Second Life Residents logged nearly 400 million hours in 2008, growing 61% over 2007

Sorry for my misinterpretation. What kinds of improvements would you make other than reducing the price?

Though I know people find it hard to believe - its very difficult to differentiate bots from live activity - there are signs that we are working on correlating but is very expensive from a database perspective in real time.

That said, as I mentioned the LindeX did grow more slowly than hours. That definitely means that the amounts people have cashed out hasn't grown as rapidly either. Could the divergence be related to bot growth? Perhaps - but at this point we don't know. Our revenue has grown faster than the LindeX as well - so perhaps 3rd party exchanges that offer more international payment mechanisms are growing faster. Just not perfectly sure.

Many fair points here. It may be directed to the wrong people, but I'm just the CFO commenting on Q4 metrics. So this is where I discuss these issues. Happy to talk to anyone in world if they'd like.

You had a tough Q4? What do you sell? How much were you down? To what do you attribute it to?

I totally understand that. Fair point. It was a difficult decision that we had to make.

Grayness & missing textures is something we're working on. Lots to do in the rendering pipeline. Glad you're seeing reduced crashes. There more reduced crashes coming in the upcoming releases. That's been a big focus.

In terms of paying users, we did set a record for the number of paying residents in December. I think there's lots of things to do to continue to improve the experience for new users that will benefit merchants. Good stuff coming in that regard I think.

Finally you make a great point about how new land stimulates the economy. Land contraction is likely to have a negative impact on the economy. The real world economy is also having an impact - the real world economy is very disturbing right now.

Zee,
Homesteads the way they are now with a monthly fee of 95 USD are something the market will accept as you are getting value what you pay for, but when you increase the prices to 125 USD they will be overpriced and people will not buy them anymore and the impact on the land mass will be much worse than it is now. I really hope you will rethink your second price increase and offer sl users a product which is not overpriced.

I really do think that LL people are out of touch with the residents and have no clue what is going on. Posting Q4 financial the way you did it was not very sensitive, so many people lost their land because of your mistake and to write how great your financials are after that, must make them feel crappy.

We do eat our own dog food here. We have lots and lots of meetings in Second Life. Big ones and small ones. We love it. We have a virtual board room that looks just like our real board room. We have a video camera in the room so you can see it in the virtual board room. The sound is amazing (most of the time). There are lots of things that I see that can make it easier. I wish we had 500 more engineers when I think about all the things we could do. But we don't have that kind of money. We're growing the business and adding engineers as fast as we can.

On void sims cancelled, I think all the data is in the post in this paragraph:

We talk a lot about bots in these forums when I bring up user hours. Unfortunately I'm not the datawarehouse guy that could tell you exactly why something works and other things don't. All I know about bots is that I don't think about them when I look at our financial statements. Our revenue has grown similar to user hours for many years, so I don't see any change in bot behavior in our revenue numbers. I keep saying the same thing about that because that's all I really know. Probably someone more technical than me could do a post about bots and what we know and what we don't know and then we could have a forum discussion just about bots.

There were lots of ways we could have avoided the open space fiasco. We made mistakes, we fixed them in a way that we think works for lots of customers 9,250 Homestead regions worth. We fixed it in a way that balances the needs of the residents with the needs of the grid and the needs of the business. I wish we could have come to this answer a lot sooner and I don't think I can apologize more than we already have.

We're learning. We're growing. I'm hopeful.

This is also true and can sometimes cause the numbers over short periods of time to be...shall I say..."quirky." I think over long period of time we see reasonably consistent trends. I am working with the datawarehouse team and the product team to get better data on the underlying strong and weak points of the economy in terms of object sales & I am looking forward to talking more about that when it becomes available.

LOL! I'm a Beagle in Second Life so that hits pretty close to home. I chase birds and cats! It was my mistake. I can't blame the cats and birds as much as I'd like to catch them...

To Lindens: Please rethink the parcel ranking system to get rid of traffic bots and come back next year with more reliable statistics...

No you didn't have to make the decision you made, the decision, like the island price cut, lacked creative thinking. You had an awful lot of customers, USD$95 you'd have probably got away with, USD$125 is much too much of an increase and ignoring the previous precedent of grandfathering when such a big increase was at play was another epic fail.

I'd imagine you'll also lack creative thinking when you sell homesteads direct, as you've been asking former premium residents if they'd return if you sell homesteads direct it seems only a matter of time before you damage your reseller market again.

As for what can make the new openspace more attractive, a price cut is the only option to make something that is so ineffective attractive. Even compared to the openspace product prior to the changes the new product is heinously overpriced. USD$75 is not small change for a product that is purely decorative.

