Interview with Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon

Ian Lamont — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 10:39:18 -0500

Earlier this month, The Industry Standard interviewed Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon at the company's offices in San Francisco. Linden Lab is the parent company of Second Life, which in recent years has enjoyed a huge surge in popularity -- as well as a backlash over technical problems, changes to in-world regulations, and an earlier period of media hype. In the interview, Kingdon addressed these issues and also discussed Second Life's enterprise push, efforts to improve the Second Life experience, and Linden Lab's strategic goals for 2009. (Related: Linden Lab executives plot Second Life growth, but interface concerns persist).

Industry Standard: The first question I'd like to ask is: If you were going to give a brief state of Second Life talk right now, what would be the main points that you would highlight?

Mark Kingdon: The first point that I would highlight is that all companies go through various stages of growth. There have been a lot of programs written and a lot of research done on companies in innovative categories and their growth trajectory.

I think we've followed a pretty standard path. We've had an incredible hype phase where the world discovered the power of virtual worlds in Second Life and then just as there was a huge amount of energy put into exploring the potential, there was a huge amount of energy put into exploring the pitfalls and downsides of virtual world space.

I think the virtual world category, and our company in specific, has moved out of that kind of anti hype phase and we're now in a much more comfortable place where I think the world has gotten its head around the fact that virtual worlds are here to stay. There is a very compelling set of activities that virtual worlds are incredibly powerful for. They erase geographies, they allow for a type of interaction that you can't get in the real world and they bring with them really interesting economic and business opportunities for users.

So that's really where, I think, the outside world is in terms of its view of Linden Lab and Second Life, and the virtual world space.

As a company, I would say we've probably followed kind of the same trajectory, which is that we had a period where there was just incredible energy in the virtual world space. We benefited tremendously from that and our growth showed it.

Then we went through a phase where people were questioning the virtual world space and our growth probably showed that as well because it slowed. Now we're at a point where we're growing our active user base were the in world economy continues to grow at a very rapid clip, where usage hours continue to grow, where down time has diminished.

So, on all of those metrics, we're making really, really great progress as a company. It's more, I guess I would say more comfortable, normal progress that you would expect of a company of our maturity level. So, we're in a really good place as a company because things have evened out in the industry. Our company is very thoughtfully proceeding on the things that it needs to do to grow and be a dominant platform in space. Those things, I can talk about a little bit about.

Industry Standard: Well, let me go back to a couple of things you just mentioned. You said "compelling activities." What are those compelling activities?

Kingdon: They are very wide-ranging, which is a blessing because it means that Second Life can mean many things to many different people, but can be a challenge when you're trying to communicate the specific attributes of Second Life.

Compelling activities, if you're looking on the consumer side of things like: blog music, creating your virtual identity, joining in world communities around a passion of yours, learning -- education and learning are really powerful. Imagine taking a language class in Second Life, a great language, there's probably several, in fact -- connecting with like minded people in different places, creating rich content, whether it's art or merchandise you sell, that's kind of on the consumer side.

On the business and education side it's very much about learning, it's about in world training, it's about collaboration. It's also very much about changing work processes inside of a company, a company or an organization. Depending on who you are and what your interest is, there are many, many different paths that you can take through Second Life.

The way the company is internalizing that, is we're trying to find a wider variety of entry points that we then build into experiences for users.

So rather than treating all users in precisely the same way or offering them precisely the same experience with no differentiation or no tailoring, we're in fact, trying to do the opposite. Yes, we want to keep Second Life open ended and exciting, but if someone's coming because they have a specific interest in blogging music and they want to create an avatar that reflects their identity and go out and listen to music on Saturday night, what we ultimately want to do is stream together an entire experience for them. They can do anything they'd like, but we'd like to create those experience elements for them, connect them together in a way that's not generic, but specific and tailored.

So the first step in that is if you go to the website now, instead of it just being you're world, your imagination with no specificity, the first page is: do you want to play, do you want to learn, do you want to explore? What are the things you're interested in doing?

Industry Standard: This in terms of the sign up phase?

