DISQUS

Actually, I think international phone books would be more useful. Wikipedia's strength is being dynamic.

Some sites aren't that great and some products are lackluster, but I'd hate to think that you'd misuse your own popularity to sink what could be good initiatives with constructive criticism instead of what you've done. Even when you appended 'I just visited every one of these companies. Boy do they almost all suck (at least their Web sites and if their sites suck, I can’t believe their products are going to do much better).', you really don't say too awful much... I mean... which ones did you think didn't suck, and why? And why lump them all together without differentiating?

You can do better than this - and you should.

My old calculus instructor in high school nailed it all very well, and gave me something that works.

"Simplify."

The points on culture are very good ones - in the Caribbean, much of the same is seen though broadband penetration continues to lag more than the EU. That by itself is a separate issue - but the Caribbean, due to its history, is at least partially reflected in EU culture and language fractures. That is the premise of CARDICIS.org.

As far as Second Life and popularity - I lean more heavily toward the spirit of Schot's comments as you have presented them. Technically speaking, you're right - but Second Life is not, by any stretch, as big of a deal as the media has portrayed it over the last years.

Comparing WoW and Second Life is flawed for many reasons, as you also wrote, but I'll add one more: The technical capacity of the WoW infrastructure is more robust with user interaction because Second Life allows users to manipulate the environment even more.

Good post.

Torley - honestly - I think you've outgrown Wordpress. I think its time for you to charge up for a content management system.

Under more sombre news - your office is in Geyl Fapp's last film - she passed away last night.

Video here: http://blip.tv/file/783980?filename=Vsideways-S...

And memorial here:
http://www.your2ndplace.com/node/1059

Clarification: Kapor wasn't the creator of Lotus 1-2-3. Jonathan Sachs was. Kapor was to Rosedale as Ondrejka was to Sachs.

Well, let's be serious about Facebook and LinkedIn: They are less time intensive, and in some ways save users time. Second Life itself could be seen as more of a timesink, and has to compete with other things - family time, going outside time, mowing the lawn time, etc. Facebook and LinkedIn might require, at most per day, one login and 10 minutes.

Thus, comparing retention rates seems to be apples and eggplants.

If they had used a true content management system, such as Drupal, they would have a much more powerful interface. Indeed, what they are doing is slowly building a content management system... reinvention of the wheel, perhaps?

well, here's the thing.

I have email. I have RSS. I have blogs, such as yours, where I can read cohesive and unfragmented thoughts when I wish. What I love about them is that I can do things uninterrupted. When I have time, I can look at them.

Allegedly, Twitter is supposed to be the same thing, but on the site it says...:

"With Twitter, you can stay hyper–connected to your friends and always know what they’re doing."

Don't want. Even if I can, as it says, stop it at any time. Well, heck - I can do that right now with asynchronous communications. If I want, I can set up SMS->email; Email->SMS, etc. But - Don't Want.

My time in the day is better used for other things. I don't need to know what people are doing at every second. I don't *want* to know what people are doing every second. And based on the 'twitterings' I've come across, they're about as fragmented as a FAT 16 Hard drive.

I look at it like this: I have 24 hours in the day. Twittering doesn't get me paid. Twittering doesn't get me laid. Twittering doesn't do anything for me but buy into a faster culture that isn't necessarily better - at least for me. What is funny is that I do SMS, but I only SMS when there is a need. Not to broadcast to the planet about what I just had for lunch, or name dropping. I'd rather go read a book.

Now you like twitter - that's fine, I respect that. And other people like it too. That's fine. I respect that. I don't. Please respect that - that's all I'm saying. I'm not disadvantaged because I don't want to try every little new technology under the sun - heck, I've been known to push the envelope with such technologies, even gaining press in doing so. But I find no function in it that is useful to me.

Twitter is simply not useful for me. And for that matter, 80% of the people on the planet have no use for it because they ain't even online.

Yeah, I've been considering all of the judgemental stuff myself Roland (such as above), and I think the criticism is more reactionary and thoughtless than well thought out. I'm not sure myself, but your post is of a more sober variety - thank you. I expect I'll reference it. :-)

Err. Not for nothing, but Luna Oaks had a traffic rating of 0 yesterday.

Yet all the marketing that has happened within Second Life had no apparent metrics in mind. I've written about that more than once.

http://www.your2ndplace.com/node/963
http://www.your2ndplace.com/node/957

As far as conversations - decidedly so. And yet most of the entities that entered Second Life left after they started conversations. Few continued them. This is what would be called 'broadcasting'.

The link to that blog is here (since you missed it):
http://www.knowprose.com/node/18463

They're gonna have to do a LOT better than that, especially with today's announcement with NMC and Sun: http://www.your2ndplace.com/node/918

Recommended reading: Devices of the Soul, by Steve Talbott.

As far as talking to ordinary people - no, that isn't as important because ordinary people listen to experts. What is important is looking hard at empirical evidence. And in many instances of hype, it is simply lacking.

And you got that in 2 paragraphs. :-)

I think that the whole thing really revolves around one thing (funny enough): If people invest enough of themselves into the technical aspects, as with all things technical, they will be able to tweak things. And let's face it: No one says - 'Hey, join Second Life to tweak everything'.

At the end of the day, people just want stuff to work. What they get is technology. The true magic isn't explaining technology - it is making it transparent. Remembering that would make a lot of other things much more simple.

Good article. Unfortunately, we live in a world where people just want everything to magically work - and 'client side' or 'server side' doesn't matter to people too awful much. It is just plain lag to them, and the urban myths will prevails.

Also - scripted attachments do still use server resources that could otherwise be free, as is the case with prims. The rendering and all the other 'fixes' you mention certainly help but it really just masks the fact that the algorithms and hardware have a lot of catching up to do to meet inflated expectations of people.

I recently explained to a client that WoW and other synthetic worlds have better graphics because they are all installed when they run the CD. Not so with SL. And texture lag is a strain on everything - but it is generally worth the price (IMO).

In the end, applying common sense is a risky business. And a 'social event' that has more people than one can talk to - honestly, I question the value of those, but then my personality is not one that permits me to be pleasured by avatar fashion as much as avatar 'content'. :-)

Hmm. Having read all of Lessig's books, I've never once seen him write "all property is theft". In fact, he points to the *balance* of property more than anything else.

Criticisms of Lessig's works along those lines is akin to people who are anti-Darwin and have never read 'The Origin of the Species'. Perhaps Prokofy should spend more time reading than writing. :-)

So, in essence, they just explained what already is known and did not discuss anything new?

minor correction: AJAX Second Life does *not* have voice communication. I meant to write instant messaging and text communication, but lacking voice. Of course, with Skype, that doesn't matter too awful much.

The amusing part of your observation on Second Life is that the open source version, created by community members (OpenSim), has had 'HTML on a prim' for some months now.

Further, a 15 year old young woman in the UK already wrote an AJAX Second Life client last year that is low weight, and allows instant messaging and voice communication.

In short, Linden Lab announced features that community members have already created, and InformationWeek simply parroted what Linden Lab said.

Amusing, actually.

Yup, I made a similar prediction recently. This may be why Linden Lab appears to be stepping up to the plate more.

Submitted with no further comment:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=facebook

I think what Scoble meant was that Google has the largest global collection, the 'database of intentions' written of in "Search" by John Battelle.

I don't think Facebook can compare, despite its fan base. Why? You don't look for vacuum cleaners or other stuff on Facebook.

Nice advertorial. Did it help?