Where are we headed?- The latest Blog

I actually want to buy land - in either of the 2 sims I current own in. There is even land for sale in both, however neither of the sims have land at anything below L$15/sqm. I bought my existing land in both areas about 6 months ago for around L$11-12/sqm. There is no way I am buying land for L$15/sqm. I ideally would buy at L$10/sqm. I think that either they are land barons trying to artificially hold up the land prices or people who have bought at higher prices are trying to get the most for their money before cashing out and are hoping some chump will come along and pay them most of what they paid when land was priced higher.
Either way it should be interesting to see how long they can sustain their asking price - in the last few weeks my home sim has gone from one small plot of yellow to 4 or 5 plots at the same size or larger for sale.

...Secure Sockets Layer?



They aren't being paid much by you directly, but LL does make money off you indirectly because the presence of people like you is the reason that people like me pay large amounts to LL for an island.



huh? I frequently see LL talking about efforts to increase concurrency.



oh wait nevermind about my previous question, I see now.

It receives mention. It got more mention in a blog post today.

If it were a priority, it would have been anticipated and done.

Letting the concurrency problems linger is throwing away money, in which case Linden Labs is poorly managed.

Or, the other possibility is that when one looks at the bottom line, Linden Lab isn't throwing away money because the extra residents, and extra resident time in-world, do not translate into money for Linden Lab.

Whatever the reason, it doesn't reflect favorably upon Second Life's potential for growth- at least, growth in its current form.

How much credibility does one put in Linden Lab's talk about fixing concurrency? I don't see a reason to give Linden Lab a lot of credibility.

But when Linden Lab implements a prompt, stable solution to the concurrency problem, I will certainly admit to how wrong I was.

Edit: Oh, and if Linden Lab does have some great economic growth that benefits the vast majority of Second Life merchants, I will absolutely admit to what I fool I was to let the great opportunities of Second Life pass me by, and to congratulate everyone else's successes.

I discovered a little bit of extra background reading when it comes to Linden Lab and its plan to tackle the concurrency barrier.

Linden Lab first hit a peak currency of 60,000 in mid-January of this year. It wasn't an isolated event; Linden Lab continued to set new peak concurrency records throughout January.

http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/2008/01/31/data-shows-growing-divide-between-casual-and-heavy-sl-users/

The trend upward toward 60,000 and beyond shoudln't be a surprise; Linden Lab has had it graphed and tracked.

http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/04/15/second-life-economy-grows-15-from-q4-to-q1/

I seem to remember that stability took a sharp turn for the worse, particularly in my experience, at about the beginning of April of this year. I think there must be some basis for my memory and perception, because in Googling blogs, the beginning of April is when I start seeing a lot of description of 60,000+ concurrent users as routine.

In April of 2008, Linden Lab was still reporting grid problems in the blog, rather than on a separate subdomain. Look in the archives of the Linden Lab Blog, and April has a whopping 109 entries, most of which document the severe load problems on the grid. Skim them to remember the pain. Linden Lab did acknowledge that in April, "virtually every piece of mission-critical Second Life Grid infrastructure failed catastrophically at least once." (http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/05/09/second-life-grid-availability-in-april/)

On April 22, in announcing a new CEO for Linden Lab, outgoing CEO Phillip Rosedale let us know of incoming CEO M Linden, "He will have an intense focus on improving the in-world experience and stability and reliability of Second Life." (http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/04/22/announcing-our-new-ceo/)

In the new CEO's first blog post, on May 27, he noted that, "Platform stability is a key strategic priority for the company as it has been a severe pain-point for residents (especially recently)." (http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/05/27/my-first-week/#more-2001)

After two months on the job, he writes, "Our growth has come at a cost which you felt, and still feel - platform stability, viewer performance, lag, inventory management, etc. It’s important for you to know that we are ALL OVER these problems and that we’re making progress." (http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/07/09/letter-to-second-life-residents/)

So Linden Lab saw where the trend was going in concurrency certainly last year. The trend became a reality in January this year. It became a huge problem in April. And now in July of this year- as quoted in the original post- Linden Lab is now contemplating solutions.

Yes, LL has always known about concurrency. Back two years ago, they were convinced they could just 'throw hardware' at it and scale indefinetly. They now know better.

They have implemented a lot of changes which have increased concurrency a lot. But I think they are coming up against a wall, where changes are only giving modest gains. I think that 70k M Linden mentioned will be hard won.