Kingdon: Yes. That's the first step. There are probably another 100 steps we need to take, but you can start to see, or start to imagine how we might be reshaping the Second Life experience based on what you're seeing on the home page today.

Industry Standard: You also mentioned metrics before that you keep an eye on. If you were to identify the two most important metrics that you look at, what would they be and how have they changed in the past six months or so?

Kingdon: Right. Well, the amazing thing about Linden Lab is that it's a very well-metered company. We all have access to the same dashboard which has more than 100, probably less than 200 different metrics that you can look at. I have to count; I should count, that way I can let you know what that number is. It's a lot.

Different people follow different metrics and so you can look at the playlists of other people and see what metrics they follow on our internal dashboard, which is kind of a cool thing.

I look at pretty much all of the metrics several times a week because it's very easy to do so. All of the figures are in chart form so it's very visual and you can see trends very, very quickly. The ones that I look at most frequently are: hours lost to outages. So if we have downtime, how many hours were lost? And that's a very interesting statistic when you look at 2008, because in the second half of the year the hours lost to outages were probably about half of what they were in the first half of the year.

So as a company, we're making a lot of progress in minimizing disruption to the user experience.
The other things that I look at are monthly active users. I look at that daily, I look at that weekly, but when it rolls up monthly you begin to see tends. Active monthly users are people who have been in world more than one hour. That's a statistic that we're seeing nice growth in and it's really important.

We've seen a nice uptake, particularly in the fourth quarter there. And, it's due to a bunch of different things that we've been doing to optimize Web traffic and to optimize the reg flow.
And, because we had some publicity in the fourth quarter that generated a lot of interest in Second Life.

Industry Standard: When you say reg flow, you mean the registration process?

Kingdon: Yes.

Industry Standard: How do you optimize that?

Kingdon: Well, the first thing is we've been doing search engine optimization like all good companies do to make sure that our website does well in rankings. We're doing basic blocking and tackling. Then, the next thing that we've done is we've very substantially shortened the registration flow. Initially when I started the registration process was seven pages long -- as long as a mortgage application! And, we shortened it in July to one page and saw a very substantial increase in registration completions. And then we've also implemented better email management techniques to increase activations. So, with that first registration email that says 'Welcome to Second Life', we make sure that gets through spam filters, that it's got a copy in it that you recognize, and that helps you come to Second Life.

We also changed from having orientation islands, which were pretty extensive experiences, to "help islands" which are not as feature-rich as orientation islands, but seem to generate the same degree of following activity.

And, so, those are the first steps, as I said, we've taken. I feel like, the first of probably a hundred steps to optimize that chain, as well as launching a new home page which actually also has performed very well. So, we've identified a whole series – this is just good marketing -- of drop off points, holes in the bucket. if you will; that we're working to fill.

Industry Standard: Now, when you say that you're using SEO, usually, for an online publisher, they use SEO to get new customers in who otherwise might not know about our content because they have never visited our site before. For a site like Second Life, there's a very limited universe of virtual worlds.

Kingdon: There is. You just want to make sure that the content that you want to surface surfaces well. You want to make sure that essential content is appropriately drafted and packed so that it can be picked up by the search engines.

Industry Standard: What kind of content are you talking about?

Kingdon: You know, keywords that people use when they're interested in virtual worlds. "Avatar" is one of them.

Industry Standard: You also mentioned that you shortened the registration form from seven pages to one. Does this mean that you made one page seven times as long, or did you actually cut out a lot of questions?

Kingdon: We cut out a lot of stuff. I have to go back to do a before and after comparison, but basically, we got rid of a lot of stuff that we were asking. I mean, it was nonessential stuff. It was nice to have from a marketing insight perspective. But we haven't given up any essential information, and we probably added back a field or two. So, that's a work in progress, and it's going to change yet again, as we see. That was just the first step, and now we have another set of changes around sequencing and intensity of the forms.

Industry Standard: You mentioned two metrics. You mentioned downtime, and you also mentioned the number of active monthly users. What about the [Second Life] economy?

Kingdon: Well, I watch that very carefully. I watch it like a hawk. In terms of the in world economy, we look at the level of user to user transactions in terms of volume. So, how many transactions. We look at average transaction size, and then we also look at the Lindex to see the degree to which people are buying and selling virtual currency. And, we look at land stats. And those are metered just like the other metrics that I measured.

