The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic put on a concert in Second Life on September 14, for what we are told was to be 100 Second Life users. There's not many venues that would have supported that many in relative comfort.
"According to the orchestra, 9 million Second Life denizens watched the performance live on Second Life's own cable network, and the broadcast repeats every couple of hours through November."
Nine million Second Life users watching live. The tensile strength of truth doesn't go nearly that far.
Perhaps counting beyond 4/4 is a mite harder than it sounds.
A special shout-out goes to Anastasia Tsioulcas at Reuters, who could have easily sanity-checked this figure, but didn't.
Ben & Jerry's is in-world? Have they created Virtual Vanilla? If not, hands off, it's mine! The best part of this article is that there's a quote from someone representing each company, and they're all pretty positive. I like things to be happy, don't you?
As reported, LL has placed a ban on gambling in SL, which has caused casinos gridwide to shut their doors, grumbling. However, this Reuters news article reports that many operators have simply gone underground, choosing to operate in private, similar to the speakeasies of the 20s and 30s in the United States during its Prohibition period.
Robin Linden has said 'We'll do the best we can to enforce the policy,' which has created doubt in the mind of the representative speakeasy owner of the article. 'No real player wants to be a snitch,' claims 'Miss C'.
I'm looking forward to seeing EliotNess Linden and his crack team swoop down upon any and all abusers of LL law. Voe-dee-oh-doe!
Connecticut based Information and technology research and advisory firm Gartner, has been in the Second Life part of the news of late with predictions that "80% of active Internet users will be in non-gaming virtual worlds like Second Life by the end of 2011" [via Reuters] followed by a warning that there are 'significant' risks for business in getting involved with virtual worlds [via ZDNet].
Potentially, both these statements are true. The intrepid 57 Miles from Metaversed is gathering Gartner's Steve Prentice, who was responsible for both assertions along with a number of other interested commentators together for a panel discussion about Gartner's assessment and position on Second Life and virtual worlds (which some have described as 'conflicted').
The discussion will take place in Second Life at Noon, on Thursday. Check the Metaversed group or blog for details.
[This is most likely to be an audio-session (technology permitting), so be prepared]
As reported on their website and by Reuters, Ginko Financial has had to temporarily cap withdrawals to L$5,000 per day rather than L$300,000.
Nicholas Portocarrero is, understandably rather buried in IMs, and when I spoke to him, he offered to add a comment here when he gets a chance rather than give me a quote directly.
Maybe I should be careful of throwing rocks, as I sometimes publish thin stories, but I've got to say the implication of the Reuters piece that "Ginko's troubles are due to the gambling ban" is more than a little disingenuous. In about 2 minutes thought there are a number of other possible issues, including:
Lack of trading on WSE (Ginko is listed)
Lower land prices causing a run as people buy land cheap (I helped a friend buy nice land for L$8/sqm yesterday, when was the last time you could do that?!)
Casino owners cashing out
Single bit investor cashing out, particularly if they do it through several alts.
Hopefully we'll hear from the horse's mouth soon, with a suggestion as to when things will be returning to normal as well.
[UPDATE] Nicholas managed to find a moment to give me some comments. There was a run on the bank, he isn't sure why - although he feels both WSE and the gambling ban may have contributed to this. This overwhelmed the bank's reserves and so they have capped them until they can grow reserves once again. Nicholas considers it is more important to keep Ginko investments strong for the long term rather than sell them short to cover a temporary loss. Historians who remember the Great Depression and various "black days of the week" may well agree with him.
[UPDATE] I missed the fact that Reuters grabbed their piece from Virtually Blind when reading the article. Not sure how now I'm looking for it, but I did. You can find the original piece here.
"traditional Internet bullies ... work through instant messages and cell phones"
"A new type of cyberbully known as a griefer is overtaking other forms of aggression on the Internet and in the world of online gaming, a health researcher warned." -- Reuters.
"Please, dear god, won't someone teach them to use Google or something?" -- Tateru.
Seems someone has all their background material backwards, or has just ignored years of it. Not sure if it is Reuters or Doctor Black. Black's research about behavioral changes and MMORPG's may be more indicative of children having unsupervised interactions with unknown peer groups - but that may just be an impression.
While we're here, we may as well talk briefly about these sad people called 'griefers'. Maybe Reuters will even notice.
As reported on Reuters, Stroker Serpentine is taking legal action against Volkov Catteneo, whose physical world identity is unknown at the present time. The complaint, filed by Serpentine's legal representative, Alfred Villoch III of Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC, leaves some doubt as to whether Cattaneo is selling knock-off items or digital duplicates of Serpentine's products.
