FJ Linden here, to report on the latest Ongoing Updates from the Grid.

As I promised in my first post, this will be a regular monthly communication to keep all of you up to date on our efforts to improve grid stability and reliability. I’m finishing up my 3rd month at the Lab and have some significant progress to report.

I’m happy to report that we have an approved plan to move away from VPN reliance. We’ve finalized a design and chosen facility and equipment partners to build and deploy a private fiber optic ring to interconnect our datacenters. “LLnet” will be the designation of our private network and we have established an aggressive timeframe to activate it. I’m pushing hard to bring LLnet online by the end of this year (’08), and begin a phased migration off of the VPN’s immediately after. Given the amount of traffic to move, I would estimate completion of this project by February or March of ‘09 at the latest. So we have a light at the end of the tunnel on one of our biggest stability issues.

In addition to freeing us from our dependency on VPN’s, LLnet will bring additional redundancy, as we will have a means to keep our datacenters from being isolated, if a Level 3 outage were to occur. We’ll also be building a fully routed architecture that will allow us to deploy BGP and finally add redundant Internet providers and improved traffic performance. This is a major infrastructure investment, but one that is long overdue.

I’ve included some timeframes in this posting, but do so only to show that we are pushing as aggressively as possible to get the network operational, if timeframes slip I’ll make sure to communicate that as well. I think it’s important that we start making hard commitments and push aggressively to meet them. I know everyone is tired of talking about the VPN problems, and you can count me in that group! We’ve now got a solid plan in place and are implementing!!

I also wanted to highlight a few additional infrastructure projects that are targeted for completion by the end of 2008.

So, I’ll continue the monthly updates and, while I’m sure there have been individual issues since my last post, we are making real progress towards our primary goal of grid stability and reliability. As always, the proof is in our execution of these projects, not the promises.

We’re happy to announce a new First Look for SLim, a new voice and text instant messaging client.

SLim’s technology is provided by Vivox (www.vivox.com) and developed in partnership with Linden Lab to work with the Second Life viewer.  SLim enables Second Life Residents to conduct voice or text conversations with member of their Second Life friends list….whether they are logged into the virtual world or offline. While the Second Life viewer will still serve as the primary inworld communication engine, SLim is capable of running on most computers, and offers users a voice-enabled instant messaging client that extends the value of the Second Life Grid beyond the virtual world.

SLim significantly lowers the barriers between virtual world and real world communication and ensures that Second Life Residents will always be able to connect to friends, regardless of location or broadband connection. SLim is also a compelling tool for the Second Life Grid enterprise offering, which will enable employees to communicate and collaborate with colleagues meeting inworld without having the Second Life application running.

SLim’s features include:

• Access to your Second Life friends list with real-time “presence” status updates
• Seamless migration from a text conversation into a voice call
• Ability to leave voice mails for offline friends

Learn more about SLim in our Knowledge Base article

Because this is a First Look, there are a few known but not serious issues with this release.  We hope you’ll report any new ones to this PJIRA.

We’re happy to see how voice has taken off in Second Life and to give Second Life Residents alternatives in how they choose to communicate with other. Voice concurrency rates are about 50% of our total inworld concurrency:  for example, when total inworld concurrency on Sunday is 70,000 Residents, the total number of concurrent voice speakers is 35,000. Vivox, our partner in SL Voice, recently  added more voice servers to keep up with demand.

We hope that SLim will be yet another bridge between inworld and out-of-world and other online activities.

Hi, Katt Linden here with a roundup of our main methods of communicating with you. First, I want to acknowledge that I have heard your concerns and complaints about the changes to the blog and the login screen. In answer to your questions about where to find key information, please see:

• Second Life Grid Status Reports. We are collecting all information about the status of the Grid — known issues, new server and viewer software and, very important to those planning events, a calendar showing planned outages, such as rolling restarts. We collect this in one location so that those needing this level of update can find it easily, without having to sort through blog posts on unrelated topics. You can subscribe to this by RSS or Twitter, which means you can have updates sent to your mobile phone.
• Official Second Life Blog. You can subscribe to the Second Life Blog by Email or by RSS or Twitter.

• From the Official Second Life Blog, see the links, in blue text, at the top left side of the page, to the Second Life Grid Status Reports, to the Knowledge Base Articles, and to Torley’s Video Tutorials.