Now, the in world economy is, my hypothesis is because it's a large enough and diverse enough market that it comfortably finds its equilibrium. It's not particularly volatile. In other words, the in world economy, when you look at transaction volume and transaction size, doesn't move around as much as things like Web traffic and registrations. So, we watch it like a hawk, but it continues to grow at a comfortable and steady clip.

Industry Standard: When you say it's not as volatile, shouldn't it be tied into real-world trends? For instance, Christmas holiday, everyone's off for a week, they have more time to spend. Maybe they're feeling good because...

Kingdon: Well, Christmas Day actually is a slow day for us. Christmas Day and New Years Day are slow days for us because people are usually doing other things needed. It's a very different concurrency period. It's actually quite a lot. As a matter of fact, I logged in on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and looked at our concurrency chart, which is always live. And I went in to Higher C, which is our internal chat to ask the team that watches the grid, I'm like, 'It looks slow. Is this...?' And then, of course, everybody pointed back, 'Well, look at last year.'

You know, Christmas Day is pretty slow. People are eating turkey and unwrapping presents. They're not in Second Life.

But, they'll be here later. Wait until after Christmas. Then it's true, we just had another concurrency high this weekend.

Industry Standard: In the real world, the month before Christmas is a huge retail shopping time. Is that also a transfer? Are all the creative types producing more virtual goods? Or, trying to sell stuff?

Kingdon: We did see, yeah, we saw some [but] it's not the same. The interesting thing is that there's no Black Friday in Second Life. We do see more transaction activity in the holiday season, but it's probably not as marked as it is in the real world, which is good, because it means that our merchants are not relying on Black Friday the way retailers are. Black Friday can make or break your year if you're a real-world retailer. It's not the same in Second Life.

That being said, we see a lot of opportunities to give our in-world merchants more marketing tools to market their merchandise, their businesses, so that they can make more of holiday purchases.

Industry Standard: Is Linden Life profitable?

Kingdon: Yes.

Industry Standard: As a level of profitability, has that kept pace with the increase of the number of staff that you have? [Ginsu Yoon] mentioned that you have increased your staff.

Kingdon: What we're doing is our focus for the company from a management perspective, is to achieve a very specific set of goals around user experience and platform stability. And, we've been doing some very deliberate investment hiring in order to deliver on this.

So, we're managing to deliverables. This is a company that generates positive cash flow and is in a very good financial situation. We probably have more cash in the balance sheet than we've ever raised from investors.

Industry Standard: Really?

Kingdon: Yes. This is a company with a very comfortable cash position and a very strong economic model.

Industry Standard: Despite the fact that there's a deep recession taking place right now?

Kingdon: We have not felt the same in world economic turmoil that the real world has faced. We haven't seen the same pain.

Industry Standard: [Yoon] said in some articles or research that he'd seen about the video game industry saying that recessions can actually be a boost because more people are, instead of going on vacation or speeding $50 going out to the movies with their family, they can stay home in front of the computer and do something that's either free or low cost. Do you think there's an effect like that for Second Life?

Kingdon: I think there is, and I think it's great entertainment. Basic accounts are free. So you can go in, startup at Second Life, explore things, and there's a lot of free content that people give away. You can even go to Freebee Island and get great things for your avatar that costs nothing.

I think you can have a great experience in Second Life without spending money, but then you want to create content. You probably need to buy some land or rent some, you really want push out on this level where you can spend some money.

I haven't done any analysis, but I have to imagine that the cost to attend the movies today, it's almost $10. At least in the bigger metropolitan area, unless it's Benjamin Button which is a three hour movie. Most are two hours, right? So you're spending $5 an hour before you buy popcorn and snacks.

You could easily spend $10 in two hours in Second Life. If you weren't buying land you'd have to work hard to get around to spend that kind of money. That's a lot of Linden dollars, right, $10? You could do it in two hours, but you'd have a lot of fun.

So I think dollar for dollar, it's high-value entertainment for the casual user.

