It’s not your world anymore!
by Christian Scholz on December 18, 2008
After the Trademark policy change, where Linden Lab made clear that it’s indeed not the world of their customers (once known as residents) but in fact their own one, somebody remarked that the slogan “Your world. Your Imagination” was getting smaller and smaller with each iteration of the homepage. Unfortunately I forgot who said that but I with the discussion of the new homepage (in proper Linden Lab tradition announced in advance with a fixed date which now has passed without showing up the new page) I went looking for it on archive.org. So here it is:
May 2004
January 2005
SL Banner Today
So in fact it got smaller and smaller. But with the announced new homepage it now is totally gone!
So it’s of course not that customers are unimportant now, they do that in order to gain more of those. But they don’t have a say in things. Linden Lab seems happy to let them create that world but owning, thanks no! That’s sad.
Then again not too long ago there have been times where you saw this on the homepage:
That was February 2007 which was when the world was still good and you owned what you created.
4 comments
The new slogan that is being shown at presentations by the Lab is "Your world, your way"
by Tateru Nino on 18.12.2008 at 08:53. #
if they want to be completely honest "Our World, don't do as we do, do what we say"
by Dekka Raymaker on 18.12.2008 at 23:12. #
Once again, LL is giving up on its strongest points. Without resident's imagination SL wouldn't be worth single logging. I'd really like to know what is in their heads and who is destroying the only marketing point they have.
by dandellion Kimban on 19.12.2008 at 23:46. #
I see the TM policy change as the biggest mistake they actually did. It basically disabled a whole word-of-mouth marketing community. Usually you have to be very lucky to have such a community who goes out there and defends their "product" that much. I put it in "" because back then I didn't think of it as a product. I saw it as something we all are developing, a world. LL though then started to market it as product and IMHO that's not a good thing.
Also imagine Twitter would go that route and basically disallow everybody to use the words "twitter" or "tweet" in their tools! Esp. for twitter it is obvious that those tools and the community is their main business value. Killing that would make no sense whatsoever.
And of course without all the work the residents put in it, there never would have been a Second Live hype and it might be dead by now already. And IMHO this effort is much more worth than anything Linden Lab did. I am not saying they didn't do great things but I think the biggest thing in the beginning was really to open up the world and give it to their residents to fill it.
@Tateru: My feeling tells me more that it should be "Our world, our way. But please come visit and keep creating it for us!" ;-)
by Christian Scholz on 21.12.2008 at 00:36. #