Is LL auctioning so many sims in a desperate attempt to cash before the collapse?

But would the owners of the new virtual world want our *primitive* stuff?

Seriously though, there is some nice stuff in SL. But I find that most of it is only good within the context of SL. I would like to think that a virtual world that manages to lure residents away will have moved on from primitives (including sculpties).

LL has announced a slowdown in new sim sales.

This seems to be exactly in line with their intention to get land prices to 6-8 per sm. Given LL's excellent record in the last 6 months on keeping the linden very stable, I don't see any reason why they shouldn't be able to keep land prices stable.

The OP is a bit off here in his dire predictions.

Because they're "Fair and Balanced" you mean?

Fox is gutter journalism at it's worst.

Sorry, this is totally off-topic, but can I point you at: , which is a proposal by the Arbor project aimed at reducing the Ad Farms.

Originally Posted by VooDoo Bamboo
So if that number has not changed how is it that all these summer people are gone? (Scratches head)

Bots?

Put me into the end-users that bought a whole sim catagory.

From one small business owner's perspective, I've noticed a marked upswing in sales in the past week. Don't know if kids are back in school or what. Definite improvement (4 fold!) over the summer's slow days.


I don't think the sky's falling just yet.

Its definitely an iffy situation. There are not really a whole lot of solid facts available. One thing is certain, the future of SL will depend on LL being a profitable company. We don't know exactly what their expenses are, but we do have some clues about their income. Let's look at one of their more lucrative income streams: L$ sales from Supply Linden. Unlike land or estates which require at least some amount of hardware investment and deployment, sales from Supply Linden by their nature (LL printing money) had a HUGE profit margin.

Last month (July) Supply Linden sold around 160 million L$. Those numbers have been roughly similar for the months before, generally going up. THIS month (August), however, a check look at the economic stats page shows Supply Linden has only sold 15 million L$ by the middle of the month. If that trend continues and Supply Linden sells another 15 million L$ by the month's end, that puts them about 120 million L$ short of what they were doing. That translates into about 450,000 U$ / month loss of revenue. Thats about 5.4 million / year in lost revenue if the trend remains similar. Since that income was mostly pure profit, it does seem they are experiencing some sort of financial pain.

I'm not going to speculate about SL demise or anything like that. I am just pointing out that according to Linden Lab's own published data, they seem to have lost a significant source of income. Add to that the fact they are almost certainly having to spend more on labor (and I'm sure legal counsel) in their gaming crackdown efforts and it raises a few more eyebrows.

Is SL going to die? Who knows? That requires speculation. Is LL experiencing a significant loss of revenue. Oh my yes. How will it impact the future of SL? I don't know, and I doubt anyone on these forums does either. I'd say the economic statistics are definitely something to keep an eye on though, and well, they aren't looking good.

It's the End of SL!!!

Again. :igh::

Angel.

If this is the end of SL, please sell me all your islands!

Not like I care, SL is Virtual Lego to me. I just have to pay out the arse because this Lego needs Primo servers to run.

Since the forums opened, there have always been those who say the end is near. It is funny, becuase how many times have they been wrong.


The actions as of late are NOWHERE near when they stopped paying out L$ Based on traffic. That effected far more land owners pockets then casinos.

And that FORBES video is freaking stupid. Notice it was not very professional and they actually took stabs at the general users of SL rather then discuss anything serious. Sex and Casino's are the only thing in SL?! I've been here 3 Years and I've spent all of maybe an hour total in a casino and a few minutes in a pure sex area. I know that rings true for most other SL players I know. RL and SL.

-edit-
That Forbes guy, Dave Ewald, is really just a WoW Player. He is no one special.

Good points and something I was watching, too. What I see: a 'new user' spending curve.

Essentially it goes a lot like this, for a paying user: starry-eyed spending on avatar and land for the first months, climbing like crazy as they are drawn in. Then a sort of cool-down, where the avatar is decked out, the alts are decked out, they are drowning in land and now a bit bored with their early acquisitions.

