So what do the 200 Linden Devs do?

Linden Lab Hires Big Spaceship to Improve "First Hour Experiences"

Linden Lab announced today that it had hired the interactive design agency Big Spaceship "to dramatically simplify the sign-up stage, ease users’ introduction into Second Life, and quickly connect people to relevant content and experiences in Second Life." The challenge of bringing new users into Second Life has been observed for some time, and when CEO Mark Kingdon first announced the addition of third-party support, he noted that a project to redesign the "first hour experience" began shortly after he took over. The focus of the project will be on Second Life's registration through the Web and virtual world Viewer and users' initial experience in-world. Big Spaceship will not, though, be officially creating content inside of Second Life.

"Big Spaceship will be working with internal teams at Linden Lab to research, design, prototype and test web sites and user interfaces that dramatically lower the learning curve for experiencing Second Life," explains the Linden blog. "Big Spaceship will employ a user-centered design methodology to develop innovative solutions for streamlining the complexity of Second Life without limiting the freedom and expressiveness that makes Second Life so powerful for so many people."