How much are the lindens pocketing?

I am kind of curious to know what kind of profit linden labs turns, i am sure it is a nice profit but does anyone have anything halfway decent as far as statistics?

The forum says there is 114k (something around there) members, so i just multiplyed that by 9.99 and came up with 1,146,752.00 thats a nice chunk of change and thats just off of account creation. Is my theory incorrect?

all trial accounts are also members of the forum

yeah!

do they get perm membership to the forums? And if so how long after there account expires do they lose there membership to the forum?

they last forever!

these have to be trial accounts responding considering you guys only have 1-2 post.

maybe we just like to lurk

what did you need? you imed me a few days ago saying that you needed to speak with me.. im me in world if you do.

i haven't seen dusk in world since january

Not knowing what was put out for startup costs it is quite possible that LL hasn't made a profit yet.

Everyone says with the amount of business that Amazon.com does they have to be rolling in it but as of last year I beleieve they had yet to realize profit.

You're right, Talen. In a recent case study, me and my class studied how amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com and other type of tech capital have yet to gain their return, where the company withstands some considerable losses just because they believe that in the modestly near future, income will stagger due to exponential consumption growth... I dunno if that's the case with LL, but sometimes there are things we just don't see in some buisness cases

Edit: And we all do know what are the costs of technology... and labor costs... If someone's going to be behind those servers 24/7, I hope he is well paid and has a good dental plan!!

Well... in November they were clearly still pretty shaky, but since 1.3 they've finally found a sustainable business model. Not clear whether they're repaying their VC yet (probably a little), but they have enough money around to start thinking about investing in the future, which is a good sign.

The main danger at this point is that they arrived at a sustainable business model more by chance than design. Throw enough mud and it sticks. What that means is there could be a tendency to cling unquestioningly to the current model - and not to innovate - so they could find themselves replaced by other, younger start-ups.

Azelda

this is proving to be quite interesting! i would have never thought that amazon isnt turning over millions upon millions of dollars!

I saw an interview with Amazons owner a few years ago when they were just getting ready to move to new warehouse space for the second time and they have again since. He said it would take in his estimation at least four years before they were to realize profit and that was barring more expansion. The next year they added music and movies to the lineup. Even so they have very solid support and backing. The owners thoughts were ...as long as the employees, bills, and loans were being paid we will continue to expand profit or not.

talen do you know where i can find more information on this? for some odd reason this intrest me i guess its because i always pictured the company makeing so much money they have issues tabulating it.

Can someone summarize for the ignorant noobs what is LL's biz model that now finally works? Is it the monthly accounts and tiered land use fees?

I'm just curious - personally I'm still amazed SL is possible at the price!

The interview I saw a couple years ago on sity minuts...I would just googele Amazon profit forecastt or look for something on the owner.

i wish the lindens would post information about there company. I am really interested to see what kind of turn over they experiance.

Before version 1.2, everyone paid into the system the exact same amount -- 14.95. That was regardless of how much land you owned.

The result was one person able to snag an entire sim for 15 bucks a month while everyone else could barely scratch together a couple hundred meters.

BAck then, prims also were'nt tied to land, so if you had a 16 meter plot, you could build up to the max number of prims allowed in the entire simulator... really made for some colorful neighbor arguments.

As for if they're making money... the lindens, in various interviews (philip and robin) have said they're making money, and consistently philip keeps saying that "money isn't a concern" whenever they expand.

However, my (crude) numbers as to whether or not they're making money points to "no", or "barely". That's assuming that they get bandwidth for pennies per terabyte a month, and that their server costs are negligible.

Regardless, my guess is they have a ton of "angel" investors... folks who talked to philip, liked his idea, and wrote him a blank check.

The genius of SL is it will get cheaper to run as time goes on, if it all "goes according to plan"; once SL gives people the ability to license the server software for their own boxes, the income will come flowing in like water. Also as commodity parts for servers get cheaper, bandwidth becomes even more ubiquitious, etc the same servers will be running on less money per month.

BEsides, the sheer optimism coming out of Linden Lab every day seems to point to a company that's a) good to work for, and b) doing something right money-wise.

LF

You can also check their stock info on the web... though I don't remember the initials right now, but it's not too hard to look up (i'm a little lazy.. lol)

Being small and in a specialized field I would bet their turnover is slim to none. When something like this starts it usually starts small and the people become tight knit like a family.

Yea.. maybe when (and if) they go public, we'll get much clearer numbers regarding their performance!

one day in beta i was witness to buddies james aka linden and philip chatting about a potential investors meeting in washington.

if SL is going to "take over the world" it could have the backing of some of the same insitutions that were backing arpanet.

I am unable to find them in any listing.

I Agree with you Lordfly. Me working on telecom industry, I can surely tell you that some projects profit only after 3 ~ 5 years... and we're talking services like broadband, carrier, etc where you sell to companies bound by contract (low risk) plus the prices are high...