Email from Linden Lab:

Two Important Changes to SL Classified Advertising

My favorite: Viewer 2 (which by the way, version 2.2 is released and it's actually quite kick-ass.) Yo: if you don;t like it, shut-the-f*ck-up and don;t use it. Linden Lab doesn't give a flying sh!t whether you like it or not. They do listen to those who actually use it (why the hell would or should they listen to you boneheads who think you're "all that" who just diss on the thing and refuse to use it?)

This is my own response to "Former Linden" who posted the "explosive" comment at Prokofy Neva's blog. Even if every single word of "Former Linden" is absolute, utter truth, how does it matter at all? And do remember, "Former Linden" is making comments based on their perspective. So it may be truth from their perspective, but not necessarily the "big picture".

And as for Philip Linden catching the bus: who cares? He doesn't and hasn't run the company in a few years. His vision has had it's time. The grid have moved-onto more rural pastures a couple years ago. Philips vision for the grid simply doesn't apply any more.

In the end, as with all customers of all sellers you have a choice to take it or leave it and vote with your time and dollars. When enough have chosen to vote on something else, then and only then will Linden Lab be in dire straights. But the vote goes slow. Linden Lab will see the tide turning long before it gets to that point.

Additionally, I have always said: Second Life grid is Linden Lab's house. Who the hell are we to tell Linden Lab what they should or should not do in their house, especially when we (most of us) are non-paying guests in that house?

How about we call it Linden Lab's doom or demise the day Linden Lab actually sends out the "We are discontinuing operations..." notice, and until then: just shut-up?

Indulge me if you will...

For "shits and giggles" last year I did what a lot of other Second Life users are doing: create a Facebook account under your Second Life account name; A.K.A: you In-world avatar name. The first "failure" of Facebook is in how they absolutely insist that only real names of real people be allowed to create accounts at all. However, this creates a conundrum. The same conundrum Linden Lab has: enforce your terms of service with regard to account creation, or allow people to bend the rules so you can boast the number of users you have?

For Linden Lab and Second Life: you are allowed to create up to five (5) accounts, full stop. However, I hear word of people who have tens even hundreds of "alt" accounts. And of course it also creates the "bot" problem, which I won;t bother rehashing now. The issue though is that all these alternate accounts are included in the "number of users" Linden lab can proclaim; even "active" user numbers as "active" means any account that has been used at least once in the last 90-days. Bots are really good for those "concurrency" numbers.

As for Facebook, though they have previously enforced their terms of "real person, real name" and killed some high-profile accounts, they don;t actively hunt these bogus people down. The "number of users" result is just way too tempting. They recently have claim 500-million "users". Though I suspect at least half of those are users like me: I don't use Facebook. At all. it's a ridiculous waste of time and a complete joke.

I now have 85 friends. 85! Every single one of them is another Second Life user and almost all of them are in Facebook under their avatar account names. Here's the kicker: I *vaguely* know one, *just one* of all those people. Every. Single. Person. Except that one are 100% total strangers to me. Not a single one of them have ever attempted to so much as IM me in-world with a simply "Hello!". What a fekking joke.

To these people, and likely 75% of every other Facebook account holder, the goal is to boost that number of "friends" as high as possible. Then there's those stupid, idiotic "games" like Farmville and Mafia Mob or whatever the hell it's called. I mean, really?! Here's the irritating part of it, though: these 85 "dunno who you are, but let's call us *friends*" play these stupid games and then select me to participate. This of course messages me inviting me to "install" the "app" so I can waste my time just like all the other losers.

I had to turn off email notifications from Facebook a long time ago. Now I get a message from Facebook once every month or two telling me there are messages waiting for my attention. So I log-in, and click "ignore", "ignore", "ignore", "ignore", "igno..." you get the idea. Fact: facebook is becoming is horribly bad to "legitimate" people as "MySpace" dot com. it is turning into an adolescent playground except at least this time you don;t have viruses, trojans and disgustingly-loud music blaring in your face when you inadvertently visit someone elses profile or "wall".

It's known fact the the grown-up use Kinked-In as their genuine, go-to "circle of contacts service.

So, Linden Lab is hoping to incorporate more "social" features into Second Life, undoubtedly to include Facebook and Twitter. But I wonder if they ever will go the route of the "serious" with services like Lnked-In? Because let's face it: Plurk is a waste of time (sorry, folks: you just aren't *that* interesting in terms of following your "adventures" on a minute-by-minute timeline); Facebook has turned into a typical adolescent playground, admittedly not yet the cesspool MySpace had become.

Though Twitter actually is useful as long as you can find the ones worth following and communicating with. And at worst: the crap-garbage that comes through at least are only force-fed in short, 140-character burps. Easy enough to quickly determine the "followability" of someone there.

Not Photoshopped: Fafe, Northern Portugal