Where are we headed?- The latest Blog
http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/07/08/second-life-virtual-world-expands-35-in-q2/#comments
>>>>>>>>>
Second Life Virtual World Expands 44% in Q2
“Because land represents nearly 8x more revenue to us than premium accounts, our focus has been on the launching of new land products rather than on enhancing the premium subscription.”
.....
Q Linden Says:
July 8th, 2008 at 12:39 PM
@1: Ann, the “all hands on deck” mentality might help us to raise the glass ceiling, but it doesn’t break it. Breaking the glass ceiling on concurrency requires the sorts of architectural changes that the Open Grid Protocol (OGP) and the Architecture Working Group (AWG) are contemplating.
<<<<
So:
60,000 concurrency is the limit while a new architecture is being “contemplated”.
LL want to make more money by selling more land.
Who will buy it? We’ve peak concurrency. Maybe they can raise the glass ceiling a fraction, but we’ve hit it.
If nobody buys new land, then LL can only increase revenue by raising tier.
If people abandon land, LL need to raise tier again.
The amount of Yellow on the map grows day to day.
Protected waterfront is sitting unsold – even at 15/m.
Welcome to the Second Life Forums Archive
These forums are CLOSED. Please visit the new forums HERE
Where are we headed?- The latest Blog |
|
|
Sling Trebuchet
Deleted User
Join date: 20 Jan 2007
Posts: 4,548
|
07-09-2008 04:14
_____________________
Maggie: We give our residents a lot of tools, to build, create, and manage their lands and objects. That flexibility also requires people to exercise judgment about when things should be used.
http://www.ace-exchange.com/home/story/BDVR/589 |
|
Dekka Raymaker
thinking very hard
Join date: 4 Feb 2007
Posts: 3,898
|
07-09-2008 04:24
"Second Life Virtual World Expands 44% in Q2"
So avatars are getting fatter, a stricter diet regime? _____________________
|
|
Dekka Raymaker
thinking very hard
Join date: 4 Feb 2007
Posts: 3,898
|
07-09-2008 04:27
Seriously, aren't we the residents always in a 'wait and see' position, even when a Linden drops a hint, it becomes a carrot on a stick, always just hovering around, but never close enough to bite. Then something totally unexpected happens, no hint given about it at all, it's like one should suspect that hints are rather 'red herrings' rather than carrots and that LL has a rule never to hint at 'golden eggs'.
Many metaphors in that or what? LOL  _____________________
|
|
Ceka Cianci
SuperPremiumExcaliburAcc#
Join date: 31 Jul 2006
Posts: 4,489
|
07-09-2008 05:05
they should give some good reasons to be premium and maybe those would go back up..
making more land is like printing more money in a bad economy. prices go up worth goes down and before you know it they won't have a 60,000 online problem anymore.. it's a nice place to visit but i'm not taking it serious anymore..if these hints are true then it is driving to only have people with bigger pocket books owning land.. if tier goes up a dime they can have mine back and my premium account as well.. *yawns* _____________________
|
|
Sling Trebuchet
Deleted User
Join date: 20 Jan 2007
Posts: 4,548
|
07-09-2008 05:36
they should give some good reasons to be premium and maybe those would go back up.. making more land is like printing more money in a bad economy. prices go up worth goes down and before you know it they won't have a 60,000 online problem anymore.. it's a nice place to visit but i'm not taking it serious anymore..if these hints are true then it is driving to only have people with bigger pocket books owning land.. if tier goes up a dime they can have mine back and my premium account as well.. *yawns* That's the sort of view I'm taking. It appears that a fixed (or non-increasing) number of people would have to spend more to keep the show on the road. They would have to do that in a world that becomes increasingly crippled and unreliable as LL squeeze the last few drops of concurrency out of it. I have to say that I suffered a crisis of confidence while watching Torley's video of the Mitch Kapor speech. It was so laggy and borky - and it was a showpiece. I'll just play with my land for as long as I can. I have enough that I can dump some and still have a goodly number of prims left I don't see any vision coming out of LL. _____________________
Maggie: We give our residents a lot of tools, to build, create, and manage their lands and objects. That flexibility also requires people to exercise judgment about when things should be used.
