Update, October 31: Read part 2 of this interview here.
“I'm back,” Philip Rosedale tells me, swiveling his Zoom camera around to reveal Linden Lab’s San Francisco HQ office looming in the background. “And I'm here every day; I'm in the office right now. Brad’s upstairs in the corner.” He nods at the open office’s upper level, where Linden Lab head Bradford Oberwager is situated.
Yes: As of this month, Philip Rosedale has returned full-time to a leadership role at Linden Lab, developing Second Life — now, as its Chief Technology Officer.
“I'm not splitting my time,” he adds. “This is not the Elon [approach], ‘I run Tesla and SpaceX and Neuralink, and whatever else.’ I’m only CTO of one company and that company is Linden Lab.”
Rosedale’s return to developing Second Life full-time comes at a crucial inflection point, both for the virtual world and — as the imminent US Presidential election suggests — the offline world at large:
“We're at a point right now where I think with AI and mobile, there's a chance of getting to broader reach with virtual worlds,” as he puts it.
“And I think the other thing is, just as you know, with FairShare and all the stuff I've been doing, I'm super concerned about the state of the world. And I think that there is also a chance that our sort of dystopian future will drive more and more people into virtual worlds.
“If it happens — or for the amount of time that we have to spend doing it — I'd like [virtual worlds] to be a positive experience, without evil advertising or surveillance or whatever. Without needing to read a Cory Doctorow book, we know that could get pretty bad with virtual worlds. So that's another reason why I'm pretty motivated.” (As for the offline world, Philip endorsed Kamala Harris / Tim Walz during the recent Gamers for Harris livestream.)
This news comes on the heels of a recent re-organization of Linden Lab that’s spurred concerns among the SL community that the company is facing tough times. The exact opposite is the case, says Rosedale:
Philip's avatar during a special 20th anniversary in-world appearance in 2023
“Another thing that’s important to note is that the business is just doing great. They, Linden Lab, we — we have money to invest in new projects, marketing, people, all that stuff. Brad after the acquisition over the last four years, has made this company very efficient… As Brad said, that re-org is to restructure the way we do service so that it's better. But the company's been continuously growing and investing in stuff.”
Since returning in early October, Philip’s been meeting new team members and checking in on major projects, “trying to lean us down, make us do less better.”
Which is actually a change from the last time he held the CEO role at Linden Lab, over a decade ago:
“I’d say that’s kind of an overarching thing, which I think is a little different than the old me. It's not like, you know, ‘Philip, come up with some crazy new idea to work on.’ It's much more like, ‘Let's make things we have working work really well.’”
Chief among those projects is iterating on the mobile app:
“I don't think every experience you'd want to have in a virtual world you're going to ever have on your phone, but there's going to be some things that you're going to do on your phone. So that's the kind of stuff where I think that my background with Second Life as well as my technical skills [will be important].”
The other focus, as mentioned, is adding more AI-related features to Second Life:
“[W]e've got many experimental projects underway, some of them coming out of the Lab, work that we've done that are related to AI in different ways… I think that AI greeters or companions — there's got to be a there there, right?”
We’ll get into the specifics of Philip Rosedale’s approach to mobile and AI in a follow-up interview. For today, it’s enough to mark his return to full-time leadership of Second Life, a role he’s not had in quite some time. (Even though he’s been a part-time advisor since Second Life’s acquisition in 2021 and the most prominent public face of the virtual world since its inception.)
“It’s fun to re-examine all this stuff after 20 years, look back on it, hang around in-world and talk to people,” he tells me. He returns to a virtual world that’s much changed since Second Life’s stint as metaverse media darling, roughly between 2005-2010.
Above: Philip Rosedale's 2008 TED Talk
Then again, Philip himself has changed since then — as has his own view of the virtual world:
“This is a difference from the me you knew in 2006,” as he puts it. “I don't think that Second Life needs to be something that every man, woman and child on earth makes daily use of, because it's a sci-fi future and we're all avatars. I actually don't think that's true.
“I feel like it's not for everybody, but the people that it serves when it does are aided by it, or at least can be, when you do it right. Maybe even like teenagers, to pick a contentious group, I'm not really sure that teenagers should be in virtual worlds, I don't know. But I think people that are using Second Life and getting benefit from it are almost in every case, not teenagers, as we both know. They're disabled veterans, there are people that are stay-at-home moms that don't have access to a social life because they've got kids on their knees.
“There's always wonderful reasons why people use Second Life, and part of the fun for me has been growing up and realizing, I don't have to make it something that I get super famous, and everybody in the world uses it, and feels more like an Elon Musk project or something.
"No, I'm perfectly happy making it a really positive experience for a much smaller number of people. Like, that's totally fine.”
But in this new era of Roblox and Fortnite, which each country active user bases larger than most countries, “small” is relative:
“I'm struck by the opportunity. If we're a happy place for people like moms and vets, are there really only as many of those worldwide as we have using Second Life today? I'll leave it to you to do the same math as I have.”
Over the years, roughly 50 to 60 million people have tried to install Second Life, but gave up for various reasons, usually due to addressable technical or design hurdles. A virtual world with 50 million monthly active users would be on par with the population of South Korea.
That’s a great goal. And now that Second Life only has 500,000 monthly active users, a highly challenging one as well.
More on reaching something like that target from Philip Rosedale soon.
Update, October 31: Read part 2 of this interview here.
Please support posts like these by buying Making a Metaverse That Matters and joining my Patreon!
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 
Leave a comment