Temporal Mitra is a semi retired entrepreneur in his late forties in real life. In Second Life, he's coming close to making enough money to quit his day job entirely. Together with lead coder Bopete Yossarian, he runs Temporal Industries, a SL business making money in adult content, gadgets and tools for ordinary folk, ranging from terraformers to tip jars. With over 40 businesses in operation within Second Life, and a seat on the SL better business bureau, Temporal Mitra is one of SL's business elite -- And he has plans to "change the face of Second Life forever"
Temporal tells me he considers himself only a mediocre coder, his stock and trade is a production line of ideas. He and Bopete met at a scripters group where he was lamenting the lack of reliable programmers in Second Life, and to talk to them both it's clear that they're good friends and that their skill sets compliment each others. Temporal is an virtual entrepreneur with a never ending stream of ideas for new gadgets, toys and businesses in the 3D world. Bopete's job is to turn those ideas into reality. The two joke that they're turning out more gadgets than they have time to properly market, but it seems true. There are dozens of scripts, HUDs and tools just within the stores I visited and, from what they tell me, a whole bunch more in the pipeline.
One of Temporal Inc's current projects is a plan to "compete with the linden classifieds system" by providing residents with a HUD (a graphical piece of software that attaches to your viewer screen) similar to the Meta Mart shopping HUD I wrote about yesterday, but with the added incentive for people to wear the HUD of paying them. Paying people to watch ads is not a new idea, and historically it's one that has failed time and time again (I can't think of a recent example, but can you name a successful one?) but Temporal and Bopete, pictured right, are supremely confident in the new product. There are thousands of people earning small amounts of Linden dollars by "camping" on virtual property to raise the traffic ranking of businesses within Second Life, and Temporal Inc plan to give these residents a new way to earn money: By wearing the advertising HUD. Their ambition is replace the built in Linden classifieds system, and put an end to the practice of camping. I can't say I share their confidence, but it is an interesting concept, and I'm not inclined to write it off just yet.
Sex Sells
So where are Temporal Inc making the most money? Sex of course. Adult content is still the biggest earner in SL and Temporal and Bopete make literally dozens of sex objects (furniture with preprogrammed positions and animations for example), gadgets, HUDs and toys. Their most popular gadget, and the single item responsible for the most income, is the Escort HUD that was developed to help SL escorts ply their trade. Among other things, the HUD allows escorts to scan nearby residents for payment info. They can see at a glance who has set up a credit card with Linden Lab, and thus, better qualify prospective clients. Just reading the list of features in an education in itself.
Sex does indeed sell, and at L$1000 a pop, the escort HUD sells up to 20 units a day. Currently that's around $4 each. I'd thought not to cover the adult industry in SL on the Metaversed blog, but though you shouldn't expect a great deal of it, it does seem an unavoidable aspect of technology within the Metaverse, and as in other mediums, it's driving innovation here as well, with more effort and resources being poured into adult related content and tech than any other area.