http://www.ace-exchange.com/home/story/BDVR/589 |
|
Rocky Rutabaga
isn't wearing underwear™
Join date: 14 Apr 2006
Posts: 291
|
07-09-2008 05:56
Where are we headed? The amount of Yellow on the map grows day to day. Protected waterfront is sitting unsold – even at 15/m. Retaining customers should be LLs primary mission, not selling sims. The strategies and tactics to accomplish it are easy, do not require US$ outlays and would breathe life into this place. I'd be happy to avail my relationship marketing skills to the Lindens, but then I'm sure there are dozens more here who have even better ideas and would donate their talents if asked. People like me, who have stuck with SL for quite awhile and are now teetering on the edge of leaving (and I have good friends who are on the same teeter board) only need a parity competitor, a major loss of inventory or another lagtastic SLbirthday celebration to tip us out of here. _____________________
|
|
Conifer Dada
Hiya m'dooks!
Join date: 6 Oct 2006
Posts: 3,716
|
07-09-2008 06:06
The cost of a Premium account is less than the annual subscription to many a monthly magazine. It's NOT expensive - and you get most of that money back in L$ anyway.
You get a tier-free 512 sq metres, which is enough for a basic home though it's nice to have a bit more land, of course, to indulge your creativity. Even if you don't want to pay for SL you can still come and join in the experience on a permanent basis. _____________________
|
|
Brenda Connolly
Un United Avatar
Join date: 10 Jan 2007
Posts: 25,000
|
07-09-2008 06:21
It's not the cost per se, it's what that cost returns to you. I have no Interest in owning land, especially mainland, nor do the Premium Support options have much relevance to me. I paid my Premium monthly, as I don't committ to things like SL on any long term basis, the $300L a week is a pittance. I did this for an entire year before downgrading. I used to feel it was doing my part to help SL continue, but no more. The stabilty and other issues coupled with LL's General Business incompetence, along with less time spent in world made me change my attitude.
I'm actually one who thinks everyone should pay LL a little something to use SL, after a trial period, be it a one time sign up, or a small monthly fee, that can go higher as incentives are added. But if LL wants to give it away for free, as they struggle to keep in running, that's their problem. _____________________
Don't you ever try to look behind my eyes. You don't want to know what they have seen.
http://brenda-connolly.blogspot.com |
|
Raudf Fox
(ra-ow-th)
Join date: 25 Feb 2005
Posts: 5,119
|
07-09-2008 06:46
Yes, there are times I wish LL hadn't opened the floodgates. I felt they should have offered more payment methods and if they didn't charge the initial 9.95 fee, then at least require payment info on the accounts.
I also think that when a certain concurrency is hit, bots should get logged off to make room for actual users. Period. Bots should go when the concurrency hits 50k, maybe less. _____________________
DiamonX Studios, the place of the Victorian Times series of gowns and dresses - Located at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Fushida/224/176
Want more attachment points for your avatar's wearing pleasure? Then please vote for https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1065? |
|
Victorria Paine
Sleepless in Wherever
Join date: 13 Jul 2007
Posts: 1,110
|
07-09-2008 06:57
It's kind of a catch 22 for LL.
