LindenLabs Corporate Migrates; but why can’t the Forums?

Lewis Nerd wrote regarding Linden migrating their corporate blog to WordPress.com:

Interesting.

You pay a third party site to run a blog for you – but wouldn’t do that with the forums.

The problem is the same – you don’t have the time or the inclination
to do either properly – so why didn’t you just save the forums – as
many wanted, indicated by prop 1781 which was ignored, and the various
other threads on the subject?

I’m still waiting for Philips response after the recent Town Hall on this subject too.

Lewis

Lewis, from my experience with other companies a corporate blog is a much easier way to get information out to customers and potential new customers. One of the main reason this is true is because current relevant news and press releases can be displayed directly on the frontpage. Within a web forum users would have to dig for the same information. This can be troublesome, especially if you are not familiar with the forum layout or how to locate the news.

Taking the blog off of Linden’s server and putting it on wordpress.com is a wise move. Everytime SecondLife is offline the website inadvertently suffers from a type of DOS attack that isn’t intentional. Too many users trying to use the website and then the web forums to find out information caused them to go down. What makes wordpress.com different? I’m not sure about their servers and structure – but I’m pretty sure they have the resources to keep the page open and probably have the ability to reallocate bandwidth during the heavy usage times.

I was under the impression that the reason Linden started closing the forums was because they felt that the residents could do a much better job self governing and operating their own sites. Users started to migrate to other locations even prior to the announcement. While I agree that it was wonderful to have a single location to go to, I could understand why Linden would want to downplay the forums and allow Liaisons and Helpers to spend more time answering questions in the SL world and less time making sure people are following forum rules. Since the switchover I’ve encountered more Lindens in world – perhaps its just a coincidence, or maybe it’s something more.