The dispute revolves around Serpentine's sophisticated and popular Sex Gen product line, the Sex Gen bed. Cattaneo admits to having sold fifty of the items, claiming that the proceeds all went to an unnamed third party, and defying anyone to locate him.
Reuters reports that the contracts with Integrity Services have been finalized and signed, and we've confirmed that with Linden Lab. If you had hopes of preventing the planned age/identity verification system, promoting an alternative provider or proposing an alternative mechanism, you're too late. The system will roll out as planned.
Of course, this is Linden Lab we're talking about. It is unlikely that the system will remain as it is without some change and evolution. Things like this always change once they can be evaluated in operation, but if you were hoping to affect, divert, delay or prevent the initial implementation, no dice. The deal's done. We will likely see this coming in an update soon - as soon as the implementation can be properly tested and tweaked.
As noted by our friends over at Reuters, the Spanish socialist and conservative parties have made griefing accusations against each-other. Never mind that no actual damage can be done to the sites in question, and that a few minutes with the land-management options would have entirely prevented pretty much all the issues that were described - unless the parties were in so much haste to get into Second Life that they omitted doing their research.
Following on the heels of their SL-driven commercial for Two and a Half Men, CBS Reuters announces that the broadcast company will participate in a $7 million dollar round of financing for the Electric Sheep Company, which has created builds for AOL, General Electric, NBC, and Viacom, as well as CBS itself.
While this is great news for ESC, it does make me feel a little leery that SL, already touted as the next iteration of the Web, is still following the pattern of the boom and bust of the late 90's. While it could be argued that there is more efficacy to supporting MDCs at this stage of SL's growth than there was in VC funding early websites with no real sustainable business model, the parallels are a little too close for comfort. Let's hope this doesn't turn into a 'CBS is doing it, so let's do it too' from other companies, only to have the whole thing fall apart like a badly-baked soufflé.
A little earlier than reported, Warren Ellis begins his subversion of the otherwise respectable news source Reuters with his first "Second Life Sketches". In this inaugural post, he covers the Anshe Chung media cover-up, with the help of tech writer and Boing Boing blogger Xeni Jardin.
In a wise and prescient move, Reuters precedes Ellis's article with "The following is an independent opinion column, and is not connected with Reuters News. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not endorsed by Reuters."
Yes, Reuters, yes they are. Let's see how long this lasts.
When the offices of Lichtenstein Creative Media had to be hastily evacuated, and staff treated for minor injuries and smoke inhalation, it pretty much disrupted any chance of the event going forward as planned.
Wow, I wasn't expecting this. Warren Ellis, rake and raconteur, notorious for his take no prisoners approach to storytelling, will be bringing his previously personal blog-only column 'Second Life Sketches' to Reuters.
Reuters, friends and neighbors. The sky is falling.
Actually, I'm a huge fan, as past posts have shown. I'm looking forward to reading his weekly column next month, and, Yog willing, possibly get an interview out of him, if I can bribe him with enough Red Bull. Do they make 4 gallon tubs? If this turns him into the SL Spider Jerusalem, I'll shave a swear word into my fur.
This will be the online companion piece to our previouslyposted articles on Wired's recent SL Guide. What's interesting about this, to me at least, is this line: "Today, Second Life is second home to half a million people ... "
This article was just a few weeks ago! And we've hit the million user mark already! I think we can thank both Reuters and the Yahoo! mention for bringing in all the tons of new residents (or should I say 'new users', as they'll only really be residents if they stay). This is unprecedented growth, and LL is going to have to do some pretty quick catching up before the tide of newbies drowns us all! This is not to say that we're not happy to see you all, but quit shovin', wouldja?
This is huge! Reuters, the respected RL news service, will be opening an SL branch office, offering RL articles to in-world residents, and debuting a special service covering SL for the rest of the world! They'll also provide a wearable object called the Reuters News Center, which will provide links to Reuters stories. Additionally, they plan to offer an Atrium which residents can occupy to discuss the latest news.
Coverage from the outside is nice, but this is a major step for a news service, and I can't help but think that it's a good one, especially with the implied interaction between worlds. Adam Pasick (Adam Reuters in-world, continuing the trend of RL services being granted equivalent in-world surnames) will be heading up this development, and I'll try to get an interview with him, so keep your eyes peeled!
kfest follows!
Connecticut based Information and technology research and advisory firm Gartner, has been in the Second Life part of the news of late with predictions that "80% of active Internet users will be in non-gaming virtual worlds like Second Life by the end of 2011" [
As reported on 
"traditional Internet bullies ... work through instant messages and cell phones"
As 
Reuters reports that the 
When the offices of Lichtenstein Creative Media had to be hastily evacuated, and staff treated for minor injuries and smoke inhalation, it pretty much disrupted any chance of the event going forward as planned.
