Second Life Founder Stepping Down as CEO

By Geoff Duncan March 17, 2008

Second Life founder Philip Rosedale has announced his company is looking for a new CEO, although he’ll be staying on as chairman of the board and still be fulltime at Linden Labs.

“I will be 100 percent involved and full time at Linden Lab. Second Life is my life’s work, and I am not going anywhere!” Rosedale wrote in an announcement on the company’s blog.

Rosedale will take over as board chairman from Mitch Kapor, who co-founded Lotus. Kapor will continue to serve on Linden Labs’ board.

As Linden Labs grows, Rosedale sees the role of CEO as the person who hires the right people and helps the company increase its scale. Rosedale characterizes the CEO opening as possibly “the most interesting job in the technology world.” Rosedale says he will focus instead on his particular passions and skills: design and vision of Second Life. “I will focus on product strategy and vision, continuing to design the right kind of company, and being an effective communicator and evangelist about Second Life. As a community member, you will probably see more of me in-world.”

Linden Labs has not announced a timetable for the transition, and Rosedale expects to keep on at the CEO position during the company’s search.

Second Life is a 3-D virtual world where all the locales and content are created by residents. Users can “own” virtual land, buy and sell virtual goods, and (of course) endlessly modify and trick out their in-world avatars. Second Life is frequently cited as a prime example of the growing interest in virtual worlds, not just for entertainment and content creation, but for business functions, education, and arts.

Rosedale’s announcement is the second high-profile shfit at Linden Labs in recent months; Cory Onrejka, the company’s outspoken CTO, announced he was leaving the company last December.

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Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…

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