Massively^™

Linden Lab Chairman, Philip Rosedale and freshly-minted CEO Mark Kingdon gave an introductory speech at 10AM Pacific time to open Second Life's fifth anniversary for 23 June, 2008. While some have considered the speech to be somewhat bland and uninspired/uninspiring, it was pretty much what you'd expect, and you can still smell Rosedale's passion through his anecdotes.

Interestingly, Rosedale referred (with characteristic Linden Lab not-actually-mentioning-it-directly obliqueness) to the troubles that arose from Linden Lab's takeover of the anniverary event from resident-organizers.

New Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon has reported on his first week at the Battery Street office of Linden Lab in San Francisco. Obviously, Kingdon is still in the immersive learning phase (which, depending on the person and the business can last up to a year) before getting down to brass tacks.

"Inworld collaboration is going to be a killer application," observed Kingdon. We're inclined to agree with him. It is one area of Second Life that is notoriously weak, and we're certainly not going to begrudge him focus on that. From erratic group-systems to overly coarsely grained permissions, inworld collaboration is often frequently better handled out-of-band. We're looking forward to Kingdon's observations after a second week at the Lab.

In the last couple of years, Linden Lab has grown from around 50 people to (we are told) around 250 people. It is a growth stage of companies that most do not survive, as usually they do something lethally boneheaded in the process.

Another stage that many companies do not survive is their first change of CEO. It is a massive change for the company's table of organization, reporting chains and corporate culture. The first CEO change generally sees a large staff turnover.

That's what usually happens, anyway. While we're not predicting sudden death for Linden Lab, they're getting their first new CEO today.