The business model that evolved was based on a free access model (unlike other "games" which generally are 100% pay-to-play), with a combination of subs and land to make money. As things developed along, people grew accustomed to *not* paying a monthly fee ... and that mentality took hold. The fact that people can rent anywhere and "own" island parcels all without paying a subscription just really waters down the incentive to subscribe, even for the relatively more committed SL residents who want to rent and own land (as compared with the much larger, transient group which is happy to flit about without any digs of their own). As a result of this, LL became addicted to land sales as its main source of revenue. There just wasn't enough "bang for the buck" to incentivize people to sign up for premium. Instead, most of the most committed SL residents opted for private islands, which had admittedly become the main focus of SL in terms of the total real estate out there. So for LL to try to introduce mandatory subscription fees at this stage would be a bit too late in the game. Way too many people have become used to "free access" (in terms of no subscription required) for LL to switch the program now. LL has become addicted to land sales and tier/island payments as its main revenue stream. It's risky, because this bases the revenue stream of the entire enterprise on the backs of a relatively small % of the user base ... but the alternative of making SL a pay to play experience would simply drastically reduce the user base. Now some of us may think that is a good thing, but LL probably disagrees. |
|
Qie Niangao
Coin-operated
Join date: 24 May 2006
Posts: 7,138
|
07-09-2008 07:07
Q's reply in the comments gives us something about which to muse. Reading between the lines and speculating wildly, I'd venture that our present concurrency plateau has resulted in splitting Engineering's attention between two parallel efforts to gain scalability: fixing the architectural limits of the central database, and scaling to multiple "grids" (which may or may not have anything to do with OpenSim, initially).
With the current central database architecture, they're pretty much up against a brick wall: they've already fragmented the data store, probably about optimally by now. They've pushed the hardware upgrade path about as far as it can go. And even if it didn't have a prohibitively long development cycle, porting to another engine buys them nothing: Oracle would have at best a few percent better performance, and DB2 on *NIX would be substantially worse (benchmarks notwithstanding; been there, done that, got the t-shirt from both vendors' best contract techies). So they now just have to keep pulling stuff out of the central DB, and figure out ways to further distribute the load across multiple, independent engines (not just clustered stores). And I'm betting that nobody is supplying a completion timeline in which Engineering management has confidence. So, Plan B: scale by leveraging the OGP and AWG efforts, to make possible multiple "Grids" running the current, closed LL servers--also building on the earlier spin-off of the IBM sub-grid. Exactly how limiting this would be for within-LL multi-grids is not clear to me. There's no requirement in this case to protect IP across such grids--they're just a redistribution of LL's current load and growth. Same with identity, money, etc. But there'd have to be a fat transaction pipe of some sort to get all that information between grids--else the whole central database would end up replicated on each grid, defeating the whole purpose. If Plan B is even on the drawing board--if there is such a race--it's interesting to speculate what the effects would be to LL's business strategy, depending which development effort wins the race. _____________________
Archived for Your Protection
|
|
Rocky Rutabaga
isn't wearing underwear™
Join date: 14 Apr 2006
Posts: 291
|
07-09-2008 08:43
Q's reply in the comments gives us something about which to muse. Reading between the lines and speculating wildly, I'd venture that our present concurrency plateau has resulted in splitting Engineering's attention between two parallel efforts to gain scalability: fixing the architectural limits of the central database, and scaling to multiple "grids" (which may or may not have anything to do with OpenSim, initially). With the current central database architecture, they're pretty much up against a brick wall: they've already fragmented the data store, probably about optimally by now. They've pushed the hardware upgrade path about as far as it can go. And even if it didn't have a prohibitively long development cycle, porting to another engine buys them nothing: Oracle would have at best a few percent better performance, and DB2 on *NIX would be substantially worse (benchmarks notwithstanding; been there, done that, got the t-shirt from both vendors' best contract techies). So they now just have to keep pulling stuff out of the central DB, and figure out ways to further distribute the load across multiple, independent engines (not just clustered stores). And I'm betting that nobody is supplying a completion timeline in which Engineering management has confidence. So, Plan B: scale by leveraging the OGP and AWG efforts, to make possible multiple "Grids" running the current, closed LL servers--also building on the earlier spin-off of the IBM sub-grid. Exactly how limiting this would be for within-LL multi-grids is not clear to me. There's no requirement in this case to protect IP across such grids--they're just a redistribution of LL's current load and growth. Same with identity, money, etc. But there'd have to be a fat transaction pipe of some sort to get all that information between grids--else the whole central database would end up replicated on each grid, defeating the whole purpose. If Plan B is even on the drawing board--if there is such a race--it's interesting to speculate what the effects would be to LL's business strategy, depending which development effort wins the race.  