Rosedale's Priority: 'Making It Crash Less'
Spiegel Online recently talked to Philip Rosedale, and asked him a few tougher questions than the Linden Lab founder seems usually to field from the media. Rosedale was asked, essentially, if the "party is over," following what can be perceived as a bit of a bubble popping for Second Life in the media. He says that's the natural cycle of new media, but admits it's a "rollercoaster."
Rosedale highlights Second Life's uses for business and academic collaboration, but stops short of admitting, when prompted, that marketing in second life is "a flop."
One highlight, pertaining to business models:
SPIEGEL ONLINE: One thing you haven't managed yet is to make people pay to use Second Life on a large scale. Online games like "World of Warcraft" that offer mission and reward schemes make huge amounts of money through subscription fees. Do you need to reconsider your model?Rosedale: Our strategy is that other people need to build that on top of us, and they are doing that. We have to make sure the platform offers the right kind of features to make that stuff easy -- and that is a challenge for us. It is similar to Facebook, where they've created an API to allow people to build little social applications. But we are not going to make Second Life into a game to improve its retention.
Finally, Rosedale says that issues of performance and accessibility are currently the main focus: "Making it crash less on everybody's computers is our number one mission right now."
