Rosedale: Well, gosh, a lot of things need to happen. I mean, like account creation, like the way you sort of get an account set up to go into Second Life. That experience needs to become standardized and normalized in a way that works for businesses as well as it does for end user people that are signing up today.
Obviously, as you're probably well aware from your own hands-on experiences, the orientation process, the first hour. And I'm sure Mark talked about this too, but there's this utility function in Second Life, or actually with anything. Where when things are still in the early adopter phase or late early adopter or early majority or whatever, they're in this problematic space where sometimes the cost of getting acclimated in the new media exceeds the benefit associated with the particular experience. So, like have you ever gone to a live music event in Second Life?
Industry Standard: No, I haven't.
Rosedale: So, it's one of the coolest experiences, I think personally. I mean, it's really amazing, right? You go into somebody's nightclub, it's clearly a venue. There are signs up. They've talked about how this or that performer is going to be there tonight.
The person is standing up on stage, they're singing and playing live, they've got an avatar. There's all these people from around the world obviously sitting next to you. You're chatting with them which doesn't distract, so you can chat with the whole room, but you're still listening to this performer. The performer's shouting out stuff, you know? It's just a totally surreal, empowered experience. It's just amazing, right? It's going to be a big deal in the future.
So, why isn't it that [San Francisco music club] Bottom of the Hill is going out of business because basically everybody just does this in Second Life now, live performance? Well, the reason for it is simple. It's not that the economics for the musician aren't better in Second Life, I actually think they are. They're a lot better.
I mean, we've got a bunch of musicians that work here, and we laugh about it. Because why on Earth would you go try to get a gig at the Red Devil Lounge on Polk Street in this, one of the world's good music cities? This is a good place to be as a musician.
But, there's no way it makes sense for you to do that as compared to performing in Second Life. Because in Second Life you still are getting 25-45 year old people listening, but 65 percent of them are international.
I mean that's just a huge. You can't argue with that. You really as a budding musician you want to hit a large audience so that they'll get the word out. And the fan out of a group of people in Second Life just crushes what's going to happen anywhere in San Francisco.
So, there's an economic benefit to the performer, but there's not yet a utility function for the attendee. I mean the problem is, right, if I told you "some band that you kind of like is playing at Second Life tonight," are you really going to go see it?
Industry Standard: It depends if I had the time.
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