Industry Standard: Are there big spenders in there that go on sprees or are people usually very targeted and thoughtful about what they're buying?

Kingdon: I haven't actually looked at the individual market basket. A market basket analysis would be really interesting. What we usually look at are independent businesses that are generating a lot of Linden cash flow.

There's some really great businesses in Second Life. You can own land, which Second Life is pretty well known for. Making hair, making make-up, clothing, animations so that people have cool enhanced moves. Those are really substantial businesses in Second Life.

Industry Standard: I've noticed that in the past two years of observing Second Life that sometimes business-related issues are the third rail of the community and when Linden Lab messes with something, whether it be the way that gambling works, advertising works, or land sales, there can be huge outcries in the community.

You have to do some of these things sometimes, obviously. You have to tweak the way things work or change them outright. How do you interact with the community? How do you prepare this? Does it make changing Second Life a difficult thing for Linden Lab?

Kingdon: The last eight months have been an incredible learning experience for me because there are very few businesses where you find a community that is as active and engaged as you have in Second Life. Really, I think they're very few corollaries to Second Life.

No matter how prepared you are, it's still an incredible learning experience. I learned a lot about the community, how to engage with them, what they're specific pain points are, what the right form or approach is.

I think we, as a company, are working hard to getting better at finding a way to proactively get feedback and input, and then how to ensure we have a good conversation when we're in the rollout phase. I think we'll continue to get better at it.

The thing that's really important is ensuring that we don't lose sight of our strategic objectives for the platform and the fact that we have an incredibly widespread audience. So things that are good for some are not good for others. Making sure that you take the entire picture into account when making decisions is something that we're really, really conscious of.

We made a change last year around ad farming on the mainland, which was something that residents, there was a lot of discussion and debate about. There was a discussion before we implemented our policy change. That's an example of a policy change that we made that's had a net positive impact on the mainland experience and was welcomed by residents.

So there are changes that we're going to make to the business in the way that people engage in the economy, but our objective is to make the net impact a positive one.

Industry Standard: Let's talk a little bit about strategic objectives. What are they, short term?

Kingdon: A very important strategic objective of the company is to grow our active user base. We see how the in world economy is growing, we see how land mass has been growing, and we see that the changes that we make to the registration process are having a positive impact on our active user base.

That number needs to continue to grow because we believe that the Second Life platform is in a very, very unique strategic position in terms of the development of virtual worlds. We want to make sure that it continues to be a front and center.

So we're very focused on growing our active user base. You just flip that over, in order to grow the active user base, we have to have a stable and reliable platform. We've made great progress on that as well. We've been reducing to fewer crash rates. We've been reducing the hours lost to outages. We're still nowhere near where we'd like to be, but we're making continual and steady progress there. Insuring those two are in lock step is really, really important.

Around that, in terms of growing an active user base and ensuring the platform is stable, we're also very focused on our international markets. We've had a big push to localize the Second Life experience for local markets. That's website registration, keyword, and our helpfuls. We put a lot of effort behind that and have made great progress in major international markets in localizing the experience.

Industry Standard: What are those markets?

Kingdon: The markets where we've been the most focused are the big ones. France, Germany, Spain, Brazil, Japan, and we're at various stages of completion in those markets.

It's been a really important thing for residents. We put a substantial team in the lab in place and really leveraged the community in some innovative ways to help with translation and localization.

Industry Standard: Now, one market you left out was China. This morning I saw some statistics that said China now has 298 million active Internet users. I know China has its own virtual world, like HiPiHi. And they have some video games which are used as a virtual world platform.

Does Second Life have a place in China or does it require something else that you don't really have?

Kingdon: There's a point in time, it's a bit further out in the future, where we'll add China to the list of strategic initiatives that we're actively focused on. We see it as an opportunity, but today we're not making major investments in the Chinese market because to do it meaningfully, you need people there, you need to probably form a local partnership, and develop the opportunity to localize the experience in a really meaningful way, perhaps even make some fundamental changes to the experience.

That's a market where that's warranted. But we have some closer priorities that we're focused on right now.

Industry Standard: For markets like Japan, Spain, or Germany, are you doing that, where you have local staff?

