SL’s Downward Spiral? June 23, 2010

I just posted this on SL’s forums (well with a few stupid typo’s i couldn’t later fix oops lol so I’ve modified it a bit here) and really wanted to share it here as well…

I AM CONCERNED…

…on a few topics actually.  First and foremost, this new voice morphing technology … LL is making SL a better and better tool for predators! It’s already a serious and growing problem, people trying to pass themselves off for what they are not, preying upon lonely, depressed people, destroying lives and psyche’s … and now, one of the tools I have taught to others as a red flag to being super wary … whether or not someone will get on voice … is being taken away. LL is empowering the predator here. I am SERIOUSLY concerned about this technology.

On another note, while I’m all for technical advances, I have some concern over this new mesh tool. I just posted the following directly into a thread about it, but thought I should pull it out to something more specific to “being concerned”… “I may be missing something but this actually worries me. What I see is the expense and difficulty to be a content creator skyrocketing which means the cost of products will skyrocket, freebies will go by the wayside and residents who are on budgets or get a thrill out of freebie shopping will dissappear. SecondLife will become for those who are rich, not for everybody.”

Questions for Linden Labs:

1. Are those that be in LL really so lost as to not realize what they’re doing with a voice morphing tool?
2. Do they seriously think they have double digit millions of users when the average person who uses sl has at least 3 to 5 avies of their own (hell, i know a lot of people with avie accounts in the double digits) and people who come to try it out usually dont cancel accounts, they just go away and forget about it?
3. Do they not see the avid drop in resident sim ownership?
4. Do they not see the closing of hoards of SL businesses owned by residents?
5. Do they seriously not see all this as terribly concerning for the future of SecondLife?

Not to mention at any given time, the number of people logged in is under 50,000?  Back in 2006 when 50,000 were logged in, there were only 1.6 million “residents” — a much different ratio. I can’t recall lately, when i’ve seen it over that really, even on a weekend.

I mean really, the stats are saying right now that in the last month, there were 1,381,848 logins (that’s logins folks, NOT individual users), while it’s stating about 19.6 million residents, but right now, there are only just under 49,000 people logged in. Ok, obviously residents does not mean unique users, that’s for darn sure. So seriously, do they really not see how SL is circling a wicked downward spiral? Oh and lets not forget about duel loggers, that’s a VERY high number of users. So that 49k number of people logged into SL right now is more than likely not anywhere near accurate either.

How about tracking how many user accounts their are by IP address or Email address, or age verification info, or OMG actual address or contact info. Lump together their avatar accounts into ONE user account and start redoing these numbers and then lets see how well SL is doing!

I must say, every single day I hear of at least one more sim shutting down … sometimes more than one in a day. And now they’re adding voice morphing so that predators can do a better job of hurting good people and making content creation harder and more expensive so that not just anyone will be able to build a business in sl and the cost of goods will skyrocket making it difficult for residents to purchase goods … I just see something really deadly coming down the pike here and I’m so dreadfully sad to be seeing it or even saying it