-
-
- Second Life Competitors: Be
Heard or Be Ignored
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- This article is both a
follow-up to "Who Will Provide Linden Lab serious competition to
Second Life?" and a response to
feedback provided by Dusan Writer (AKA Doug Thompson, CEO of
Remedy Communications).
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- December 18,
2008
- By Eric M. Scharf
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- Dusan,
I appreciate your post and the great detail you put into describing
the very real effort that exists to create competition for Linden
Lab's Second Life virtual world technology.
I have no argument with any part of your response. It is spot on,
and I concur with all of the examples you have put forth.
There is one missing ingredient, however, to your argument that
might have prevented this discussion from taking place in its
entirety, had I simply accounted for it in my original article. That
missing link is good old-fashioned advertising (which can make all
the difference in the world between making a real effort to create
competition and actually having become a real competitor).
If the competition, free or otherwise, is not making a daily,
aggressive attempt at some furious flag-waving to get the attention
of the unknowing-public-at-large, then, those hundreds of
developers, who are pouring themselves into building what may be
great Second Life competitors, potentially become no better than the
hundreds of researchers who toil away for years and years on
"great-but-unknown medical cures" for pharmaceutical companies,
until those medications are mercifully announced by those companies
and potentially approved by the FDA.
Regarding the "free" virtual world tech being developed, free is
nice, but we-the-people, in general, are brazen enough to expect
more. Free, without a blinking red light, may just become free fall. Existence, without enough people knowing about you, just becomes a
silent blip in history. We
– the people
– have not come so far in our
evolution that we are finally willing, as a collective, to give up
our desire to have a "cool new thing" delivered to us on a silver
platter. People still apparently want to be deluged with hundreds of
Internet ads, magazine / newspaper articles, TV commercials from
Best Buy, Verizon, and Sony, as well as CNN breaking news updates to
find out "what's next."
Even though I cringe at the mere mention of it, I know you remember
VHS versus Beta Max. I know you remember the very early beginnings
of Windows versus Mac OS (before it was even called such a name). Beta Max is gone (but not forgotten, as I have been led to believe
it still exists in healthy numbers in Japan), but Apple remains as
the embodiment of what happens when a company is encouraged to focus
on the quality of its product at every turn (and the existence of
Microsoft reminds us that things were not always as crisp and
delicious at Apple as they are today).
For those blog visitors new to the basic story, Second Life began as
a heavily-frowned-upon hobbyist idea, with a pretty good-sized
initial investment (like at least 15-20% of all software-driven
projects, garage or corporate-based, in the world today). It could
be argued that investors and potential investors alike were more
interested in Phillip Rosedale (Linden Lab CEO) than the idea of
Linden Lab or Second Life itself.
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- Nonetheless, through timely
trade show / behind-closed-doors demonstrations, word-of-mouth, and
"some" advertising, Second Life flooded the marketplace to the point
where, just like with VHS and Windows, no one was complaining about
quality, feature sets, or lack of competition; just applauding
Second Life's very existence, accessibility, what you could
accomplish, and at a relatively low cost (relatively, because, at
the time, there was no highly-visible or recognizable competition to
Second Life, thus, people, in general, were more than thrilled to
pay the price –
at least initially
– simply to "have" to this cool new
thing).
Second Life did not begin as the embodiment of perfection, nor has
it reached perfection, nor will it ever do so, nor will any other
marketplace product, for that matter. Did it start with a perfect
business model or roll-out plan? Does any product, really? Once a
product builds enough of a following, critics and users alike,
naturally, begin to subjectively pick the product apart, listing
positives and negatives.
I am a perfectionist who runs a tight ship in everything I do, and I
know all about being ungrateful, per say, towards a
first-of-its-kind-product and wanting more-better-faster
improvements, especially with even a hint of competition on the
horizon. I am the farthest thing from a product apologist. All a
product can do is evolve, and it can only evolve through the
war-like interaction of two historically-opposed forces: (1) the
product creator's desire to enhance and add features to keep
customers happy and grow the business, and (2) the product customers
who want-want-want, no matter what kind of strain those demands
(lower cost-better features-making the Second Life code base
available to the public) place on the product creator.
When the reaction times of product creators are slower, of course,
than the time frames of the demanding product customers, the
breaking point results in the very real effort that exists to create
competition for Linden Lab's Second Life virtual world technology. But, again, the demanding product customers have, by leaps and
bounds, been developers, not the rest of society; the average Joe's
and Jane's who are, generally, only aware of Second Life.
No one can argue your points, Dusan, just the missing ingredient:
how competition, just like in any other industry (auto, computer
hardware, food, clothing, and shelter), needs to be seen-and-heard
by customers to truly exist in the eyes and ears of customers. If
you do not advertise, and do so in a subjectively big enough way,
you will be ignored (with rare exception), not because of your
quality level, and not because people do not wish to see or hear or
pay your price, but because no one knows you exist.
The competition cannot afford to wait to be noticed, like a UFO, by
the masses (the customers, not the developers). There may never
again be another Mozilla, and, while it is the right of the free
competition, for example, to dream of being the next Mozilla, that
is a dangerous game to play when the difference between existence
and myth has never been slimmer (and our discussion does not even
include a debate on usability / GUI quality). I think you and I both
know that not all of the competition to Second Life has agreed to
collaborate towards a common 3-Musketeers goal.
"Is the enemy of my enemy my friend . . . or my enemy?"
Again, your points are very much appreciated, Dusan
– not only by me
but all of the people who drop by The Genuine Article from time
to time. Second Life
– like any other product that has been at the
top of the heap for a while
– has never been more ripe for some good,
solid competition. Let us all hope the competition decides to
throw a serious coming out party "someday, while we are young," and
soon. Someone from the competition, in fact, should send you a check
for being such a good promoter.
Thanks and Happy Holidays,
Eric M. Scharf
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