Kingdon: In Japan, we have someone on the ground that helps with communications and partner relationships. We don't in Germany because that can be served from other markets.

The three centers for Linden Lab are the United States, most of our staff is here, and then we have staff in Brighton, England. We have staff in Singapore and then we have a few people in other markets, but our three core staff areas are in the United States, Brighton, England, and then Singapore.

Industry Standard: Why Singapore?

Kingdon: Singapore because there's a great technical talent in Singapore. The Singaporean government has been very, very interested in leveraging technology investment in their country. They have been very welcoming of Linden Lab.

We've been building our engineering team there, focused on all quality assurance where we also have some developers. It's a talent pool as opposed to a team that's focused on the external market.

Industry Standard: Let's talk about strategic objectives, not for the consumer space, but for businesses and enterprises. What are those?

Kingdon: We talked about the core consumer proposition which is growing the active user base, ensuring the platform is stable. We talked about international expansion. The other area that's, I think, a very rich opportunity is the enterprise marketplace which includes for us government and education, what's called a non consumer.

There are couple of things that we're doing now: The first is we're looking at our hosted solution -- this is the software as a service play, right? We're looking at sharpening that up for the enterprise market based on specific requirement s that they have. We have a roadmap for that market.
We're also developing a behind-the-firewall solution which is something that companies have asked for, for quite some time because there are some companies that want to host Second Life themselves. Obviously there are some security concerns or they have content that they want to develop that's closer for their business or their corporate firewall which makes it logistically easier for them to maintain and manage themselves.

So we have that product out right now in alpha and will be in beta in the first half of next year. That's a really important development for the enterprise market.

Industry Standard: Is this the Second Life Grid that you're talking about?

Kingdon: Well, the Second Life Grid is our hosted solution and we call the behind-the-firewall solution right now "Nebraska," [that] is the code name or working name. It's not the full product name because we haven't named it yet, but Nebraska is in alpha in the market.

Industry Standard: For corporations that are in Second Life, I've seen lots of them in the past. Intel, and think Cisco even has a sim.

Kingdon: Intel, Cisco, IBM, (muddled) we have lots of different companies.

Industry Standard: If you were to identify a couple of these companies that either are the most active or the most creative, what would they be?

Kingdon: I think there are so many, but I'll focus on one to start and we can get you a case study also if you want to explore it further in an article if you're working it out.

IBM has been a long-term partner for Linden Lab well before I arrived on the scene. They've been very interested in adding virtual worlds to the mix, to their mix, because they see it as an amazing way for people to learn, for people to collaborate, to drive business productivity.

They've done it to demo data centers, which I think is a really interesting approach that we've seen a lot of other companies do as well, which is they'll build a facsimile of a physical building or a physical space, then engage people in world in the tour, in the dialog, in the experience.

For them, it's demoing a data center, but there have been hospitals that have been built in Second Life so that you can show prospective patients the path that they're going to follow through the human process. Before you go into the hospital, maybe for a series of tests or a serious illness, it's kind of good to know what to expect, right? Because you can go to a hospital physically and feel like you're shuttled from place to place, but if you experienced it virtually, you know what's coming next. You reduce the fear factor. So that's an exploration I saw that I thought was really, really clever.

What IBM has done, I think, has pushed the envelope from a learning and education perspective. We recently hosted IBM Academy. The thing that I like about it is IBM Academy is the IBM training center. They hosted it in Second Life for a bunch of their students.

The thing that I liked about it was that when you're in a corporation, and you go to a training event, probably 60 percent (I'm giving the benefit of the doubt here) 60 percent of the value is in the content that you receive and 40 percent is in the networking opportunity. Meeting folks at college and other parts of the world. And you build relationships that help you in your career.

Well, the cool thing about the IBM Academy experience was that people attended, they absorbed the content -- and you can do really interesting things around simulation, data modeling and data virtualization and everything else that you can't do in the real world. They did all that.

But then on top of that, people stuck around afterwards and socialized and made connections, hung out, and did things together in-world that showed the power of the medium. They are making a human connection as well as absorbing the information we expect them to absorb in corporate training.

