Linden Lab boss Philip Linden has written a
thoughtful blog post this week entitled 'Long Road Behind, Long Road Ahead', which includes an explanation of the company's recent changing of its mission statement, as well as some insights into how it plans to develop Second Life in 2008.
The mission statement is now: "To connect everyone to an online world that improves the human condition", replacing the wordier "Create an online world having the exceptional property that it advances the capabilities of the many people that use it, and by doing so affects and transforms them in a positive way". He also talks about some of the challenges faced by Linden Lab in 2007:
"Second Life has grown enormously faster than our systems have been able to support, we collected European VAT charges in a clumsy way, we restricted different types of activities to comply with the law and our own principles, and we suffered through far too much downtime and instability."
So, to 2008. The company plans to "substantially reduce" both client and server crashing over the next two quarters, and has a team working on making it easier to browse the web in-world, particularly important for people using Second Life for education and collaboration.
Finally, three more plans. Linden Lab will "seriously reconsider how the UI and more broadly the user experience for SL works, especially for new users", and the company will also continue its process of opening up in terms of formats, source code and partners. Finally, Linden Lab wants to improve its communication with Second Life users, both in frequency and clarity.
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