A Second Life corporate grid: When, not if
by Tateru Nino 
Aug 18th 2008 at 9:00AM
Filed under: Opinion, Second Life, Virtual worlds
So, you think Linden Lab's work on inter-grid teleportation is for the benefit of third-party Second Life simulators like Opensim and its ilk? That's hardly likely, in the current climate. Actually, the ideal beneficiary for a straightforward inter-grid teleportation system like the one being developed is actually Linden Lab itself.
In what way could Linden Lab really benefit from a straightforward inter-grid teleportation mechanic? Why with a corporate grid, of course. A grid totally devoted to government, and corporate use -- maybe even with educators and non-profits, if you're lucky. Teleporting to such a location from the main grid could be as easy as using a landmark to a private estate elsewhere on the main grid. So -- what's the benefit of having a corporate grid?
Well, it doesn't have you or your content for starters. Sure you can go there, but that's different.
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Imagine a Second Life grid without the mainland (the Linden-owned estate) -- a landscape made up entirely of corporations, businesses, media companies and government agencies.
Why would a corporation or media business have a simulator or simulators on that grid, as opposed to just running their own simulators behind a firewall? Collaboration. No arguing for weeks with your IT people to get holes in your firewall just so you can bring someone's avatar in for a meeting. No third-party unsupported software riding the network DMZ. The solution has integrated voice already, and Linden's scripting system fully implemented, and its easy to blame someone else if it isn't working right.
Sure, a main-grid resident has to teleport to visit your CorpGrid simulator - if you even allow them, but they have to do that anyway on the regular grid, and here as a CorpGrid non-native they turn up without their appearance and content. Maybe a native of the Agni grid (that's the main adult grid) doesn't even have permissions to create or upload content onto the CorpGrid. In which case, about the worst situation you'd ever have to deal with would be a foul-mouthed nudist -- easily dealt with at the touch of a button.
Linden Lab can operate CorpGrid sims at lower costs -- those foul-mouthed nudists aren't going to be a major bother, and everyone else is beholden to their respective organization as an employee. Governance can be minimal, even virtually nonexistent.
Third-party simulators could be attached to the CorpGrid without any bothers about the owners of those simulators replicating Agni content -- that content simply cannot get to the CorpGrid. With Mono about to roll out, the CorpGrid might remain completely free of any LSL2 bytecode entirely.
Users native to the CorpGrid could spend their off-time or lunch-breaks on Agni, leaving their inventory behind on Agni when they return of course.
Safe. Sanitized. Quiet -- where the only content is made by businesses for their own use, or for display or conferences. A sober place of business, events and advertising (if they can entice people to come and visit -- which doubtless, some will). And none of those embarrassing users native to the Agni grid.
From media, financial, public-relations, sales and marketing perspectives, the CorpGrid is pure win for Linden Lab on every front. While Linden Lab hasn't announced any such initiative, we feel certain that they will, and soon. It's too good an opportunity for them to pass up, and probably already under development. If the Lab is really targeting that market (and all the signs indicate that they are), this strategy is one of the few that makes any sense for them.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Loki said on 9:50AM 8-18-2008
There wont be grids anymore, but Hives, hives buzzing with different content and ideas..... The biggest Hives full of pron and depravity, while the places of wonder lay hidden in peace. You'll be able to be a furry in one Hive, a Gentlemen in a steampunk hive, a rocker in a Music Hive..... in the end the corporates will loose, realising they are only adverising to each other, not the residents who travel the Hives... Megh!
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Animagnum said on 10:49AM 8-18-2008
This idea makes sense to me. In the long term I think a designated
corp grid would make SL more appealing to the corporate world, who
might have only heard about it from tales of flying phalli. While
'freedom' purists might scoff at the idea of a secluded, locked-down
world, it just makes good sense. The web makes use passwords,
intranets, captcha, and all manner of security precautions to
maintain website integrity, so why not do something similar in SL? I
realize that was a very general comparison, but I think you get my
point.
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Prokofy said on 5:27PM 8-18-2008
Yes, Tateru, here's where your cynicsm and hate of capitalist corporate America, always evident in your writings, probably has some validity. Most of the time, however, it obscures the rest of the story for you, as I've indicated here:
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2008/08/i-am-view-i-env.html
On this story, yes, the Lindens will have a separate corporate/education grid, and it is a question not of "if" but "when". In fact, it might have several, in different countries, with local servers, subject to separate laws.
Remember, they're a business that has to keep selling software and server space, to keep you gainfully employed as a pundit on a blog knocking it -- otherwise, there'd be nothing to talk about.
A year ago, in May 2007, I asked Joe Miller at VW07 in New York, why the Lindens didn't just make separate grids and be done with it. Why not just make a clean boot of it, on servers devoid of flying phalluses, furry sandboxes, and BDSM dudgeons? Have it available in a special license or log-on, rent out servers only to those purchasing such accounts, or let people host on their own servers behind a firewall, using this special biz/edu software or hookup. And the answer was, after a pause, was "That is not the vision our founder had, although there is nothing technically to preclude it."
In other words, it was only Philip's oneworldism, his concept of an integrated and united grid for everybody, that prohibited tekkies spinning off a separate biz/edu grid.
But now they may be getting over that; Philip has moved onwards and upwards, more pragmatic biz people have come along in the form of M Linden and the board members who wanted him there, there are now high-level biz accounts, the IBM firewall, etc.
So they will do it, because they have to, because their customers demand it, because they need to, and because they want to.
And...why shouldn't they? It's a free country, with free enterprise, and thank the Lord for it.
We may find it a boring prospect to fly around a sanitized corporate silo, but who cares? it's not for us. It's for them. And we will be given the rump mainland and rump private island non-user-hosted Linden-supervised continents. Eventually, this entire thing could be outsourced, or subsumed by some bigger company that would be willing to take on the community governance and crime headaches.
But there's nothing inherently wrong with businesses and educational institutions wanting sanitized grids. Indeed, they are right to ask for them.
And guess what, there's no need to make the biz/edu grid separate...there's no reason why some more purified high-concept arty expensive rentals FIC-type grid couldn't be created too, and leave the masses to fend for themselves on the rump. It's only a matter of time before we see that, too.
People don't want to be in One World. Sad, but there you have it.
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dandellion Kimban said on 12:32AM 8-19-2008
Sure that Linden Lab is working on intergrid teleports for their own benefit. They have to. OpenSim is developing very fast, and it would be silly to expect that LL will stay the only player in the game. So, it's better to jump into intergrid development on time.
But it sounds crazy to make a completely new grid. Stripping residents to Ruths without inventories is stripping Second Life out of its main value. Especially if on the other side, one will be able to make a full jump on the independent grid.
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Prokofy said on 2:03PM 8-19-2008
>But it sounds crazy to make a completely new grid. Stripping residents to Ruths without inventories is stripping Second Life out of its main value. Especially if on the other side, one will be able to make a full jump on the independent grid.
It's the easiest thing in the world to open up a new central asset server, put some prefabs already out in the public domain like Lordfly's work for Clever Zebra into libraries, open up a separate, unrelated grid, and deploy a new version of SL on it. The question isn't why they don't do this; the question is why they haven't done it *yet*, and the answer is only ideological -- because they are oneworlders, as you are.