Q3 closed on a high note with an unusually strong September. Talk 11/12 w/Zee Linden

True - the user to user transaction numbers are at best a rough estimate of what is actually happening. The have stayed relatively consistent relative to the money supply and relative to the LindeX volume certainly since we banned games of chance. LindeX volume may be a better measure of activity because there are transaction fees and real money involved.

Believe me, I have reported them before and nothing ever came of it lol, I attempt to abuse report anyone abusing something like that. Same goes for a PG Mainland sim I had which I no longer own due to the pornographic material that was all in it, reported that and to this day there is still pornographic material in the sim, I have never really seen any good use of abuse reporting.

Does this mean the price rises and changes are set in stone? If it does can you ask someone to have the decency and good manners to actually say this.

Mephistopheles - Actually there are many very useful bots that contribute significant value to the economy. Many third party marketplaces and exchanges depend on bots to close transactions. And IP address is not a good way to limit things because there are many organizations that route to us through a single IP. I'm not saying there's not a good way to do this - just that its a little more complex and not a high priority for us just now.

Ciaran - thanks for your message. We did change the pricing structure from Jack's original post in a post that Mark made. We are not planning to make further changes to the pricing in the post that Mark made, so for now, those are final.

Zee, i'm not talking about usefull bots, i'm talking about traffic bots. I think it's easy for Linden Lab to remove the traffic from the calculating of popular places. I remember 2004 till 2006 that there where alot of SL-voting stations around in Second Life. Back to the roots would be a good way, because if popular places aren't longer bound to traffic, all traffic bots are senseless.

That is how I understand it too. I would like some more information about this.

At the same time, if that number has always been calculated this way, the actual number of lindens exchanged doesn't tell us as much as the % of growth in resident to resident transactions, right?

I agree that primium account need a boost and soon. Here are some ideas Zee maybe you can pass them to the right Linden for evaluation.

1) Make the free land 1024 instead of 512, 512 and 117 prims is not a good incentive anymore, and I know alot of people who don't use it because it is so small.

2) Make premium members only forums, that would have added content and value as a incentive.

3) Create primium only islands, parks, oceans, sandboxes and rezzing areas.

4) Offer premium members more goups, 25 is not enough for serious users that support SL.

My company Idea Labs has come up with allot more idea, if you need more you can contact me.

I think those are some great ideas, I cancelled my prem account because I feel there is no value to even have one any more.

I have 12 stores inworld and in my case I do not use ALTs to transfer money, so you can't use that as a rule and want numbers based on what some people do with thier money I am sure most of the business people get the money in thier account direct and through ALT's.

Just my 2 cents.

Nonsense. Have you looked at how many of those parcels are for sale again? It's a combination of wanting a unique parcel experience and land barons trying to profit from the "new." Lot's of people trying to profit, not a lot of building going on.

that was 2003. Voting stations were eliminated in 1.1; They were no longer accurate and were basically being gamed. It is a game after all when you spend 30 minutes flying to all your friends voting stations and clicking them to ensure that everyone gets a little pay.

Do you think this is related?

WEB-841
Refer-A-Friend link no longer exchanges calling cards with new signups. No referral bonuses for accounts created after July 2008.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-841

Banning bots is a Bad Idea

1 how do you tell between a "bot" and a normal account?
2 what about a large family/multifamily/BUSINESS group that all logs in from a single location
(gateway server)
3 bots can be used for some very useful things
A store model (LL needs to release a poseable "shell" to get around this)
B high end greeter/service person
C many other creative things
4 what about "normal' accounts that are also used as bots??

I've kept my premium membership and encouraged others to go premium just to support Linden Lab. I will say that if there is not further amendment to the openspace policy (say, give the openspace regions a more reasonable 1750 prims than the 750 now in effect or keeping Homesteads at $95instead of raising them to $125 in June), I will no longer support Linden Lab. I'm an island owner. I have mainland as well, but I have it just because there's no tier. My plan, if there isn't movement on the opensapces form Linden Lab, is to dump both my openspaces and my premium membership on June 1. I expect my mainland sim won't survive beyond the end of 2009 becaue by then one of the other grids will be running well enough to make migration an option.

So would I. That's the point, Zee...bots consume resources. Server time, CPU cycles, and bandwidth. They contribute nothing to the economy. Not to LL, not to the residents.

I say, save the virtual world for real people.

A. Hire a resident, who will then buy things, which is good for the SL economy. A bot contributes nothing.
B. What could be more higher end than a real resident? Yes when you hire "people" you have to pay them AND develop the skills to manage employees. That's part of business.
C. Many other creative things ... i.e. faking traffic when the sim is in fact boring. yea good argument, NOT.
4. Normal accounts are by definition NOT bots.

Bots need to be done away with just like the voting terminals were.

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"The revenue we generate from premium subscriptions is largely offset by the stipends we pay out to these account holders, so this decline doesn’t have a material impact on our business."
--------------------------------------------

Linden Lab pays "back" the subscription in form of stipends using LINDEN DOLLARS. L$ doesn't cash out from Linden Lab finances, but they are paied back by those persons that cashes in their *real* money into the LindenX.
Linden Lab does NOT purchases back our L$ when we cash out, it's the other residents that "recycles" em.
So, we pay using real money (USD/Euro.. whatever) you give back a virtual money (Linden Dollars) that exists only because other residents are purchasing those L$ using (again) real money.

To be short: if (in theory) anyone stop to purchase L$ using the LindenX today, i *CAN'T* convert back into a real currency, because Linden Lab doesn't purchase anything.

So, please explain your sentence: "we generate from premium subscriptions is largely offset by the stipends we pay out " <<< I believe this is wrong.

you might start by getting M. Linden to apologise and restract his <Immaterial> statement.

I am so amazed to read all the raves about how great the SL economy is --- from my end, traffic at my club is way down, and sales at my most popular location, are nil. I have asked around, same everywhere. My landlord has lowered rent just to keep people on his island, everyone is leaving. I expect sales to pick up over Christmas but when the new tier structure on the "Homestead" sims hits in Jan, I am prepared to see the end of all my stores as masses of people plan to abandon their OS and leave.

No don't bother, M says it best when he says nothing at all.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Zee, do you have an email address that you would share with us?

Thanks,

Des

With this two things you will decrease the population, because many good and very good scripters and builders haven't and don't need a premium account.

On the other hand, there are many public sandboxes around from private estate owners, so you can't limit sandboxes and rezz areas to premium only. If you would do this, you must reduce the rights from estate owners. Believe me, they don't want it.

Premium Accounts should be for SIM-Owners only, to recude the communication or limit it to premium users only, is a very bad idea.

We all own nothing, it should be clear that every customer in SL rents server space !
Server space is cheap (2000 GB traffic on a quad core INTEL server = +/- 75 US$ per month), so this indicates high profit margins for LL.

Misleading customers with key metrics is mostly a sign of internal weakness, customers are 'not' interested in these figures when the overall performance of the company is lacking.

And the most important; CUSTOMERS DONT RENT HERE A PRODUCT, THEY WANT TO RENT A RESULT !