Industry Standard: For doing this type of activity, socializing, is Second Life really optimized for that type of thing right now? For instance, we are having this conversation now, we can cross relate. You are smiling right now so I can see your expression. Second Life doesn't have as rich of an experience as that unless you are a really pro user and you know how to do all of these things right off the bat. For dragging a bunch of people into this space to have a meeting, you will have different levels of skills with Second Life. Doesn't that present a big barrier to doing this type of thing?

Kingdon: You know it's odd. You might think it would, right? And I did before joining the company and I quickly got past that and saw that it was incredibly powerful. It's true you can't necessarily see someone's facial cues unless they're an expert user or communicating a raised eyebrow or chuckle, but people express themselves in different ways through the avatars that they use.

And I spend probably between one and 3-4 hours a day in Second Life because we have distributed offices and I rarely travel to them. And every week I sit with one of our offices in-world and we have a fireside chat. And some folks I have never met in person but I feel I know them because of the way they express themselves through their avatars and the conversation that we have.

So it's not the barrier to connection you think it would be. It is actually the opposite. And the reason it is the opposite and I think it is so much better than a video conference for instance, is that people are free and feel comfortable expressing themselves.

So sure there is a tradeoff. I can't read all of your body language. But, at the same time, what I found in the virtual world is because you have a degree of separation through the interface, and the opportunity to text as well as voice chat, people are much more likely to express themselves, ask questions and have dialogue than they are in the real world.

I say that because I have done this test. I have gone to town hall meetings if you want to call them that in our offices. And I will sit down, even if I have met a lot of people. We are sitting on the floor. Everyone has got something to eat or drink in their hand. It is a very casual environment. We have a casual culture. It's very hard to get Q&A kicked off. When you are there and present in real life, there are a lot of inhibitions, right? When we're in-world, no problem.

First of all, I always take snapshots of these because they are mind blowing. People show up in fantastic avatars. I mean, unbelievable avatars -- giants, dragons, tugboats, green frogs. They go and they buy an avatar that they feel expresses who they are. Our CFO comes as a beagle.

And you know what? The first time, the icebreaker in every conversation is visibly apparent in the avatars they have chosen. Usually we are laughing, cracking up, looking at the avatar and asking questions and immediately the conversation starts flowing. And then because people can text chat, people will ask questions. It's really profound and it's the simplest of things. People text chat their questions in a rolling scroll and they agree and we do polls and all kinds of fun things and the dialogue is terrific. Some people will use voices. Some people will use text. People will pile on. You are never short of topics for conversations in that environment.

I haven't seen anything in a real world that is as powerful. Video conferences are far worse in real world because everybody sits still for the camera, maintains perfect posture and doesn't move around too much. Why? Because you are on video and we all know what that's like even in the most high-end video setups. So I am a huge believer in Second Life as a business application.

Industry Standard: Let's talk about the video for a second. I actually saw one of your executives making a comment in response to a question. The question was is Second Life a competitor to Cisco Telepresence? The Linden Lab executive said yes. I can't remember who it is off the top of my head. Are they?

Kingdon: Well, [they] could complement [each other]. It could a substitute. It could be a competitor. I think there's going to be some people who are more comfortable in one environment over another.

I think for widespread adoption and ease of use, Second Life is the most compelling because everyone has a PC and most everybody has a PC that is going to be equipped to run Second Life.

You don't even need a headset really. You can just listen and do text chat. If you have a headset you go into Second Life, you log into client, you can be anywhere in the, we call it business world which is going to have broadband-speed access and you are connected. Sure, there is some setup time and sure you have to learn how to use it. You may not have the perfect avatar out of the box.

It may be a little embarrassing when you are stumbling around. But once you get seated at the table and you start having a conversation it works really, really well. And I think for widespread adoption, there is really nothing else out there like it.

If you look at Web-based conferencing system, [it's] also very accessible but you don't have what feels really like human interaction. It feels very 2D.

And that's one end. At the super high-end video conference, you are going to have relatively few installations and so it is going to be a very conscious act to schedule a meeting, go to the room, have the meeting, leave and Second Life can be much more pervasive and widespread happening because anybody can use it at anytime.

