Tag: Brad Oberwager

Brad Oberwager Appears On This Week In XR Podcast

Posted on by Daniel Voyager

On 6th May 2022 Brad Oberwager who is the current Executive Chair at Linden Lab appeared on This Week In XR Podcast hosted by Charlie Fink and Ted Schilowitz. Brad starts by saying Second Life had a big boost over the pandemic from older members of the community coming back to the platform and there was new users. Brad mentions “the real growth came when the users came in the concurrency increased and so the economy increased” along with the social increase.

Brad comes in around the 10 minutes & 50 seconds mark talking about the growth of Second Life in recent years, new residents joining the platform, the business model and the land based model. Brad talks about how to build a creator economy, the metaverse and much more.

Brad says Second Life does 1.6 million transactions a day, 650 million dollar economy and that Second Life has 2.2 billion items in the world which is a huge amount. The podcast runs for 48 minutes and 3 seconds. Thanks to the sponsor Virbela.

Please spread the word 🙂

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Philip Rosedale & Brad Oberwager Talks About High Fidelity and Second Life

Posted on by Daniel Voyager

On Monday 31st January there was a special pre-recorded edition of Lab Gab with Brad Oberwager and Philip Rosedale hosted by Strawberry Linden which aired from 9am SLT to 10am SLT. Already there has been over 1, 700 views on the Second Life YouTube video (shown above) and there has been some positive comment feedback. Over 300 questions were submitted for this special Lab Gab interview. It’s a really awesome interview with useful information about the future of High Fidelity and Second Life.

Here is a brief summary of the main talking points…

  • Brad views Philip as the “moral compass” of the metaverse right now and that he thinks that Philip has established himself over the years to making things better.
  • Philip says there is a small team at High Fidelity and that they are doing a great job selling spatial audio technology (like clubhouse). Philip new role as “strategic adviser” at Second Life means he is not responsible for day to day decision making but he has meetings with the team with different groups inside the company when they would like help or ideas. Philip is an engineer and a product strategist. Philip will be continuing in a more direct way to be a compass for decisions the lab makes.
  • Philip and Brad met while boat sailing around the bay and they started talking about Linden Lab/Second Life (chatting about selling Second Life).
  • Philip had a lot of concerns when he left as CEO of Linden Lab he wondered if he managed the company correctly. Since the return Philip says it’s nice to come back and not feel any stress. Philip says Second Life is constantly transforming itself and it’s changing all the time.
  • Philip briefly talks about Meta on some of the risks that are out there.
  • Philip said that there was 500 media articles written about Second Life every day back in 2005/2006. Most of them were on paper in those days and now it’s a like an “incredibly powerful moment for all of us in the world”.
  • Brad has now been a co-owner for a year now since he stepped in at the lab. Brad says “Second Life operates so much more closely to the physical world than people think in reality”.
  • Philip says that “we are the original crypto and we were the original nfts”. Brad says there are no plans for crypto, web 3 and nfts.
  • Will Second Life ever have VR capabilities ? Brad: can’t do it basically / Philip: There are Second Life viewers that have VR capabilities and he says that “we shouldn’t do anything with VR in a mainstream way” for at least five years. He thinks that desktop and mobile experiences will continue to dominate what social virtual worlds mean for at least the next five years.
  • What’s next for Second Life in 2022 and beyond ? Brad wants to continue to see “consistent improvement in the experience, the engagement and the number of residents as a metric for how well things are going”.
  • Philip wants “more and more expressive avatars are necessary to get a larger number of people to participate in virtual worlds”. The other thing is “how many people can be in one place at one time?” and he says Second Life is the leader. Virtual worlds on smartphones: Philip says “if virtual worlds are to serve you know billions of people it’ll have to involve smartphones in some fashion”.
  • And there is more!

What are your views on what Philip and Brad said from this interview ? Please share in comments.

Lab Gab Special: Philip Rosedale & Brad Oberwager – 9am PT on 31st January 2022

Posted on by Daniel Voyager

There will be a special pre-recorded edition of Lab Gab with Philip Rosedale (Philip Linden) Second Life founder / current Strategic Advisor and Brad Oberwager (Oberwolf Linden) Linden Lab Executive Chairman starting at 9am PT on Monday 31st January 2022.

I can’t wait to hear about what Philip and Brad have to say about the big news recently on High Fidelity investing in Second Life, Tilia inc reaching a deal with Unity (Verified Solution Partner) and answering the most popular questions from the Second Life community. There will discussions about Linden Lab and probably what’s coming next on the roadmap.

The official news came via tweet on the official Second Life Twitter page on Saturday 29th January 2022. This is going to be a big show drawing in hundreds of viewers I would imagine.

Please spread the word to your friends and share this on your blogs etc. Thanks 🙂