What I've seen, and this is VERY anecdotal, rough, and imprecise: the average person that spends significantly will spend maybe 500-1000 USD in the first 3-4 months, then shed some land and settle down to about 4096m of land by about the year mark across a 'main' and one-two alt characters, often maintaining a blend of mainland and private estate land.

Depending on demographics it may be double or triple, landwise, or even an entire sim. But that's forum people, the wealthy, and hardcore enthusiasts - not everybody.

So... is the grid doomed? Not really. I think we see a 'depression' insofar as we aren't growing boundlessly any more, and coming down to sustainable economic spending levels across the general population.

Much like a python eating a pig the big boom is settling, but it won't kill us to not be constantly gorging.

I see a boomlet coming from about late October through winter holidays, with January being the highest sustained concurrency - possibly defining what concurrency will be for 2008. With spring still strong, and a somewhat stable summer much like this one. We'll know if I'm right or not about the winter boomlet by the end of January or so.

Also realise, this is a managed economy, even though we are doing the spending. LindeX sales by Supply Linden are determined by sources and sinks in the economy, and you can bet that they will 'pull the levers' as needed to maintain a gently positive $L sales situation for Supply Linden. Money supply and 'land printing' figure heavily into the equation.

There are also a lot of good fundamentals that we can't see. The big one is user retention/conversion - we have a lot more *hooked* users sticking around and part of the metaverse this year than last. These are the people who, Atlas-like, hold up the metaverse on their shoulders.

I'd say the big story isn't how overblown and overhyped the metaverse has been in 2007, or its financials, but how well known it has become by Joe Average in the general populace, and how it is now becoming a household concept.

We don't judge email or the web by financial yardsticks, really, but they are critical components of the whole *in concept*. It doesn't matter too much how many billion websites or email addresses are created, compared to the world 'getting the idea' that such things are extensions and options for every single one of us.

2007 is the year that cyberspace became a real destination for the common man.

I nipped out to work and got back not long ago; when I left the end was nigh.

Has it been and I missed it?

Bravo! Well said.

Yes, but it turned out to have all been a dream and we're still alive and signed on for the next season of "Metaverse."

Strife! Where are you and your pithy comments??? Shut it down, pleeeeease?

After weekend..........hehehhehe

It might be useful to keep an eye on all the economic statistics, not just Supply Linden.

For example, we do know that over the past month LL sold more than 200 new mainland sims. Nevermind the auction price of those sims; the sale of sims represents one-time revenue and we can assume much of it is offset by the costs of purchasing and installing servers. That's up to 13.1M m2 of new land earning tier this month that we didn't have last month--and that tier will keep rolling in every month for the foreseeable future.

What tier is that? At least US$39,000 per month, assuming all 200 sims are retained by the original buyers; more likely, though, they'll divide up their sims that first month and re-sell the parcels. If the average auction winner divides his sim into four and resells to mini-barons who further divide each 1/4 sim into parcels of 4,096m2 each and sell those to end users, we're looking at US$39,000+US$60,000+US$80,000=US$179,000 in new tier that first month. The more times those parcels change hands, and the smaller sizes they are divided into, the more tier LL earns each month. And that's on top of the existing monthly tier income LL receives from all the rest of the mainland. And that's on top of the monthly tier LL receives from private islands.

It would be stupid for LL to rely on an ever-increasing (or even stable) demand for new L$ each month--and, judging by their published statements, they're not counting on that. According to what they say, they're actually PLANNING for the growth of SL to slow down to the point that, far from selling L$, LL will have to take measures to remove L$ from the economy. But no worries--that tier will still keep rolling in, month after month, even with a static population (where the number of new users is equal to the number of older users who quit).

http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/08/14/rates-of-mainland-supply/

This forum isn't for general discussion; there are many Resident Sites where this discussion is appropriate — Resident Answers is for Resident-to-Resident help. I'll close this thread...