It’s not here yet, but 2011 is already around the corner and it’s time to reflect on the big Second Life news stories during 2010. From the feedback I received, I can now draw up a list of hot topics that residents have been mostly talking about during 2010….
- Layoffs, departures & firings – Many Linden Lab employees were laid off by 30% from June 2010. Mark Kingdon left Linden Lab and Philip Rosedale came back as interm CEO then left LL again a few months later. A major restructure of Linden Lab during 2010.
- Nonprofits and education – Linden Lab will be increasing the price of virtual land for non-profit and educational institution’s during early 2011.
- Viewer 2 – There has been alot of news coverage on this since early 2010
- LL Customer Service – There were cut backs in support hours during late 2010 causing issues for residents including support tickets processed far more slowly during 2010
- EmeraldGate – There was alot Emerald controversy coverage during the transition from Emerald to Phoenix
- Mesh Imports Open Beta – Finally getting of the ground during late 2010
- TSL Transition – The announcements caused increased coverage – Teen grid closing in early January 2011
- Gambling Ban – LL has plans to relent on gambling ban in Second Life in 2011
- Multiple Lawsuits– Virtual property ownership etc
- LL Microsoft Rumour – There was alot of news coverage on this during September 2010 via rumor spreading
- Avatars United – Many sl residents joined but the service failed to take off probably – LL later closed down AU
- TOS Changes – New policy on Third-Party Viewers made news coverage
- SL Economy data feeds – Linden Lab discontinued the data feeds
It’s been a very hard year I think for Linden Lab and the SL community in many ways. I hope that 2011 will be a better year with the SL economy showing growth and stability. It would be nice to see new services launched by LL in Second Life next year and to know that new Lindens are being employed. Later this month I will publish the month by month review of SL during 2010. Stay tuned for new posts. 🙂
Daniel Voyager 
Its exhausting looking at the list remembering the high emotion that many of those topics came with. Interestingly the debate in Twitter was my key resource for keeping in touch with changes in Second Life and exposing me to new blogs and perspectives.
I wonder if 2011 will seem boring by comparison. Seems we had enough drama for one year… maybe a year of predictable “business as usual” is in order.
xo
Skylar
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@Skylar: Indeed. It’s been a year full of emotions for everyone I think. The saddest part of the year for me was when I saw the grave stones of Lindens that left Second Life between June and August 2010.
2011 is going to be the “adopting year” from the changes made by Linden Lab during 2010 I think.
My predictions for 2011 for SL.
* A new Linden Lab CEO
* Mesh will be officially launched
* Teens introduced to the Main Grid
* Major TPVs will switch over to using Viewer 2 based code
* Educational organizations leave SL cause of land increased prices
* More residents moving to OpenSim grids etc
* SL concurrency to reach 100, 000 users online
* LL ends Viewer 1.23 support
* LL starts hiring former employees and more new employees
* More Linden Lab press news & new projects
* The SL Economy will hopefully grow stronger
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Great wrap-up, Daniel, thanks for sharing. A late highlight might be added: Project Skylight and the Web viewer beta of SL, plus all the other browser based projects going into beta: Starting with Heritage Key and JIBE based on Unity3D last summer up to the recent launches and announcements by Blue Mars, KataSpace and Tipodean. Very promising, when you think of combining different ways to access 3D worlds for educational purposes, and different degrees of immersion. Also very helpful when you have to explain the relevance of the virtual 3D development for the future of the web.
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And another recent SL-related development (at least as of 12/14/2010) is the apparent demise of the wonderful http://www.megaprim.sl seach tool. It’s been raising an MIT “Account Unknown” page for two days now. If it’s gone, it’s very sad… but there’s always http://prims.streamgrid.net/ to help fill the empty void in my heart!
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Also please let me know if you hear more about http://www.megaprim.sl ! 😉
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@Hanno: Thank you. Thanks for the extra highlights you mentioned. *makes note*
@Times: You mean http://megaprim.sl/ ? Looks to be still online!
“At this point, megaprim.sl only exists due to surprisingly high demand for the service. It is largely unsupported, and I am no longer actively involved with Second Life.”
If anyone else has anything else to add, feel free. I will be doing a wrap of 2010 later this month in anycase. 🙂
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You’re right! megaprim.sl has come back. Must have been a short server outage!
WOOT!!!
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