Industry Standard: You said most people are equipped with a PC that can handle Second Life. There is a trend taking place now. I asked this question of Gene, as well. Net books are becoming more popular. Portable computers such as the iPhone or other smaller devices. People aren't getting desktops all the time. Actually laptops, I think for the first time ever outsold desktops in the third quarter of last year.

Kingdon: I haven't used a desktop at work or at home. Yeah. I am a laptop person.

Industry Standard: I am assuming that you have a pretty good laptop and it's a high-performance one.

Kingdon: I have a good laptop but I don't think it's necessarily … we don't make special orders. I mean it's an off-the-shelf laptop.

Industry Standard: Is it a PC or Mac?

Kingdon: It's a Mac. But, can I just answer your question, because I don't think I did.

You talked about people moving to notebooks and smaller pieces of hardware. What we are looking at for Second Life is to bring a lot more of the Web into Second Life, and to take really significant elements of the Second Life experience and put them out on the Web, so that we are in sync with the market changes in terms of the way people want to connect with and consume Second Life.
It doesn't mean we're going to put the entire Second Life experience in a browser, because there are probably elements for the foreseeable future that you can't do that with. But, there are other elements of the Second Life experience that very much lend themselves to the Web.

Industry Standard: Such as?

Kingdon: We have our land store; it's on the Web, so you can start to think of a significant e commerce experience on the Web. Profiles, if you know where to look, you can find Second Life profiles on the Web. But, we need to make that social tool much, much stronger, and it can easily be Web-based.

The same with communications. We see a lot of natural extensions of instant messaging and voice out to the Web. So, when you start to think like that, you can start to see things that can be amplified and pulled out to other places.

Industry Standard: You also mentioned that Second Life is probably the most widely adopted virtual world. Are there other competitors out there that you keep an eye on?

Kingdon: Sure, I look at the market space, and we talk about it pretty broadly all the time. I just want to stay abreast of what's happening out there. It's a pretty diverse space, as you know, when you start to think about virtual worlds and their broader definition. You can spend all of your time being concerned about individual point solutions. We like to stay abreast of what's happening.

But, what's more important to us is focusing on the things that we know we need to work on to create a better user experience. Make sure that Second Life is relevant, especially in key use cases, and the platform is stable. And that's really what grounds us.

Some companies are competition-obsessed. We're more focused on what we need to get done and how we need to move the ball forward.

Industry Standard: I read an interview where you said that Google coming into the space was validation for it, and [Yoon] used those exact same words. Now that Lively has gone away, what does that tell you about this industry?

Kingdon: I think, it tells you two things. One is that it's definitely promising, right? But, it's also very hard, and it takes a lot of commitment and dedication to get it right. So, I don't think that Lively's departure is an invalidation of the market. I think, it's just recognition that, yeah, there is promise [and] a lot of hard work.

And I think Google made the right decision and said, "We need to kind of stick to our knitting in this economic downturn, in this climate, and focus our resources on some of our core properties," which is quite natural.

Industry Standard: Last question: If I come back to you one year from now, and you go over the accomplishments and things that you've done for Linden Life and Second Life, what are the things that you will want to tell me at that time?

Kingdon: Growth in the active user base, I'll want to talk about that. I'll want to talk about platform stability. I'll want to talk about relevance, how we're making ourselves relevant in specific areas, specific markets.

I'll want to talk to you about the enterprise market, where I see it going. I'll want to talk about international markets. Those are the things that we'll definitely be able to talk about.

And I want to see growth internationally. I want to see growth in our active user base and in the in world economy. Just grow users and hopefully the economy comes along with it.

And I want to make sure that the investments we're making in the platform are contributing to platform stability, scalability, more reliability. I want to make sure that we're relevant in our international markets.

Industry Standard: If you talk about growth in the user base in terms of active monthly users or total concurrent users, what's a number that you are aiming for?

Kingdon: I'm not going to put a number out there, but we definitely have numbers inside the company, our numbers we're working really hard against.

The Industry Standard - Interview with Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon - Comments

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Interview with Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon