Archive for the 'Forums' Category
Friday, February 13th, 2009 by: Blue
[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
Posted in Announcements & News, Blog Improvements, Blogroll, Business, Community, Community Gateways, Concierge, Customer Service, Education, Enterprise, Forums, Land, Marketing, New Releases, Tips & Tricks |
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Hello from Support!
We are pleased to announce our new German office hours for outworld support. If your preferred language is German then we have the support for you! Monday through Friday from 08:30 to 19:30 our German support agents will be available to help you with your non-technical questions. Premium and Concierge customers have access to live chat and phone support. Please contact us with your questions.
Toll-free (US/Canada)
800-294-1067
or
Long-distance (not free)
703-286-6277.
They are available 08:30am to 19:30pm CET, Monday thru Friday.
Hi there, Tom Hale aka T Linden here, the new(ish) Chief Product Officer.
That’s a mighty lofty title, especially considering that my avie is a rather short, very cute green frog. It’s a bit like the Michelin Man and Keroppi had a love child. Chalk it up to “Frog” being my childhood nickname.
From a software genetics point of view, I come from the graphics and multimedia space and spent most of my career at Macromedia, and later at Adobe.
I started in image editing, did a stint in 3D (remember Extreme3D? No? You are not alone), worked on web tools like Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Flash, helped to make Flash a platform for applications, voice and video, then built a collaboration and training application, called Breeze, on that platform. Along the way I learned a lot about how to involve communities in the development of the software they use.
I joined Macromedia when it was roughly the same size as Linden Lab, and being here feels a bit like coming home to a new house that feels strangely familiar.
It’s been an eventful 40 days since I got here – Openspaces, a global economic meltdown, strong Q3 growth numbers for Linden Lab and a fun and fascinating deep dive into Second Life.
M said my goal here is to bring a product focus to Linden Lab and to Second Life. What does “bring a product focus” really mean? IMHO:
- Listening to the market. Cluetrain says all markets are conversations, and this is probably more true for Second Life. Understanding the needs of our current Residents and the people we’d like to be future Residents is necessary to tailor the product to meet the needs of our increasingly diverse audiences. Second Life is enormously rich, so we need more than a one size fits all experience. Today, we have many channels of feedback from Residents in the pJiras, forums, SL Views, and inworld, and as we make our way forward, we’ll be looking for new ways for us to interact.
- Striving for delight. Driving for a level of simplicity, consistency, and quality that will result in a great user experience. Software ergonomics, fit and finish, design and interaction models in the viewer and the web experience will make a tangible difference to the way Residents interact with Second Life. Think Mac OS X versus Windows 3.1.
- Developing our foresight. Predicting the future is a dicey proposition, and Second Life is as complex and unpredictable as, well, Real Life (if not more so). I can’t predict the future, but one way to predict the future is to invent it. In order to do that, we need to develop our ability to plan and invest over a longer time horizon to make revolutionary as well as evolutionary leaps.
- Thinking holistically. When we think about the quote unquote product experience we will start to segment the wonderful complexity of Second Life into component parts. We’ll have to think about these components as part of a cohesive whole, one that extends well beyond the screen into every place that noobies, teachers, land barons, currency traders, fashion designers, socializers, office workers, Residents of the world (virtual and otherwise) touch Second Life and Linden Lab.
- Balancing priorities. Tradeoffs are hard, that’s why they are called tradeoffs. The business has needs. Residents have needs. There are laws of physics that come into play in terms of resources and schedules. Wonderful people and wonderful products can lead to great businesses (as measured by two consequences of user delight, growth and profit), but it takes lots of heavy lifting to make sure that both Second Life businesses (ours and yours) are successful enough to enable investment for the future.
Of course, I am not alone in this. Designing and building and delivering and supporting and participating in the “product(s)” and businesses of Second Life is what all Lindens do.
And of course, it’s an undertaking that we will do in concert with you, gentle reader and passionate Resident. In future blog posts, we’ll share our ideas and directions, and look to you for feedback and answers to help us choose what path to take.
So let’s start with this. One of our products, the premium subscription, is ripe for improvement. It’s been neglected and there have been many conversations, forum threads, pJiras, surveys and plans to improve it, leading to some great ideas. It’s even been the topic of a Massively post by Tateru Nino who speculated about what we might do if we were going to improve the product or make smart business decisions. But what could make a premium subscription truly premium? What would make the experience a delight for you? Let us know in the forums.
Fellow Residents! I want to talk- with YOU!
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Posted in -Miscellaneous, Announcements & News, Bugs & Fixes, Community, Customer Service, Development, Education, Events, Forums, New Releases, Quality Assurance, Resident Experience, Tips & Tricks |
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Wednesday, October 11th, 2006 by: Torley
Wednesday, September 20th, 2006 by: Torley
We now have a Resident Answers forum for Resi-to-Resi help as was previously announced. We hope it will have a long and prosperous life serving the community, but that’s only possible with *your* help of course! So, we’re giving it a two-week, experimental trial run. After that, we’ll “evaluate its usefulness to our Residents” aka see where it’s at—*does Beck handclap*—and decide whether it’s worth keeping.
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Tuesday, September 19th, 2006 by: Torley
Monday, September 18th, 2006 by: Torley
Ah, another busy Monday—aren’t they always? In a few moments, I’ll be opening the Resident Answers forum. It is just what it sounds like, and fills a long-needed void. Thanx to all who suggested: Brace Coral, Katier Reitveld, Jessica Elytis and more, I’m looking at you with a smile.
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Forums. You love them or you hate them. They’re often useful, and occasionally nasty. However, for the past few years they’ve played a central role in how we talk to one another. Now it’s time for the forums at www.secondlife.com to start a transition, as some of the best known Second Life communication pathways take new turns.
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