Wagner James Au / New World Notes

Author, strategist, virtual world reporter

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Listen: I Talk Second Life, VR & Making the Metaverse With Melinda Byerley, Fellow Linden Lab Vet!

Click above or listen here for a real treat (in my extremely biased opinion): An in-depth interview of my career in the Metaverse leading up to Second Life and beyond.

It's for the podcast Stayin' Alive in Tech, created and hosted by Melinda Byerley, and she's among the best qualified people to conduct this conversation: Because Melinda, as it happens, is also a Linden Lab alum (she joined a few years after I left in 2006). So we get to dive deep into the inside details of making Second Life, such as the problem with the company's engineering-focused culture. I particularly like our conversation on why Second Life, while a great influencer, failed to go mass market. I argue that it comes down to three key things — and the third thing may surprise you!

Links to some of the topics and articles we discuss after the break. And speaking of all that, Melinda interviewed Philip Rosedale in a previous episode — listen below:

Staying Alive in Tech Wagner James Au Pdocasts

Thanks against to Melinda and her team having me on!

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4 responses to “Listen: I Talk Second Life, VR & Making the Metaverse With Melinda Byerley, Fellow Linden Lab Vet!”

  1. Erik Wall resident Avatar
    Erik Wall resident

    A big part of SL acceptance/growth problem is fairly simple. The learning curve is STEEP. A newcomer with lower tech skills has a hard time sticking around. look up the number of players with less then 7 days/15 hours play time and you will see a huge drop out rate there.
    Newcomer zones help but better tutorials in world and out, a welcome wagon, the old user guides would be good again and perhaps somehow sliming of the actual system in SL, that’s a big ask and I’m not sure it’s possible.
    My personal thought is a HUGE opportunity to expand the player base is quickly going by, Covid forced folks online and telling people about a VIRTUAL SOCIAL NETWORK they could join. Get all the social bits you are missing in real life in SL. Clubs, schools, shopping, work and more. All this WAS HERE and could have been ramped up. Its a shame a bit of advertising wasn’t aimed at this when it was an even more opportune timing.
    That said it is still here, still moving on and still growing in its own way. Freeing up space on servers(or getting new ones) for new land, making more community space on mainland and cleaning up dead zones on mainland would be nice too.
    So much potential and part of the realization of potential is timing and I think a golden one is slipping by.

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  2. Mel_yeuxdoux Avatar
    Mel_yeuxdoux

    A very interesting interview… and who can forget Facebook’s determination to wipe accounts for avatars? (You have a nice voice.)

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  3. Wagner James Au Avatar
    Wagner James Au

    Aw thanks! And yeah pretty ironic Facebook tried wiping out avatars. But I guess they gave up enforcing that because I’m FB friends with thousands of SL avatars on Facebook now.

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  4. Loz Hyde Avatar
    Loz Hyde

    Awesome interview, great to finally hear your story and put the voice to the pic 🙂
    Loz from SL

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