Tag: 7. März 2007

About Flumm Melendez, landbaron in the making

I know Flumm Melendez since some time, comes from because she’s been an avid writer to the group „SL Deutschland“. The first time I saw her profile, Flumm Melendez was a female avatar, earning her money in world as an escort and with making and selling tattoos.

After some time, though, this became boring or whatever, so she started building her own club, I guess its name was „Ice cube“ or something like that. I was there back then and helped her testing a door for the nudie room.

Then after a short while the avatar turned into a male, also showing for some time a RL picture of the player behind it in the profile. 27 years old, male, from Berlin, Germany. Quite a change.

Now I’m hopping to a new sim, Berlin City, and guess who’s the landbaron there? Flumm Melendez, also most of it crowded with buildings and sold. Not far away from this sim is another new sim, Cologne City? Owner? Flumm Melendez. So – the real money in Second Life still is in selling and renting sims and building.

And to sum it up, there’s of course also a web presence about the real estate business of Flumm Melendez: Second Earth Sims.  And here’s a posting about the history of the avatar made by Flumm Melendez himself (Germany only).

If you ask me, quite an interesting career, but not too unusual in SL at all.

The SLLA is pointless

I’ve included the RSS-feed of the SLLA blog some days ago to my RSS aggregator, just because I’m curious and wanted to know this group a little better beside the media coverage they got last week.

Well, I read the article about „army rally and protest.“ They’re claiming that they want to install a government in SL made by the people. Sounds like a nice idea at first, but I’ve read that about 2-3 years ago the Lindens already asked the people if they want such a thing – the answer was a big NO back then.

Two quotes from the article are:

Our demand is clear: we want a debate between SLLA and Governor Linden. Where was the openness for dialogue when First Land was taken away, or when Linden Labs started selling chunks of our world to IBM, Sony and Warner Brothers?

Why should Lindenlabs care at all? They are a business company, not the welfare, they need to make money, they even more need to make profit. They gain profit when people enter the world, or companies, it doesn’t matter. Profit is necessary to continue the development of this platform.  Well, and to the first land issue – better such a reaction than no at all, I guess. The original intention of first land was being perverted by land bots and such.

From our actions at American Apparel last year to our resistance to corporate control of our AV lives, we are building a movement together! We will strike again very soon, count on it.

Why am I reminded of Monty Python right now and must think of the People’s Front of Judea? Whatever.

The one who owns the technology makes the rules, plain and simple. If you are not satisfied by the rules you are free to leave the platform.  I mean, why should Lindenlabs care at all about these people? It’s nice in the form that they’re making free media coverage for the game, makes even more nice PR when they’re willing to meet with them, but the truth is – they’re usefuls idiots at the moment. Not more, not less.

Disposable pawns for the Lindens, so to speak. If they really would like to get rid of them they can do it anytime without much effort at all.

Exactly to the point of the participation of the people Prokofy Neva (…) wrote an article some time ago in his blog called „The adventure capitalists“. To cite the main passage of it:

Dear Philip,

All of us who pay tier, collectively, pay Linden Lab something like $9.5-$10 million a year (I’m not sure how many total hidden/non-hidden sims there are with tier and island billing). It’s as much as a venture capitalist. We’re the adventure capitalists.

Could we as a group get a seat on your board? We could run elections among the 42,000 mainland landowners and the thousands of island owners (about 50,000 total perhaps?) The person who was acclaimed by assembly or voted for by direct ballot could serve on your board. At least you could consider having that seat in an advisory, non-voting capacity –though the stake is real. It’s 70 percent of your revenue, correct?

The first comment on this blog entry was made by Allana Dion in that way:

Dear Wallmart CEO,

All of us who shop in your store, collectively, pay your company something like $9.5-$10 million a year (I’m not sure of the exact figures). It’s as much as a venture capitalist. We’re the adventure capitalists.

Could we as a group get a seat on your board? We could run elections among the 42,000 daily shoppers and the thousands of weekly shoppers (about 50,000 total perhaps?) The person who was acclaimed by assembly or voted for by direct ballot could serve on your board. At least you could consider having that seat in an advisory, non-voting capacity –though the stake is real. It’s 70 percent of your revenue, correct?

She’s right there. What Prokofy Neva and the SLLA want is something like this: when you’re going to a bar/pub/restaurant, it is run by an innkeeper in one way or another. But they want to make rules for the innkeeper how to run it and this is not going to work. Well, they’ve got no right to make these rules or any kind of claim to do so. And that’s why the SLLA is pointless.