They have diverging interest groups besetting them — very gnarly early adapter coders of 2003 who were Burning Man types in the desert; the huge land barons that bought up thousands of simulators and who still keep the Lindens in a healthy bottom line in 2005; the "solutions providers" who came with the corporate islands that led to the hype of 2007; the artists and nonprofits and boutique consultants and educators who gave them prestige in 2009 and non-English language groups, lifestyle groups on the adult sims, various other cultural affinity groups that they wish to keep happy. "Power users" aren't really one set people but can be very much at odds — sandboxing furries who want cutting edge technology and opensource extremism versus socializing dress merchants who want IP protection and stability.

The Lindens have struggled to keep these lobbies happy, but it's usually on the "pain management principle" of letting them scream about some new awful policy harming this or that interest group, and then seeming to mitigate it just enough to keep people logging on and buying virtual goods and land.

The solution is not to kill off or disable or freeze all these lobbying groups, but to create a more fair level playing field for them and balance their interests in transparent compromises with buy-in.

For that, they need to stop having corporate communications work like the Middle Ages, threatening to delete people who complain, or expel them from Second Life and seize their property for criticism on the forums of either the Lab or the constituencies they favour.

Why Second Life user-base does not grow that fast? I think historically there was not enough information available to demonstrate what is inside Second Life.

However, new sites such as ThreadMap (http://www.threadmap.com) are trying to make it easier to expose how beautiful Second Life is, and hopefully it will play its role in increasing the number of Second Life users.

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The vast majority of "power users" have traditionally clamoured for a *hold* on new features until existing functionality is fully working and stable, and features like Windlight (which adds a dramatic level of realism to features such as sky and water) and even SL Voice were neither requested or even known to be a possibility. Despite that, Voice has become very widely used and Windlight certainly looks great, as do dynamic shadows and all kinds of other eye candy we never asked for. And at the same time, fundamental reliability and the operation of some, but by no means all, fundamental infrastructure, have improved significantly over the past two years and recent Linden Lab blog posts appear to commit the company to focusing on asset servers, lag, sim crossings and other fundamentals that both new and power users require simply to work efficiently.

One would have thought that the availability of source code for Viewer applications would allow the development of specialised Viewers to support the need of power users, builders, animators etc, and you could argue that applications like Emerald do exactly this, although some potential users shy away because of potential copyright issues associated with some features. However the principle – that the possibility of developing third-party Viewers aimed at power users can allow Linden Lab to focus on ensuring that its official viewer suits the general user better – is potentially a good one, and one can expect the "version 2" official viewer to meet these goals effectively.

Far from pandering to an alleged elite group of users (now, where have I heard that one before…?), the reality is rather the opposite. Linden Lab appears to be focusing on potential corporate users at the *expense* of long-standing users. This is not a good idea.

The people who have been in-world longest tend to be the people who have developed successful in-world businesses, creating goods, buildings, animations etc, and there is a feeling in some quarters that Linden Lab are neglecting their needs in favour of potential new business customers. This is unfortunate, as the fact is that the two groups have an enormous overlap.

Long-standing users with their own in-world businesses have RL jobs too, and those jobs are often in areas where they could make corporate use of virtual worlds. They are early adopters who "got it" early on, and constitute a superb potential base of satisfied users via whom Linden Lab could hook the corporates for whom they work during the day.

Instead, however, Linden Lab messed with sim occupancy parameters in a very customer-unfriendly way a year or so ago and more recently has re-jigged on-line sales features in ways that have not been very well received. One could argue that most people like things that work to stay the way they are, but certainly LL do not appear to have researched the impact of some of these (largely administrative) changes on SL's most active and devoted users, or handled their introduction effectively from a PR point of view – some focus groups would have been a good idea here in advance of some of the most unpopular changes.

However if Linden Lab neglects these users' SL needs, they at the same time reduce the likelihood of those same people pulling their RL corporations into Second Life activities, ie they risk missing targeting the highest probability potential business users. These users, already convinced of the efficacy of VWs to their RL businesses, will simply take their VW business elsewhere, either to open source environments using known SL technology and behaviour, or other emerging VWs such as Blue Mars. .

Rather than paying less attention to long-standing users of Second Life, Linden Lab actually needs to listen to them more, because many individual members of its current corporate target audience are already in-world and have been for some time. They are the people with successful SL businesses and significant time and other in-world investment, and they are the people most likely to be unhappy with ill-considered moves by LL ostensibly to attract corporates.

At the same time, we need to see third parties encouraged further to develop power-user-oriented viewers and support applications for Second Life, while LL concentrates its own Viewer activities on making the early and average user experience more accessible. Remaining infrastructure failures – lag, asset servers, etc – need to continue to be addressed strongly.

Hand in hand with these requirements must go the introduction of a far more sturdy implementation of IP rights in-world including deeper levels of ownership metadata and protection, the lack of which tends increasingly to reduce the interest of users in investing time and effort into SL as their work is so easily pirated in the emerging multiversal environment.

There is an excellent business here for LL, and excellent business potential for corporate partners and individuals who wish to exploit virtual worlds – but listening more, rather than less, to long-standing users is likely to have the highest probability of producing positive results.

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The price for a single virtual region is about US$1,000, and a monthly maintenance cost of about US$300.

My first car cost a lot less than that, and I had a car to show for it. Linden Labs charges that much to rent time on a server and the consumer owns absolutely nothing.

How many people do you suppose can afford that sort of price structure? We're talking about people who must have that much extra disposable income, and these days, to have it during a recession.

Everyone else in Second Life (the vast majority) is a visitor, a squatter playing on the virtual property that the wealthy provide for them. Unenfranchised, they have no 'skin in the game', other than what they wear on the backs of their avatars, and they are completely at the mercy of the region owners who may or may not choose to let them play there.

When Second Life lowers it's cost structure so that the average person can afford to rent some server space and time, and have a region or two of their own without it costing more than a new BMW, maybe Second Life will take off and attract more users. Until then, it's a game for the wealthy.

The solution to this particular issue is to provide tailored and custom interface options. Provide a very simple interface with nice big visible buttons for the new user, and an option for them to select an alternative display. An intermediate user display, and an advanced user display. A builder's display would probably be much welcomed by those creating content. Allow the user to hide or display 'control bars', just like their browser does, so that they can customize the experience for the way they use the application.

It's past time for the technologists to presume that they know best how the end-user will used the application. Put the power of that choice in their hands, and let them walk, run, or fly, at their own pace.