Thursday 17 June 2010

Takeover.... a feasibility study.

Firstly, let me explain who we are. We are the existing clients of Linden Lab, referred to, in Mark’s letter to me as...[thanks to Crap Mariner for pointing this out]....

...”users, residents, people, customers, partnership, you”.....though actually we are clients, I would suggest, as we are paying for a service, not buying anything.

Now, I don’t have all the exact data so a lot of this feasibility study is theoretical. That, however, doesn’t make it less or more feasible.

We make SL, the social life, the builds, the PR, the economy, the culture. LL runs a bunch of servers and puts its foot in its mouth occasionally...

Now...before you dismiss this idea totally, consider the slant that Dusan puts on Sion Chickens... here..

“Sion Chickens hold the, um, kernel for new concepts of distributed work. Substitute “rare eggs” for “demanding tasks” and you get the idea – users collecting work tasks based on the level of difficulty and being rewarded appropriately. The embedded bidding and auctioning aren’t so different from crowd-sourcing, but with a difference: instead of trying to get free work from the “crowd”, you’re including proper rewards and pay.”

This makes it theoretically possible to own SL and run it from within SL.

We have more experience of SL than Linden Lab. We are more than 100,000 people with 2 years SL experience (guesstimate) which equals 200,000 years SL experience. We have around 20 years of business experience each, on average, making a total of 2 million years market economy expertise.

We have invested more time in the creation of SL than Linden Lab.

We own full rights to the most valuable SL assets, our skills, which we currently lease to LL free of charge.

We can buy out the venture capitalists or make an offer for the whole bunch of servers the Boys currently operate, though it would be cheaper to buy your own server than pay tier.

We know how to operate complex social and business structures without the need for expensive air-conditioned offices.

We propose a new face to SL where, for example, every premium member is given a share option and further options depending on hours spent inworld, thus reinforcing SL as a business owned by it’s clients.

A group of clients holding a combined quantity of share options (say xxxx) would be given a place on the board. Which would be an intelligent move as the recent 3 or 4 PR disasters could be avoided.

PR is redirected inworld rather than towards fictional future users.

We would further only employ staff who have a couple of years experience inworld.

New members will be allocated a mentor who will gain points (for introducing them to SL) counting towards a share option.

The ‘Linden Prize’ (to be renamed) would be for x,000,000 $ to be split amongst those making the greatest contribution to SL life, e.g. lag reduction, voice improvement, alpha bug, etc.

The future SL could be a devolved power structure where regional boards administer areas in return for tier, the successful would see their land prices rise and new members increase....etc.

No new land would be released. 30,000 sims for 60,000 clients is enough already.

House sales to new members will cease as the future SL will not compete for business with its clients.

Future ToS would recognise that the clients own all the skills which are leased free of charge for as long as the Board does it’s job satisfactorily.

We would be able to raise a very large sum of money, i.e. 1,000,000 users buying share options or, say, land owners boycotting tier for 6 months. Its is easy to raise capital when you are so many people.

....any further ideas..??

:)))

13 comments:

  1. A modest proposal ;)

    Feasible? I dunno, but if so, I'm in.

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  2. Here is the idea:

    http://savemeoh.wordpress.com/2010/06/15/the-saveme-oh-manifesto/

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  3. What? I pointed something out?

    A broken clockwork is right twice a day, I suppose.

    -ls/cm

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  4. Wow, that was quite a provocative and thought-inducing post. Could we own our world? Financially, yes I think we could.

    Could we run SL sustainably as e.g. a referendum-based communal democracy? That is somewhat trickier, as it would involve all of us in things that the Lab now isolates us from, like server hardware malfunctions and negotiating with the local electricity company. I would fear that "volunteer burnout" might make the experiment short-lived.

    Question to those who know: what is the sociopolitical status of Open Sim? is it corporate, and if so who owns it?

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  5. Well, Wol, you, or someone, would get paid for maintaining the servers....and the bills would get paid on time....:)) The economy would not be volunteer based.

    Yep, Crap, you point out a lot of good crap..

    Great link SaveMe but a bit too many words...looks like a ToS...

    Lalo...welcome onboard...

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  6. Second time today I have seen this, great idea.

    http://parktownprogress.blogspot.com/2010/06/let-us-buy-company.html

    I continue to say... Linden Lab gave us servers, platform, ideas. WE created Secondlife and, no matter what Tom Hale said, We created a viable culture.

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  7. You have more business-sense than "Business Linden" or whomever is nominally "heading" the "business" sector in LL.

    As a hosting company, LL neglects the basic tenets of the genre: STABILITY. If they'd concentrate on that, and selling server space, the rest of their dream-fantasies might come true from us, the residents and creators of the world.

    Soror Linden? You have my vote ^_^

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  8. Hehehhe.... not soror Linden, Miso,..... Nishi Lab....:)) (giggles madly)...

    yep, Brinda, thats synchronicity...

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  9. Yes! This is a brilliant idea! Reminds me of the thoughts I was having a day or two ago. Wondering if Lindens could be persuaded to run SL in a kind of democratic way.

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  10. Oh, another thought that just occurred to me. SL would be better run as a small country instead of a company that seeks to exploit it's clients for money.

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  11. Yep, and "ruling a big kindom is like cooking a small fish.." (Advice for the Boy...).....you put it in the pan over a slow heat and dont mess with it. Keep turning the fish and it breaks up into bits....

    ...but I don't think LL will ever consider a democracy, there is still a tendency to treat us like losers who need a Second Life. They really have no idea who we are.

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  12. oh i've thought for a long time that the residents should have some kind of government. i thought it would come eventually. it is an inevitability, sort of like when the Brits (sorry) got their Magna Carta and the Yanks (sorry) got their Declaration of Independence. i think you would be surprised at the amount of serious experience and talent that is out here in Residentville. apparently there has been something like this all along, i just recently stumbled on it. Gwyneth Llewelyn tells me they've been here since October 2004.. that is to say the Confederation of Democratic Simulators

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  13. Synchronistically, John Carter McKnight just posted this about how he doesn't think the CDS is democratic or a government. and i didn't even ask him! it's funny how this stuff (the Universe) works. http://www.johncartermcknight.com/blog/?p=762

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