January 20, 2009 by Ciaran Laval
I don't want to start any blasphemous rumours but I think that God's got a sick sense of humour and when I die I expect to find him laughing sang Depeche Mode when I was a lad. However as I'm not starting these rumours or speculation I guess I might have a free pass.
In this heavyweight battle of rumour and speculation, we have in the blue corner, the long term challenger of the rumour mill, the long time speculated, but never actually admitted, merging the Teen grid with the main grid.
In the red corner, the extremely well respected and powerful entity of XstreetSL is apparently going to become part of the mighty Linden Lab empire in a takeover.
Where to start, where to start. Rumour mill aside, both of these issues are worthy of discussion. We'll start in the blue corner. This stems from Uncle Phil's recent appearance on Metanomics where Robert Bloomfield raised a question from a former Teen Grid resident as to what the future held for the Teen Grid, Philip Rosedale's reply seems to have got some tongues wagging. The full transcript can be found here, but basically Mr Rosedale suggests that having isolated areas based on age is counterproductive.
Philip makes a good point about parents not being able to join their kids in Second Life but the rest is somewhat concerning. I like the fact that the main grid is 18+, sure a few kids sneak in. I like the fact that if I go out on the lash up town on a weekend that the bars will be 18+. sure a few kids will sneak in, but it's 18+. Well these days I like going to bars where the audience is more 30+ but that's not the point!
I really don't want kids walking around my sims, even my PG areas I don't like the idea of kids being there. If Linden Lab want to make kid friendly parts of the grid then fine, but keep them away from me. I don't want to mix with kids here, that has always been part of the appeal of Second Life.
There's also talk of how it's problematic for educators, that I can understand but to be honest I doubt educators want to be that immersed with the grid as a whole most of the time, certainly not when teaching. They'd be happy to have an education area I'd imagine, shared with fellow educators but they don't need their students to be TP'ing off to Hard Alley halfway through a presentation.
I'm really not keen on this and it really wouldn't be long before Fox News and SKY were having a field day with real pervs propositioning kids instead of forty year olds pretending to be kids.
Kids are welcome to go to kids places and I'd be happy for kids and their parents to mix but keep it away from the 18+ main grid, keep it far away.
However, the issue of having safe isolated areas of Second Life would I'd imagine, be of interest to other business interests. If they can avoid flying penises in their own little business park they may embrace the platform more heartily.
Then in the red corner we have the rumour that Linden Lab wants a piece of the SLX (sorry XStreetSL) pie. This rumour seems to stem from this post over at SquadVillage. Now this could make sense if Linden Lab utilise the service there.
I love the search on Xstreet, I love having the extra options to sort my results. I also think that it's a powerful addition to the Second Life world, so Linden Lab having some sort of stake or partnership with that venture would make sense. However there's also a fear that they wouldn't look after it as well as the current management and that is a very big concern.
There's also the issue that a rumour such as this makes people worry whether the whole place would just be shutdown. Personally I think that having such a powerful web based solution is beneficial to the world as a whole, should it remain independent?
I'm sure we'll see a denial or a confirmation of this rumour in the near future. XStreet will need to make an announcement just to ensure that their current merchants remain confident, this is the problem with leaks, people can jump to all the wrong conclusions, however as this rumour has been widely reported I think it's fair game to discuss it.
Hopefully things will become more clear in the next day or two.
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[...] Openspace fiasco when Linden Lab pulled a distraction trick by purchasing Onrez and XstreetSL! The rumours started to surface a few days before the official news was announced and covered here by Nobody [...]
Re: The Rumour Mill goes wild
LL will screw up xstreet it could be the perfect time to start a new
marketplace website that can fill the gap left by these two
acquisitions. A truly independent marketplace still has a role in SL.
Re: The Rumour Mill goes wild
already working on that since 3 months ....
Re: The Rumour Mill goes wild
Yes its true, LL has aquired not only XStreet SL but OnRez as well. Now we all know that the Electric Sheep Company (ESC) that runs OnRez has been reducing its involvement in SL, but XTreet? I guess someone waved a big bunch of cash under their noses. And if you buy both, the logical choice of which one to keep open is XStreet (commission payments OnRez doesn't charge and an apparently larger user base).
But why both XStreet and OnRez just to shut one down?
Simple answer: Monopoly.
Taking a leaf from Microsofts "Embrace, Expand, Extinguish", it seems that LL does not want competition for their new toy. It would be interesting to see if Apez.biz was approached too. While they are mainly involved in in-world sales and rentals, they also have a web based store as well.
If they were approached and refused, will they now start finding they have problems with their infrastructure. Will their in-world servers and vendors suddenly have comms problems? It may be paranoid of me, but if it does start happening, I'll be here with a big "I told you so".
And I wonder about the XStreet services that mirror SL ones. Will the currency exchange go? Will I still be able to get payments out to paypal instantly if I need cash in a hurry? Will the forums, a bastian of freedom from LL's "moderation" go? And will customer support suddenly become as "good" as LL's? And just how much money has LL paid to a certain Land Barroness?
Thats one positive note I suppose, if you left XStreet because of the 10Linden fiasco, you can go back without puting more money in her pocket.
Re: The Rumour Mill goes wild
omg its true! official email from linden lab via xstreet! logansan oh
You know....
Have you ever been online when none of your friends are on,
loggins are being spotty and messed up, and registrations are low or
broken? You know how boring and desolate the grid gets? That's the
teen grid 24/7/360.
I honestly find it terrible that Main Gridders are so intolerant and downright scared of teens, and want to continue isolating us. As you know, being 18+, you don't automatically develop a brain upon hitting 18 and become a mature, functioning member of society. Likewise, just because you're under 18 doesn't mean you're a stupid, destructive person who needs to be segregated from society.
If anything, you should be complaining about the teens who are already on the Main Grid, who are pretending to be over 18, not the under-18's who are patiently waiting, spending their time looking to make change from their side of the fence. Believe it or not, but Blue Linden himself has said that the teens can often be more mature than Main Grid people.
Unless you have a habit of running around in PG sims buck naked, with your freenis flapping in the wind, I don't think you're going to experience much of a change in freedom when teens are introduced. MG residents saying that they want a button to mute all teens is just stupid. We're coming over to the MG because we -want- to talk to you. If we just wanted sex, we could register for an MG account any time we wanted, as it's easier to do than to set up a TG account.
With all the MG residents worrying about being accused of being pedos, or of finding pedos, I laugh when they say "NO TEENS!!!11one!1". Why? Because if they're that paranoid and that vigilent, they're going to be more likely to report people for acting like pedos, more likely to try to protect the teens and shelter them, and more likely to be careful of what they say. With that kind of an atmosphere, teens will do quite nicely, thank you. We might even get a little frustrated about being babied so much.
Re: You know....
Honestly, it's not about intolerance. It's just that kids are... kids. And the adults want their space. There's nothing altogether new with that concept.
Also, Laws make it kind of important to keep the adults and kids separated, especially since the main grid is hardly something a lot of parents would want their children in... though they themselves may want to visit.
And on top of all of that, I have to point out: The main grid's main attraction for kids is probably that they can't get in. Other than that, it's just a grid. It's the plastic wrapped magazine you get carded for. In some ways, it's that pack of cigarettes you shouldn't buy anyway. In others, it could be like college.
In fact, at least for a while, the main grid looked like Spring Break with a makeover.
But if I were a teen, I'd be off the grid and getting to know the opposite sex in a real sense as opposed to a virtual sense. Second Life has it's place. Don't make it First.