I appreciate the way you engage with residents here and I appreciate the fact that you apologise over the issue, but the apology should have been on the blog as a letter to residents. Customer relations and communication are very important for any company, if you spend the money you've made from the very good year of 2008 for Linden Lab on vastly improving your customer relations then it will be money well spent, meanwhile residents are feeling the slap in the face of seeing thousands of dollars of investment poured down the drain, you need to tread carefully and a blog full of spin is not treading carefully.

A Linden who actually meets and discusses issues with inworld business owners and presents those issues at senior level would be most welcome.

I feel this pain every day. I posted earlier that that basically 75% of all our lost hours due to outages (this includes time when folks can't log in) came in the first half of the year. That means we had tremendous improvement in stability going into the second half. FJ Linden - our new VP of Technical Operations has 3 key initiatives in this area - one around our network, one around our asset server and one around our database. I'll refer you to his post just before mine for more details.

It does seem like we continually solve one problem and run into another one though doesn't it! FJ has the right priorities and is working on the right things. I'm very glad to have him on the team. With 9 years running the dial up network at AOL - he knows what it takes to scale. And he knows how to drink a beer. I'll be taking a break from the forums to do just that with him in a few minutes.

You missed the point of my post. From no fault of Your own you have lost perspective. Don't feel bad about it, you work for LL. Us users work/play/live here. There will always be some sort of culture gap.

My point was to consult with some users before publishing. Imagine running this post past Desmond first. It could help point out obvious "touchy subjects". At the very least it would help you keep in touch with the residents perspective.


((sorry to single you out Desmond, your the first who comes to mind))

And therein lies the difficulty in trying to determine how to classify a bot and then to associate a bot to specific time. We all have different interpretations based on our individual experience. In reading the various posts in the different threads, no one resident has described a bot and how to track the time. Everything is at the superficial or 100k level.

I will often spend time in my office or one of our public areas each day listening to SLCN.TV while working in another application. When someone enters the space, I will change back to SL and chat with them. When they leave, I'll go back to working in Photoshop or some RL work but in another application, again while SLCN.TV is playing...which I am actually listening to and enjoying the interviews or races.

So by the definition, since I am not chatting, not moving around (I am sitting on a couch in front of the SLCN.TV screen), and not interacting, does this mean I am a bot...didn't think so.

For everyone throwing out the need to have numbers of bots, concurrent users, and time online, we should also be cognizant that there is a lot more to this than we realize. Even those of you who are very sophisticated dataminers or software engineers should realize that you don't know everything about SL's backend system and can only make partially complete observations. We don't know what we don't know applies here...and yes, I know many posters already use this statement to apply to LL but I don't.

Actually, most private businesses throw out all kinds of "numbers" all the time to indicate their "success" in their sector. "Profits up 200%!", "$30M market cap!", etc. If it suits the business to get "positive PR" or advertisement from spinning numbers to the public, you can bet your boots they do.

MMO companies have traditionally done it since the beginning. "Accounts", "subscribers", "users", "user hours", etc. It's kinda hard to hide these numbers from your customers, because they can see what's around them. When they are wallowing in offal, and the PR spin du jour is that they are actually standing in fields of flowers, milk, and honey, they obviously start to question whether or not the flowers in the reported field are poppies, and if someone there at the company has been smoking them.



That's great. I guess you did understand the point that looking at a chart and figuring 397 / 246 = 61% increase can be done by most high school graduates, right?

Tell us something REAL in the analysis that we can't already decipher in under 10 seconds from doing basic math. "Tremendous growth in user engagement" by what measure? What do you consider "user engagement"? Logging in?

You've recovered a bit since Q1-Q2 2007's financial numbers, but the Lindex volume, trend-wise, looks rather flat to me. What does that mean?

• Peak concurrent users were up 31% over 2007

Granted, increased grid capacity and stability allows this, but really, how much of that volume is actual users and not automated systems (bots)? I see less and less people at popular venues. It doesn't jive with the numbers.

• Land owned by Residents increased 82% over 2007

Given the original OpenSpace deal, yah. Would have been even more, too, had you not lost ~1200 regions' worth.

• Exchange Volume increased 33% over 2007

OK. More people buying/selling L$. Why? and where is the money going (L$ in-world)?

• User-to-user transactions in Q4 increased 54% over Q4 of 2007.

Characterized how? I transfer money between my main and my one alt. That's included, right? Our limited-edition product release system requires people to pay into a special vendor which gives them a token and immediately refunds their money, just in order to prove that they have the funds to participate. At L$3500 a pop, that would be L$7000 per user. How many "exception cases" like these do you track as part of these figures? How can you make any meaningful analysis of the metrics if you don't take these into account?

