The deeper issue behind the Second Life trademark mess - community engagement

I don't think that Linden Lab meant to create quite such a blogstorm with its announcement of the inSL logo programme, but there's no doubt that this is exactly what it's done. With some bloggers talking about three day strikes, and many others echoing the message that Linden Lab has overstepped the mark, it's pretty clear that this is a mess - and one which the Lab will have to deal with.

As I've pointed out, the reality of the situation is actually pretty uncontroversial. The licensing programme itself is just about ensuring that companies can advertise their presence in SL without having to use Linden Lab's trademarks, which is the kind of thing that gives the average business lawyer hives.

However, the way it's been expressed has lead many people to believe that they will have to adopt onerous conditions whenever they even mention Second Life. Again, as I've pointed out, this is largely not true: unless your business name or web site name uses one of the Linden trademarks in it, you'll probably have to do precisely nothing different. Publications with "Second Life" in the title will probably need to adopt appropriate disclaimers. No one will be able to attempt to use Linden trademarks to suggest they're associated with the Lab. As Ciaran Laval has pointed out, this is exactly the same rules as any other trademark.

Clearly, Linden Lab communicated this badly. But that's not enough to explain how bad this is looking for them. Why are so many people willing to believe that Linden Lab actually wants to kick the hundreds of bloggers, writers, and content creators who contribute to Second Life's success in the teeth?

The answer lies in the complete dearth of proper community relations management and an utter failure to have any kind of real blogger engagement programme. This is something that's been building for months - and to anyone who's been following the progress of the Lab, it's no surprise.

For a company based on building communities, Linden Lab is surprisingly opaque. Partly, this is down to a failure to develop its sense of what its community is since the days when Philip Rosedale could hold "town halls" with the reasonable expectation that everyone in-world could attend without the servers falling over. The original way that Linden Lab communicated with its customers was in-world - but that only works for a few people at a time, and utterly fails with an active community in the hundreds of thousands.

(As an aside, I suspect that this is why Linden Lab spends such a lot of its time working with small groups in-world, such as the Second Life Architecture Working Group. Small groups work in-world. The problem is, of course, that it's all too easy to see such groups as "feted inner cores" and assume the Lab doesn't care about anyone else.)

Nothing has replaced in-world meetings as the core part of Linden Lab's communications programme. While the company has a blog, it is mostly formulaic corporate comms with a dash of hints and tips. It has grown well beyond the point where a single blog is enough - every senior executive should have a blog, and communicate things which impact their area directly. With the Linden blog, you never feel like you're talking to a person - which is the point of blogging.

Worse still is the apparent lack of a real community/blogger engagement programme. For a company like Linden Lab, blogger engagement is probably the most important kind of PR. And while individual Lindens often appear happy to talk about their specific area, no one appears to be doing this job for Linden Lab as a whole. This is shown by the fact that, 48 hours after this issue started brewing, there is no clarification or response from Linden Lab over the issue.

Good blogger relations - heck, just good old fashioned PR work - could have nipped this one in bud. That hasn't happened, and it's now getting to the point when a minor clarification may no longer be enough to stop the damage.

So where does Linden Lab go next? The first thing it needs to sort out is this mess, which it can do by officially clarifying things. If its lawyers can't agree on a form of words which express the simple fact that you don't need to follow every instance of "Second Life" on your blog with "TM" then it should fire its lawyers. Other companies' legal teams manage this daily.

Second, it needs to start a serious blogger outreach programme, to ensure that it gets feedback from some of the most vocal members of its community - people who's work influences thousands of opinions. And blogger engagement means listening as much as talking - something that should never be forgotten.

Finally, it needs to start being a more marketing-focussed company. So far in its short life, it has mostly been a technology development team: marketing was really a "pig in lipstick" role. The techies delivered the product: the marketers worked out how to market it. Now, it needs to learn the real lesson of marketing - put customers first, including in your development process. And that means learning a lot more about the community, who are, after all, its customers.