• Video Tutorials by Torley are being updated regularly. Find the latest, or search for the topic you’re interested in learning via the category Browse or Search tabs, in the Tutorials section of the Showcase. You’ll also find these Tutorials on the Second Life Wiki Video Tutorials page. To be updated whenever there is a new one, subscribe to the Video Tutorials using RSS.

• Knowledge Base Articles are updated regularly as well, and you can find them in the Support Portal or follow the link from the Official Main Blog (top left sidebar) to the Knowledge Base Article.

• New Releases. When we release new versions of the Viewer, you’ll see the announcement on the SL Grid Status Reports, and Release notes can be found in the Release Notes section of the Wiki. In most cases, we will also provide a link to a forum discussion thread where we read and respond to comments over several days. We use the forum for this because a discussion there can continue for several days, allowing Residents from a variety of time zones to participate.

• As you may have seen during Burning Life, we created a special web site for the yearly event, in part to showcase the year-round events which will take place there. We anticipate continuing to build sites like this for special situations.

• The “Message of the Day” is the notice you see during the login process, (one or two lines of text, under the thermometer progress bar showing your login progress.) We have recently used this for a variety of announcements, from Linden hosted events like the Second Life 5th Birthday and Burning Life 2008, to optional testing of of new viewers, invitations to join in a localization project and occasional security announcements, as well as for tips on using Second Life. We’ll start noting new Tutorial Videos and Knowledge Base Articles here as well.

• As many of you have noted, we are not currently showing blog headlines on the Login screen. These will return, as part of the process of updating our blogs, but not for some time.

• Torley Linden and Katt Linden both have Twitter accounts you can follow. We’ll be experimenting with using these for additional, informal updates, and we’ll be happy to hear your feedback.

As Robin said in her recent post, the main, Official Second Life Blog will continue to hold our formal announcements and posts from our Executive team. We’re working to post here more often.

This official, main blog will be joined by a variety of other blogs, authored by Lindens, where we’ll be able to go deeper into specific topics. It is our intention to communicate with you more often and more broadly, but we ask for your patience during the process of updating the blogs.

We very much look forward to our ongoing conversation with you, on the blogs and elsewhere.

As we have mentioned previously, tailoring the Second Life platform to make it easier for new Residents to begin experiencing the virtual world is one of our primary objectives moving forward. With that in mind, we’re pleased to announce that Linden Lab has engaged award-winning interactive design agency Big Spaceship as a partner in transforming the Second Life experience.

The goals of the project are to dramatically simplify the sign-up stage, ease users’ introduction into Second Life, and quickly connect people to relevant content and experiences in Second Life. Big Spaceship is well known for their work creating compelling online experiences that are approachable and engaging.

Linden Lab will leverage this expertise to explore various approaches to streamlining the “first hour” experience, from the Second Life Web site and registration through the Viewer and first in-world experiences.

Q: Who is Big Spaceship?
A: Big Spaceship is an interactive design agency with expertise in user experience strategy, interface design, and Web development. Past and current clients include Adobe, Sony, HBO, Nike, Coca-Cola and Disney.

Q: Why did Linden Lab choose Big Spaceship for this project?
A: Big Spaceship has demonstrated excellence in the area of online interactive experience design. They are widely recognized for their work creating intuitive and elegant branded experiences and has a deep understanding of social systems and online communities.

Q: What is Big Spaceship doing for Second Life?
A: Big Spaceship will be working with internal teams at Linden Lab to research, design, prototype and test web sites and user interfaces that dramatically lower the learning curve for experiencing Second Life. Big Spaceship will employ a user-centered design methodology to develop innovative solutions for streamlining the complexity of Second Life without limiting the freedom and expressiveness that makes Second Life so powerful for so many people.

Q: How will this project affect current Residents?
A: In the near-term, as Big Spaceship designs and prototypes potential experiences, there will be no impact on current Residents. It’s our hope that by dramatically simplifying the initial user experience, many more users will be able to experience the excitement of Second Life, ultimately creating a richer and more diverse community of Residents.

For discussion on this announcement, please visit the forum thread.

M Linden here. Many thanks to everyone who responded constructively with their concerns and suggestions about our Openspaces announcement. We’ve listened carefully and your feedback has led to some amendments to our original plan.

Before I jump to the policy amendments, I’d like to provide some insight into our decision and then recap what we’ve heard from you. When the Openspaces product was originally launched, Linden Lab offered Island owners the opportunity to add Openspaces to their land for light use only –- such as ocean or park land. But we didn’t build in and enforce specific, quantifiable performance limits on the Openspaces. Why? For two simple reasons:

1. As you know all too well, many things affect performance of a Sim in complex inter-related ways (i.e., scripts, prims, avatars, media). We were reluctant to limit the overall experience and your creativity by posing specific limits on all these variables – partly because Linden Lab has always been pretty free-form and believes in the innate goodness of Second Life Residents and partly because imposing limits require that we hire staff to enforce them.

