SecondLife Loss of Profits, and Reports of Life after SecondLife

While I was in world finishing up some additions to the SLikipedia, Tateru Nino instant messaged me and asked me what I thought. So I said:

Being on the bleeding edge sucks sometimes. It's a matter of perceptions. Linden Lab is in uncharted territory, and I've sort of been in those shoes a few times... so I'm more relaxed about it. I didn't build my foundation on virtual property, so I expect the big businesses are REALLY crying... but they should expect this sort of thing now and then. It's one of the costs of doing business in a virtual world which is never complete.

There it is, and there it is. Phil does seem to have a penchant for saying unforgivable things to the unforgiving SecondLife folk, but hey - that is not my problem. I don't live in San Francisco, I don't work for Linden Lab, and Phil gets a lot more money to worry about what he says than I do. I have other things to worry about. It seems Linden Lab is dealing with it's own issues - but in a virtual world, dirty laundry is par for the course.

Skeletons creeping out of the closet wearing dirty laundry is to be avoided.

All of this got me thinking - these sorts of issues are not unlike 'Acts Of [insert deity here]', and maybe profit insurance will be the next big business in SecondLife. And it also got me thinking about one of the most common business problems people face: All-eggs-in-one-basket syndrome.

The 'me-as-a-business' idea that I use is that everything trickles in - small revenue streams go to the stream of income to the site which adds to my real world stream of income - in fact, for the past few months it has been my stream of income (which is changing as of next week). So you invest your time and energy accordingly, and when you get a 'little extra', you stick it in other things. Truth be told, I've stashed a humble amount in investments within SecondLife as experiments. When one investment goes down, another typically compensates. It's a hard balance, and I'm playing with small numbers, but 'risk high with little, risk little with large' idea works out pretty well. And money from those investments will get invested elsewhere. It looks scatterbrained on paper, and I'm sure it's less than perfect - but to date, I haven't lost money in SecondLife (knock on wood). A lot of people don't seem to get spreading their investments - or maybe they are just cashing out for Christmas and are expecting business to flow at the same rate.

Let's be serious, Christmas is coming up and the kids don't necessarily want virtual mobile phones under their Christmas tree. They want cool toys. So are sales being lost? Maybe. Or maybe it's sort of a solution for people who need to do their Christmas shopping. Real life comes first. If you're hard up, you should be looking to your rainy day funds... and if you never put anything into other investments, you're up the creek.

Under all of this, I have to link to an interesting post by Mark Paschal, who is leaving SecondLife: I'll be hanging from the hope that I'll never see that recipe again. For those of you wondering, there apparently is life after SecondLife.