"Our fundamental focus right now is in simplifying the experience, and making it very welcome for new users to support our growth," Kingdon said. "That's the guiding principle for all our strategic initiatives."

Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon's avatar, M Linden.
(click for image gallery)

Going forward, Linden Lab plans to align itself to serve three target markets: Consumers, which is the market the service is best known for today; the enterprise, and education, Kingdon said. Within each market, Linden Lab will identify sub-markets, which Kingdon called "use cases," and focus individual business units on how the company can best serve those use cases. For example, one of the top use cases in the consumer market will be live music, and a top use case in the enterprise will be virtual learning.

The company will develop tools to help each of those use cases make better use of the platform. The company is just now launching an assessment of those markets, to determine their needs and how best to allocate internal resources and Linden Lab to meet those needs.

I found Kingdon's statements about target markets encouraging. Rosedale is prone to messianic statements about brining the whole world into Second Life. Kingdon's comments seemed much more focused and practical. "Philip has got that thousand-yard-stare visionary thing going on," said Wagner James Au, who writes about Second Life on his blog New World Notes and covers gaming for the blog GigaOm.

Still Too Unfocused?

A Second Life business owner who goes by the name "ArminasX Saiman" in SL said he's optimistic about the future of Second Life under Kingdon. "As a growing company, Linden Lab needs a visionary type like Philip, but when a company gets to be a certain size, you need someone more focused on the organization and making it reliable. And Philip is still hanging around the background to provide the vision," said Saiman, who declined to provide his real name. Saiman sells "particle effects" -- Second Life special effects involving smoke, steam, fog, and bubbles -- and works by day as a high-level IT manager for a multinational corporation.

But analyst Christian Renaud was skeptical, noting that those three target markets are quite broad and don't focus the company much -- consumer, education, and the enterprise cover most of the computing market.

"They need to have resources and create programs and target those markets," said Renaud, who heads the Technology Intelligence Group, a new company that advises enterprises on emerging technology. "Unless that really equates to driving resource allocations, it doesn't mean a lot."

In particular, Linden Lab needs to start paying more attention to its big customers. Prior to founding TIG this year, Renaud headed up Cisco Systems' Second Life effort. They have six islands and 1,000 employees in Second Life. But despite the size of the investment, Renaud said he found it difficult to get support from Linden Lab or find someone to talk to.