Last night, Thursday 2nd January, there was a meeting between members of the Second Life Blogger Network and Linden Lab executives. I didn’t attend this meeting(although I did get an invite), but I’ve heard enough that I didn’t really miss much (apart from watching Philip Rosedale almost dancing in his seat with excitement apparently). This wasn’t because the topic of discussion (browser based access to Second Life) wasn’t interesting, more due to the fact there was a public announcement barely hours later.
When Bloggers are promised early/advance notice on upcoming features, maybe that notice should be more than a matter of hours? What good is advance notice if they have no time to prepare content before an almost immediate official announcement?
If I’d attended the meeting, it’s quite unlikely I would have got a post prepared with proper test screenshots and meaningful comment, between the time the meeting ended and the public announcement was published.
This brings up a equality (or favouritism) issue among the bloggers. It’s my understanding that at least one prominent blogger had published their post on the subject (which was quite lengthy and included screenshots) while the meeting was still in progress, strongly suggesting they *did* have much earlier knowledge than the others at the meeting.
It makes me again question how much respect the Lab has for the Blogger Network, or understanding of fast moving social media.
During the Zoom meeting held on 6th December we were told about the financial investment amount that the Lab had put into Second Life and were told categorically not to disclose those numbers, to my knowledge no-one did. We were led to believe there was going to be a “big reveal” of the numbers in the New Year, I also thought maybe it was a test to see if we would keep quiet/could be trusted. However on the 19th of December these figures became public, primarily via a store owner creator releasing it everywhere after a meeting with the Lab. The next day (in my timezone) we were emailed to say “yeah, you can talk about it now”, a bit late maybe? Were we an afterthought? At 4.46pm SLT, probably. Since Second Life is a global community, spanning many timezones, I have a suggestion:
If you have some news to be shared, specify a date and (crucially) a time at which the news can go public and also when the related public announcement is going to be made. The details of which should be communicated to all parties at least 72hrs in advance. Doing that would get around the issues mentioned and we could all be co-ordinated in our posts and announcements.
I believe Philip said they will look at a discussion on the platforms use of social media, but since I wasn’t present I don’t have an exact quote. I look forward to seeing what comes of that.
I agree with this and thank you for posting it. I hope other bloggers will speak up here on this thread too.
Also, I don’t have an exact quote on social media usage either, but the impression I got was that Philip wasn’t thrilled with social media in general (or onboarding). Some bloggers were very passionate and shouty about how and where people are posting their content, so Philip mentioned having ‘another meeting with people that are really interested in SL social media’….