This is part of LL's problem, too. They spend mucho time and talent on tech issues and they still lose us. I'll bet a billion $Ls the lack of cutomer retention is not because of DB2, AWG, WTF or any other impressive acronym. Technical problems certainly must be addressed, but are not the deal breakers for heavy users like myself. Linden Labs still THINKS it sells technology. It don't. Now, if only the Lindens understood what it is they DO sell. Pixar, Nintendo and Apple (all with lots of techno stuff under their hoods) understand what they sell. Maybe someday, soon, LL will too.I feel the deja vu of the classic marketing story of how the railroads crumbled because they thought they sold trains when they really sold transportation. Also, I remember way back in the olden days when 6,000 AVs on SL at the same time blew it apart, so I'm sure they can get beyond 66,000. And is it me, or are we not reaching 60,000 online anymore? I see 50,000+ on a busy Sunday when there used to be 60,000+. _____________________
|
|
Qie Niangao
Coin-operated
Join date: 24 May 2006
Posts: 7,138
|
07-09-2008 09:09
Sorry for the technobabble. Good point.
 But the reason technology is a hot topic right now is that the grid really is max'd out. They can keep hanging more sims on the network (and have been), but SL simply cannot grow concurrency until something is fixed (the central database, most urgently). They've been scrambling to try to fix it for months now--and we've been stuck at about 64K peak concurrency for several months, too. (There's a graph floating around somewhere.)It's not that the problem can't be solved, but it hasn't been solved yet. And the comment by Q suggests that they may be trying a very different tack for a solution, and one that could have interesting implications for LL's long-term business strategy. _____________________
Archived for Your Protection
|
|
Sling Trebuchet
Deleted User
Join date: 20 Jan 2007
Posts: 4,548
|
07-09-2008 09:33
.......... So, Plan B: scale by leveraging the OGP and AWG efforts, to make possible multiple "Grids" running the current, closed LL servers--also building on the earlier spin-off of the IBM sub-grid. Exactly how limiting this would be for within-LL multi-grids is not clear to me. There's no requirement in this case to protect IP across such grids--they're just a redistribution of LL's current load and growth. Same with identity, money, etc. But there'd have to be a fat transaction pipe of some sort to get all that information between grids--else the whole central database would end up replicated on each grid, defeating the whole purpose. If Plan B is even on the drawing board--if there is such a race--it's interesting to speculate what the effects would be to LL's business strategy, depending which development effort wins the race. A Plan.B of completely *disconnected* parallel SLs would seem to be the only way in which LL could continue to grow in the short.medium(?) term. Forget about OGP/AWG. THey won't be delivering next week, month or maybe even yesr. BUT: Make Second Second Life a paid subscription only. Exchange no user data between SL and SSL apart from the database of Avatar names and passwords. This would be to preserve uniqueness of names come the day that the grids could be merged. Ditto for UUID numbers in use You want to log in to SSL? It's got your username and password, but without a SSL subscription, you can't get in. Ditto for the SSLer who wants to access SL. It is convenient for merchants that all residents of a set of virtual worlds could potentially buy their products. But that's just convenience. It's not a god-given right or an absolute necessity. If people want to sell/distribute virtual goods in both SL and SSL then they can recreate them there. There IS a problem in that however. So many items use third-party resources. How could they be rebuilt? Could the 'stuff' of an account be brought into the parallel world as required? (with all the permissions in force in the other world) - For a fee? Something like Svarga might only exist in one of many worlds. What percentage of residents have visited Svarga? Ditto for other headline builds. Other than that there is not a good reason to link SL and SSL. SL is huge. We're never going to meet each other. We're never going to visit but a fraction of the content. Would it *really* matter if there was this other SL to which we could not TP? For the majority of people, I don't believe that it would matter at all. SSL might be a bit bleak to begin with but I think it might be an exciting frontier. _____________________
Maggie: We give our residents a lot of tools, to build, create, and manage their lands and objects. That flexibility also requires people to exercise judgment about when things should be used.
