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Originally Posted by Khamon  This is the crux. LL believe, honestly, whole-heartedly that they've developed *THE* online collaborative community killer app. They further believe that they've built and fostered *THE COMMUNITY* that we users belong to and absolutely cannot live without.
They really, honestly, whole-heartedly believe these things. |
I feel so much cognitive dissonance around this. On the one hand I can see there is still a community and it's what keeps me here. On the other hand, the way LL talks to that community astonishes me. To build a community and drive it away would be absurd, but it's very possible.
I don't know the mind of LL, but I can easily see the dynamics in the cliques that make up the
SL community. The impression I get is that LL doesn't have the correct model for predicting what this community really desires.
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Originally Posted by Archer Braun I think I agree with you. But I think the management of SL simply doesn't (or didn't, as the case may be...) grok that.
I've also developed some serious doubts and concerns surrounding the efficacy of a platform like SL ever becoming a standard for online experience...which was one of the major aspirations for SL from the get-go. |
They certainly can't do it based on technology. They can never keep up with change just using one product, no one could. The concept of
SL as a destination can still be salvaged separate from any marriage with a particular form of software. If open standards for the idea of the virtual world as a pervasive network are ever to succeed, I can't see any way for LL to leverage that except on the basis of what they've done so far to create a destination, including the user base they've built up and the resulting culture and society.
So there's this huge cognitive dissonance going on with the residents as they look at an LL who seem to want community, and an LL who treat that community as something disposable that they enabled only long enough to be able to start chasing the vertical markets.
The absurdity in this is trying to market what's left of
SL-as-a-technology to verticals. IBM took matters into its own hands, and that's fine but it doesn't change impressions much.
Ordinary users have other concerns. The virtual community I've worked to help create is an end-in-itself and exists across a number of different platforms. Before I jump back into working on it, I have to give some thought to which way the weathervane is pointing.
I'm not well and I hope that what I'm saying here makes coherent sense. Thanks to both of you for your posts; you've given me much food for thought.