2. We wanted to get this product to market quickly. Openspaces was wildly popular. Some Island owners added ocean and park land, as intended but many built empires – glorious builds, beautiful rental properties and other great things. Since land-owners co-habitate on CPUs, if one owner adds an ocean and one builds a carnival, the shared CPU gets overloaded. The ocean-loving Resident who followed the original intent suffers and we are called in to resolve the conflict. Second Life is much too large to do that.

When we sorted through the good and bad in the many conversations, comment cards, emails, and calls, you shared many things but there were three consistent themes we can work with:

1. Those of you who used the Openspaces as originally intended — for ocean or park land — want that product at the original price point and are willing to accept clear restrictions on usage.

2. Some of you have built businesses on the Openspaces product, set your rental rates or built your groups and although you acknowledge you built more than was intended for Openspaces, a large and rapid price change is too much for you to absorb.

3. Some of you created builds that were between an ocean and a carnival and want some kind of “normal region lite” product – a lower price point than a normal region but with the ability to build a certain amount of content.

We’ve launched three land products in the company’s history: Mainland, Islands and now Openspaces. Because we have complexity everywhere else, we’re loath to add a highly complex pricing structure. Nevertheless, it’s clear we have to build a product mix and pricing structure that offers more flexibility.

Here is how we are amending the price change:

1. We are going to retain the Openspaces product at its original price point and its original intended use (forest, water, etc.). We will have technical limitations to help regulate their use, initially avatar and prim limit restrictions, eventually event, classified and script limits. Those of you who chose to use the Openspaces as intended may stay at the US$75 rate, but will need to contact the concierge team to do so.

2. If you want more than an Openspace, we will offer you the choice of moving to a new product called Homesteads that is intended for light use such as low density rentals. For existing Openspace owners we will phase in the price increase for this new product over the next 6 months. Homesteads will also have technical limits for avatars and prims, and eventually script limits as well.

* January 5, 2009 – non-compliant Openspaces will transition to Homesteads and the maintenance fees will go from $75 to $95 per month.  We will offer an educational discount to qualified educators on the new Homestead product. The discount amount will be the same as Private Regions, roughly 30%.

* July 2009 — the maintenance fees for Homesteads will go from $95 to $125 per month

For detailed information on these changes, please go to the Knowledge Base.

We believe this is fair. Jack and I will join you in the forums throughout the day today to discuss this. Comments are closed on the blog, not because we want to limit dialog or free expression but because this is a conversation with Residents and the forums require log-in. This is a policy we are going to follow moving forward with all major announcements. Blog the announcement, express and discuss in the Forums.

One thing I learned and others were reminded about in this process is that we have a very connected, passionate Resident base and we need to bring you into the dialog earlier, before putting forward these decisions. The input we received after Jack’s announcement was prolific and by-and-large very, very constructive. Second Life is at a size where 1:1 conversations are difficult and the forums are inadequate for full dialog. Office hours come up short, too. We have some thoughts on how to bring Residents into the dialog earlier which we will cover in a future blog post and Forum discussion.

I’d like to close on this thought: An area of concern for Residents over the past year has been platform stability. Through the hard work of many, many people, including Residents, we have made great strides that are very well documented. Crash rates are down. Substantially. Period. And until this price change, we were riding high in user satisfaction so we know you have recognized and appreciated the improvements we’ve been making. Our breakthroughs in stability improvement are particularly noteworthy because our land mass increased enormously this year. And, a good part of that increase was from Openspaces. However, the original plan was to expand land mass but expand load at a much lower rate. But, Openspaces — in many cases — have been overloaded with content, scripts and avatars so our very substantial stability gains have come even with the unplanned load increase. We are deeply committed to making this the best virtual world platform in the world and we are making great strides. We’ve also demonstrated we can deliver on our promise of continual stability improvements – even in the face of unanticipated growth.

I look forward to hearing from you in the Forum. Thank you for your candor, patience, restraint and willingness to work with Linden Lab and the Second Life community at large. Second Life is the wonder that it is because Linden Lab has always worked together – albeit sometimes imperfectly – with Residents to build this magnificent, bigger than life world we all love so much.
Thank you.