Comments

[Prokofy Neva]

There are quite a few fallacies here, but let's start with one clarification: are you a trademark lawyer by practice or training in any real-world company? Or just a blogger writing on these issues?

The townhalls ran in an era when there were at least 5000 or 10000 or far more logging on at any one time, so the idea that the townhalls existed only "when everybody could get on without the server falling over" is incorrect.

I, too, propose that they have more inworld marketing-style focus groups, and junk both the silly office hours (or make them once a month) with their devoted little fanboyz hugging the Lindenz, and also junk the SL Views, which is inappropriate for a company purporting to be a neutral platform serving the public. They need to re-deploy those scarce resources of Linden time and attention into multiple focus groups all over the grid with all kinds of other constituencies, using scheduled formats, surprise walkabouts, all kinds of things to help them break through the wall of fan adulation sucking up to them, and the wall of a tiny number of bloggers pumping negative commentary at them. They have a vast, silent majority to serve, too.

First, the Lindens maintained an excellent relay system in those earlier days. So the townhall on the 4-corner sims that could hold about 200 avatars was one venue, and then anyone who wished could acquire the relay device and tune in, with their own event, and often after-party or after-discussion and backchat adding to the specific communities listening.

At some point, this relay thing "broke" -- not sure why, it stopped working. Lindens increased the numbers of avatars that could fit to something now more like 400 on the 4 corners, and they also handed out URLs to servers you could tune into.

But the townhalls ended not because of lack of server capacity. In fact, what happened is that a very concerted and organized griefing group -- W-hat and its spin-offs in V-5, etc. -- heckled and griefed and crashed the meetings. The servers crashed precisely because they were deliberately crashed, and everybody could see this. In fact, this happened a few too many times in a row, and that's when back in 2005, Philip said he was calling the FBI and opening up a case against those who were making denial-of-service attacks. Hard to remember or admit that now, but there were such times.

So the townhalls were rolled up by the Lindens due to griefing, not lack of capacity. They tried other formats -- smaller community themed meetings that were still open, listserves (some of which have now been closed due to "flaming).

This working with inworld FIC groups is for the birds. There is no quality control; no public accountability from either Linden or the people in these feted groups.

Blogger engagement program? Hell no. We don't need any engagement. To engage will mean to control, possibly quite heavy-handedly. The principle the Lindens have upheld even now is that they do not attempt to interfere with the content on third-party blogs. This trademarking exercise isn't that -- yet. Let's not ask for "community blogging engagement" and make little fankits and uniform reproduction of Torley's little help videos, shall we?! I'm not interested in being a MMORPG game fansite.

The Lindens shouldn't be contacting bloggers in person and being controlled by them -- or visa versa. Bloggers are grown-ups. They can adjust their trademarks or use of the trademark like they would have to do for their discussion of any big product and corporation they followed avidly.

I would say in fairness to LL that they have marketers, with Robin Harper being the main marketing brains and skills there, and she has in fact spent a lot of time listening to the community by creating the office hours format. Not one I find useful, nor do I think overall LL is serious about even a managed democracy, but that's a separate issue, they do in fact deserve points for their marketing lately, in the form of organized press conferences, podcasts, Twittercasts, etc. We may not care for this format or its more homogenized content, but they definitely can't be accused of not marketing.

[Ian Betteridge]

I've received full legal training on the use of trademarks in publications, including fair use circumstances. I deal with this stuff on a daily basis, Prok.

You attended the last town hall - you know the system was broken due to overcrowding then, and the active population has probably doubled since then. As you point out, relays didn't work properly - which means you're left with 50,000 people trying to get to a meeting which holds 200.

And your point about W-Hat - if true - simply underlines the fact that in-world meetings on that scale don't work, socially or technically. SL is not built for meetings of that size.

Incidentally, Prokofy, have you removed your ban on me from your site yet? If not, could you explain to me why I should extend to you the courtesy of allowing you to post here?