http://www.ace-exchange.com/home/story/BDVR/589 |
|
Isablan Neva
Mystic
Join date: 27 Nov 2004
Posts: 2,907
|
07-09-2008 09:45
To be blunt, they could alleviate some of the strain by just removing traffic entirely and making the final move on that removal of Popular Places. With those gone, the incentive to run traffic bots is eliminated and concurrency drops by 10% -- enough to stabilize things and allow for some growth while they get off the pot about architecture changes....
_____________________
 http://slurl.com/secondlife/TheBotanicalGardens/207/30/420/ |
|
Amity Slade
Registered User
Join date: 14 Feb 2007
Posts: 2,183
|
07-09-2008 10:06
Linden Lab has had poor management for years, and continues to have poor management.
Instead of spending resources on developing higher concurrency, Linden Lab has spent resources on projects like Windlight. This is what happens when management does not direct projects, but just allows staff to select their favorites. Financially, lack of investment capital has probably been Linden Lab's bigger financial problem. They have been trying to be great technology innovators on a shoestring budget. If Second Life has true growth potential, then its current income constraints should not be a barrier to development. There should be a line of investors ready to pump in capital for future returns on the growth. I don't know much about the inner workings of Linden Labs. But the combination of its relatively good press, with the seeming lack of investors available, hints to me that there probably isn't a lot of future growth potential in Second Life. And by the way, I don't think requiring payment for access to Second Life is going to produce a huge boost in revenue. My guess is that people grab up the free Basic accounts because they are exactly the right price. When you ask the Basic residents to start shelling out ten bucks a month, they aren't going to do it automatically. They are going to have to consider on what else they spend ten bucks a month, and decide if they want to give that up. |
|
Ciaran Laval
Mostly Harmless
Join date: 11 Mar 2007
Posts: 7,951
|
07-09-2008 10:08
Not long before the current pause in the release of land, mainland sims were going to auction and receiving no bids, that right there was an indication that things weren't well in the land market.
Mainland prices really aren't recovering, they're low and yet all those who call for cheaper land, the premium memberships are still heading downward. As the grid struggles at 60,000 + there's not really that much room for expansion, so everything is going to be stretched very thinly, which has the potential to snap. |
|
Czari Zenovka
I've Had it With "PC"!
Join date: 3 May 2007
Posts: 3,688
|
07-09-2008 10:51
they should give some good reasons to be premium and maybe those would go back up.. making more land is like printing more money in a bad economy. prices go up worth goes down and before you know it they won't have a 60,000 online problem anymore.. it's a nice place to visit but i'm not taking it serious anymore..if these hints are true then it is driving to only have people with bigger pocket books owning land.. if tier goes up a dime they can have mine back and my premium account as well.. *yawns* I'm with you Ceka. I was really appalled at the stance LL took on Premium Memberships not being as important to them as selling land. In that case...tier goes up....I sell my land...and become a vagabond. ~ ~ ~ Maybe it's because I've had this awful flu for the last few days but everything is getting on my last nerve...including LL. |
|
Cherry Czervik
Came To Her Senses
Join date: 18 Feb 2006
Posts: 3,680
|
07-09-2008 10:57
they should give some good reasons to be premium and maybe those would go back up.. making more land is like printing more money in a bad economy. prices go up worth goes down and before you know it they won't have a 60,000 online problem anymore.. it's a nice place to visit but i'm not taking it serious anymore..if these hints are true then it is driving to only have people with bigger pocket books owning land.. if tier goes up a dime they can have mine back and my premium account as well.. *yawns* Your comparison with hyperinflation saddens me, for it has the ring of truth to it. I'm still premium. I'm kicking myself for buying land, however cheap. _____________________
To exchange power is sublime. To steal from another ... well, what goes around comes around.
