There seems to have been a slowdown in all the press for Second Life of late, so I guess it makes sense that The Economist has finally caught up as they now have an article titled “Living a Second Life” (Link).

In general it’s an “okay” article; however, while writing an entry about that article, I made an interesting discovery. While reading the article {which, btw, contains some errors}, I was pleasantly surprised to read about something for which I felt a little responsible:

To him that means treating every resident the same, whether it happens to be Toyota or “an 80-year-old woman from India.” Both will pay the same price for their acres; what they do with it is up to them.

Up until my series of Hotline questions regarding real brands entering Second Life, the understanding of most residents was that real brands/corporations were not permitted in SL. It took a fair amount of wordsmithing to get LL to say that, in fact, a corporation could purchase land and have a representative operate an inworld enterprise. Until then, there were no brands other than the pirated kinds (about which I was also raising issues – quite a bit of it being LL hypocrisy on the issue of trademark). Anyway, whether or not I actually influenced LL directly, I recall seeing other people link to my questions and the Linden answers that came from them in order to answer the questions of newbies who came after the avalanche of press painting Second Life as a moneymaking opportunity.

Now here’s the odd part: I cannot now find my questions and the “official” Linden answers on the forum. Fortunately I documented them in some previous entries (reLink 1, reLink 2). Thing is, if I search the forum – all of it – using my name and some keywords, I get nothing. For instance, go into Advanced Search, type in “guidelines” and my avatar name “Csven Concord”. You’ll get no returns from the Linden Lab Hotline (which is, afaik, now called Linden Lab Answers). Try “David Linden” and “advertise”. Nothing. Nothing at all.

That leaves me with the obvious question: Where are they? Were they removed? If so, why did Linden Lab remove those entries considering that the answers on the Hotline/Answers were supposedly provided as “official” guidance (some of you might recall I requested that the answers be “officially” documented but was told the Hotline was sufficient). Right now, it certainly seems as if Linden Lab is attempting to rewrite history. I wonder if they’ve told the residents. And if I’m correct, what is Linden Lab up to?