Bots are avis which are just logged in for traffic purpose, many sim owners run over 70 bots on their sims 24/7, just being logged on doing nothing. As they use a special software for it, it should be easy to find out how many there are around. And yes, these bots did increase from 2007 to 2008 more than the "normal user hours and normal new users" so any statistic about online hours or users are just wrong. Also they do not take into account that almost every user has at least one alt account.

Sorry ZEE, but I'm the KING of new products, and all my business was off for 2008.

I used to make $300USD a month from my stores, now I'm lucky to make half that.

I told Linden Lab and the Community that SL was in a recession over a year and a half ago, and you scoffed. Now people are coming to say I was right and you blame them?

Gee, if I were in your shoes, I'd want to know a LOT more about what's going on, then blaming my customers, but then again, I've proven that if I were in your shoes things would be A LOT different there

I hear you on the second price increase. We're going to watch it closely.

On posting that we're financially sound, all I'm getting at is that we're have the financial wherewithal to survive in this difficult economic climate. I think there are also many residents involved in Second Life that might be concerned about that. So I tried to strike a balance.

I am not convinced about the reliability of these statistics either.

They could be higher.

Beginners would have a better experience if they could find "real" green dots easier.

So, are you guys waiting for another openspacesim-like situation, where bot usage has become so important that when you decide to roll up your sleeves, all businesses who rely on it will be deeply affected and/or collapse?

Well, since you asked.

First I'd ask Philip Rosedale to resign from CoB and back away from any further involvement with Second Life.

Second, I'd fire M Linden for being nothing more then a mouth-piece for the CoB.

Third, I'd fire nearly all the Manager at Linden Lab for not having the balls to stand up and tell Philip and M that their leadership is sorely lacking and things need to change; something that Cory did over a year ago no.

Fourth, I'd hire managers that no how to manage an IT company. That's what you are, whether you like it or not. No longer would employee's PICK what they want to work on, things would be prioritized and assigned and expectations would be raised. You like to call yourself a real company, time to act like one.

Fifth, I'd re-organize the Bug Tracking/Reporting/Working on Policies. No more would it be allowed that Bug Reports with NO REPRO on them would be looked at. Everything would be looked at, everything would be prioritized, everything would be worked on and FIXED. No more voting on what the Community wants fixed first. You have used this excuse too long to NOT fix priority bugs, like say the Asset Server, Teleporting, Login Issues, Link Issues, etc etc etc

Sixth, I'd require every single person working in Linden Lab, that deals with people in the Community to PLAY Second Life for at least 10 hours a week, yes, 2 hours a day, PAID.

Seventh, I'd fire any employee that doesn't have the BALLS to stand up and say, "I think this is wrong". IF more of you would have done this during the OS Fiasco, perhaps the Community wouldn't have gotten screwed over so badly!

Eight, I'd FREEZE production of Second Life. No more enhnacements until Bugs are fixed, Lag is reduced, and the Community is FAT and HAPPY again. Then, either open up production of SL again or start work on SL 2.0

Ninth, I'd require every single Linden Lab employee to attend a Customer Service Seminar, which I would host. The key phrase for our business would be, "The Customer is HAPPY". No more telling customers to "Bugger Off", no more blaming the customers when things go wrong, no more treating customers with contempt. Linden Lab would become known as the Customer Company, where they keep, and make new, Customers because their Customers are ALWAYS HAPPY.

Tenth, I'd require every single Linden Lab employee to attend a Customer Service Seminar, which I would host. The key phrase for our business would be, "The Customer is HAPPY". No more telling customers to "Bugger Off", no more blaming the customers when things go wrong, no more treating customers with contempt. Linden Lab would become known as the Customer Company, where they keep, and make new, Customers because their Customers are ALWAYS HAPPY.

Yes, those last two steps are repeated because since 2005, Linden Lab employee's have been so out of touch with the Community it's disgusting.

Well, that's my plan for Linden Lab, when do I get to start?

I really appreciate that you do post here and try to answer even the tough questions and I am sure others do too. Wish your colleagues would communicate that way too! Thanks for it..

Thanks Ciaran - I post quarterly and I listen to the responses. I'm pretty consistent with the posts - they all sound largely the same. I recognize there are those in the community hurt by the openspace issue. And there are always a few issues that come up frequently in the forums depending on the various issues. I believe - and as a company we know - that its the inworld business owners that are creating all the fun and interesting things to do in Second Life. Helping them and listening them is a key part of T Linden and his team's job. He's got a couple different product managers that are going to focus on that in 2009.

True. I get that. I knew no matter what I posted this time, the pain of Openspaces would be fresh in everyone's mind. I'm here to listen and learn.