|
|
Cherry Czervik
Came To Her Senses
Join date: 18 Feb 2006
Posts: 3,680
|
07-09-2008 10:58
Not long before the current pause in the release of land, mainland sims were going to auction and receiving no bids, that right there was an indication that things weren't well in the land market. Mainland prices really aren't recovering, they're low and yet all those who call for cheaper land, the premium memberships are still heading downward. As the grid struggles at 60,000 + there's not really that much room for expansion, so everything is going to be stretched very thinly, which has the potential to snap. Maybe the bots will buy the land. After all, there's more of them than us, the zombie freaks. _____________________
To exchange power is sublime. To steal from another ... well, what goes around comes around.
|
|
Sling Trebuchet
Deleted User
Join date: 20 Jan 2007
Posts: 4,548
|
07-09-2008 11:16
I can't say that I'm concerned about Premium account status. It's really just a leftover from the day they introduced freebie signups. The status was and is just a sop to those who had paid for an account.
Its only benefit to LL is to limit the support resources they have to provide. An annual account is almost free after taking the stipend into account, and better again after taking the 512 free tier into account. They could just as easily just charge subscriptions for support levels. That would make more sense. Limiting land sales to Premiums is absolutely insane. Let anybody buy! The only real class system in SL is Payment Info. That could be used to keep concurrent numbers down by blocking NPIOFs at peak times. Other than that, any hierarchy is a waste of time/resources. I'm a Premium. I have an alt that I paid US$9 for. I'd say byebye to that exalted(?) status without regret. _____________________
Maggie: We give our residents a lot of tools, to build, create, and manage their lands and objects. That flexibility also requires people to exercise judgment about when things should be used.
http://www.ace-exchange.com/home/story/BDVR/589 |
|
Rebecca Proudhon
(TM)
Join date: 3 May 2006
Posts: 1,686
|
07-09-2008 11:17
If nobody buys new land, then LL can only increase revenue by raising tier. . There is another glaringly obvious way for them to increase revenue and I am sure it has been secretly happening for a while---but the catch for them is, no one can find out what they are doing because it will result in serious problems. |
|
Rebecca Proudhon
(TM)
Join date: 3 May 2006
Posts: 1,686
|
07-09-2008 11:20
Maybe the bots will buy the land. After all, there's more of them than us, the zombie freaks. And some of these zombies have an inside track to getting their hands on purchasing power. |
|
Yumi Murakami
DoIt!AttachTheEarOfACat!
Join date: 27 Sep 2005
Posts: 6,860
|
07-09-2008 11:22
If LL were to implement dynamic hosting, they could reduce their costs (and thus increase their profits) quite a bit, as well as probably increasing the performance of the grid.
(At the moment, they waste money hosting large numbers of empty sims, while reducing performance by not allocating more processing power to the busy ones.) I think saying "why limit land sales to Premium" is a bit odd because Premium is just a fancy name for the first level of tier, except that you get some L$ as a bonus too. |
|
Ann Launay
Neko-licious™
Join date: 8 Aug 2006
Posts: 7,893
|
07-09-2008 11:25
Is it time for the conspiracy theories already? Yay!
_____________________
~Now Trout Re-Re-Re-Certified!~
I am bumping you to an 8.5 on the Official Trout Measuring Instrument of Sluttiness. You are an enigma - on the one hand a sweet, gentle, intelligent woman who we would like to wrap up in our arms and protect, and on the other, a temptress to whom we would like to do all sorts of unmentionable things. Congratulations and shame on you! You are a bit of a slut. |
