Statistics point to improving SL economy

Although LL are not publishing the economic stats they are still being created and can still be accessed. I have a backup here: http://ninjaland.net/data/

Many pointers are indicating that the economy has been on the up in 2009.

More people are running profitable businesses in SL.

Users with positive monthly L$ income
February 65,809
January 62,929
December 59,422
http://ninjaland.net/tools/stats/?index=13


There is less land on the market, i.e. any that was previously for sale has been bought up. Although maybe this includes private estates in which case the figure may just be a result of sims shutting down since there are definitely less sims now than there were in December.

Total square meters for sale
2009-02-14 21,559,600
2009-01-15 22,141,300
2008-12-15 24,132,200
http://ninjaland.net/tools/stats/?index=19


There are more and more people logging in. Everyone knows this just from the record breaking concurrency numbers we get every weekend.

Monthly peak of Number of users logged in in last 7 days (i.e. biggest day of the month)
2009-02-05 571,631
2009-01-31 556,269
2008-12-08 534,505
http://ninjaland.net/tools/stats/?index=32

And they're bringing with them even more cash so we know for sure it's not all traffic bots.

Total supply of money in the grid, i.e. the sum of everyone's L$ balance
2009-02-14 5,609,720,000
2009-01-15 5,511,190,000
2008-12-15 5,375,480,000
http://ninjaland.net/tools/stats/?index=28

Supply of L$ is up by 300,000,000 yet sinks is pretty flat, only up 3,000,000.
2009-02-14 170,163,000
2009-01-15 163,091,000
2008-12-15 167,756,000
http://ninjaland.net/tools/stats/?index=24

And sources are all over the place but the vast majority of this number is from Supply Linden selling L$ on the LindeX so it's not give away money it's money that someone wanted and paid for.
2009-02-14 245,202,000
2009-01-15 336,783,000
2008-12-15 204,180,000
2008-11-16 133,106,000

And despite all that extra money people have been buying the exchange rate is still down and the L$ is worth more than it has been in years.

Yeah OK so this is mostly just a big ad for my website but I see all this positive data and want to share it. I think we could see a nice gradual improvement in the SL economy over the next year. Things are looking up.

I'm having trouble parsing this. Do you mean despite all the extra Lindens? Or despite all the extra money that people have been spending to buy Lindens?

I don't think there's any 'despite' about it. More people means more demand. The L$ is going to increase in value unless Supply Linden sells enough to meet or exceed that demand. Clearly Supply Linden is selling just enough to allow it to increase in value slowly.

I suggest avoiding the phrasing "exchange rate is up or down", because it's confusing to newcomers. When the number moves down (i.e. from 270 to 269), it means the L$ has actually moved up in value.

I guess I meant "despite all the extra selling by Supply Linden" I suppose it's better not to assign meaning to the words that I write! Also, shortly after I wrote that post my website exploded so no-one gets to see my pretty graphs anymore.

Elanthius based on what you see, do you think this is:

a) a nice upturn based upon its own factors

b) recovery from the incredible crater that the openspace mess caused a few months ago?

There was a *huge* loss of confidence in Nov/Dec and I am wondering if new people with no memory of it are starting to redefine the market.

One thing I have always wondered: how old are the avatars that are spending the most money? Two months old? Six? Maybe some of that can be teased out of your biz data.

I'm thinking b) of Desmond's questions. My Feb 2009 matched my Feb 2008 within mere dollars. Jan 09 was down from Jan 08 by about 6% for me.

I think we are recovering from the OS mess and I'd also bet it is newer accounts spending.

I also think b) but also a smidgen of new people shaping the market. And with more businesses active, a further dilution of the lower end of the clothing market, since most of those new businesses will likely be clothing.

I wonder if people have the memory of the massive increase in land area before the openspace mess? The land mass increased by around 40% in about two months. So with this current reduction, it's about a wash...

I think the upturn is due to the higher concurrency numbers due to the improved tech.