us here, on Thursday the 19th of February, for the launch of a whole new Second Life Blog, where it will be the good ol’ days all over again!

See you then,
-Blue