Linden Lab to step up Second Life marketing with Amsterdam office
by Tateru Nino 
Sep 28th 2009 at 10:00AM
Filed under: Business models, MMO industry, News items, Opinion, Second Life, Virtual worlds
Over the last few days, Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon, and Lab director of Marketing and Communications, Catherine Smith have been in Europe, where Kingdon is reportedly seeking office-space for Linden Lab in Amsterdam. The office is intended to start as a small marketing headquarters for Linden Lab.
At NIMK, Catherine Smith told De Hoeksteen Live! that Linden Lab was planning to launch the new office in January next year.
Linden Lab's marketing efforts for Second Life hitherto have largely focused on placement of speakers at conferences and events, and – prior to 2008 – on minor registration incentive programs. More recently, efforts have focused on the revamped Web-site and assorted press-materials and white-papers.
It isn't exactly clear to whom the new office would be actually marketing to, but with Linden Lab's recently reported figures, growth, and profitability, it seems unlikely that the target-demographic will be the sort of customers the Lab already has (ordinary users).
That leaves the business/government and education markets, the former having had a bit of an uneven history with Second Life, and the latter pretty much already making widespread use of Second Life for one thing and another.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Rik Riel said on 10:27AM 9-28-2009
I guess the Amsterdam office will be the "mature" section of the operation.
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Toxic Menges said on 11:08AM 9-28-2009
I wonder if this will allow them to be less short sighted about where their community staff are based? Or iof they will continue to be unable to make the most of talented community staff from all around the globe, because they don't live in the Bay Area, or even Boston! YES!! LL, there are places outside of the US of A!!! I know this is a shock to you, but there's this thing called a global community...
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Tateru Nino said on 11:25AM 9-28-2009
Well, the Lab apparently prefers contractors and employees to be in the same tax domain as one of their formal offices-with-payroll. I've been told (though not been able to verify) that there's been some culling (though far from total) of contractors and employees who don't match that criteria.
Toxic Menges said on 11:44AM 9-28-2009
Look at the job description for their community communications manager, Tateru - the post has been advertised since Feb, and they won't entertain applications from anywhere else in the world. How can they be marketing themselves as the go to place for remote working, when they can't make the most of talent from countries even where they have a formal office. They are obviously having difficulty filling the role, yet appear to refuse to applications from outside the US.
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Tateru Nino said on 12:05PM 9-28-2009
Last I looked, they required the position to be in the SF office specifically - though that might have been a previous incarnation of the position.
sigmund leominster said on 4:29PM 9-28-2009
Setting up in Europe can have tax advantages for a US company. Folks like Sun Microsystems, Nike, and Coca Cola have shell companies there for tax purposes. Royalties on earnings that go through a holding corp are tax exempt. Of course, if you want to bring that into the US, the Treasury then wants a slice, but so long as you use the capital for European investments, it's a neat way of leveraging earnings.
Having overseas holdings also spreads the risk. For example, my current UK pension plans are doing much better than my US because of differences in allocations and the relative values of dollars and sterling.
When Mark Linden took over last year, he was explicit about the notion of growth, and taking advantage of a global economy is par for the course if you are in expansion mode.
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Shug Maitland said on 3:55AM 9-29-2009
ROFLMAO!!! AMSTERDAM!!! :D
In SL and RL one of the most notoriously *Adult* of cities!!!!
Perhaps they will name their office "Linden Labs --- Zindra office"
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Shug Maitland said on 2:42AM 9-29-2009
ROFLMAO!!! ---- AMSTERDAM!!!!!!
Perhaps RL & SL's most notoriously ADULT cities!!!
Maybe they will call it the Zindra office of Linden Labs :D
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Saffia Widdershins said on 6:04AM 9-29-2009
Ironically, I think, the words "step up" in your title are now acquiring a rather different meaning for many SL residents. See: http://stepupsl.wordpress.com/
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Tateru Nino said on 6:54AM 9-29-2009
That's something I hadn't considered, though Step Up is something I'm planning to write about.
Gwyneth Llewelyn said on 10:08AM 9-29-2009
Hopefully that will also mean starting to look for a co-location facility in Europe. We were hoping for that since the days of their opening of the Brighton office in the UK (almost across the Channel from Amsterdam ;) ). Granted, Brighton is not famed for its big Internet connectivity (they'd have to be on the massive London Docklands node for that), but Amsterdam certainly is! As a matter of fact, they are historically the Internet hub for Europe since the 1990s.
So I guess this would be a "perfect" location for an European grid (London being a close second choice; probably somewhere in Scandinavia a third choice).
Needless to say, hosting in Amsterdam would freely allow gambling and adult content — but slightly less violence ;)
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