November & October stats out... wtf?

Mainland supply has contracted again. Has anyone noticed their sims disappearing??

That's it for the obligatory question. Now on to the meatier stuff.

I'm starting to do some comparisons that really do measure the amount of growth in SL. I've started putting in the percentage growth from month to month in the ending L supply, Linden sinks, and LindeX sales, and comparing these against the percentage growth in avatars (they got rid of unique avatars figure).

I'm going to edit this but I wanted to start channeling the discussion here. I do wonder if we can trust these metrics when they can't even keep the mainland supply straight.

edit 1: Meta just responded and clarified that the mainland supply is the amount of mainland owned by residents, not the number of whole sims, so the number is going to fluctuate.

edit 2: From March to November, this is:

L Supply growth: 15.45%, 13.25%, 10.22%, 6.72%, 7.96%, 3.39%, 6.18%, 4.81%, 5.16%

LindeX Sales growth: 4.70%, -15.13%, -30.59%, 23.20%, -1.71%, -72.79%, 251.84%, 14.80%, -19.81%

Linden Sinks: 33.34%, 3.56%, 7.90%, 38.12%, -14.09%, -8.79%, 3.58%, 103.16%, -36.20%

Population Growth:23.96%, 16.16%, 15.18%, 2.67%, 10.59%, 8.24%, 3.72%, 10.15%, 5.72%

Early this year, population growth was outstripping the L supply. Actually, there was an explosion in June 2006 of 40% growth over May 2006... looking back to about April or May of last year gives a better idea of the spikes. Resident growth was about 10x the amount of L supply growth. Granted, the LindeX didn't come into play until July 2006. But still...

using the last few months, you can clearly see that the population growth was far outstripping the L supply growth, but began cooling off in February/March 07. March is when the first land flood and the unnamed Eastern Continent was announced and released. Still, more avatars were being added at a faster rate than the L supply, which tells me that we continued to get more free accounts in than were sticking around and paying money.

This may be corroborated by the negative growth of Linden Sales. Supply Linden had to do less work to stabilize the economy. I am not an economist by trade, but this makes the most sense to me. One month looks really off in L sales, and I will assume that was because of the faulty databases screwing up the reporting numbers, causing what appeared to be a massive comeback in the subsequent month.

Population growth took some massive hits in June and September - probably corresponding to the gambling ban, and the periods of greatest viewer and inventory instability.

The interesting figure is Linden Sinks. This is the amount paid for uploads, classifieds, group listings, etc. These were pretty high at the beginning of the year, but the growth has decreased. This number has been nowhere near constant, but I think this is the key indicator of creativity. Considering that the prices paid for classifieds have increased significantly, I am not entirely sure what to think. I would think that classifieds would be the lion's share of the Linden sinks. If the growth of the sinks is not growing at the same rate of increase as the classified ad price, it tells me that less people are advertising, or more people are advertising very cheaply. I wish we had solid numbers on the amount of classified ads placed monthly and how much they actually make.

Looking at Linden Sinks in comparison to population growth, we have probably seen a large number of non-creative people flow in early in the year, but it has tapered off to close to a 1:1 ratio.... but considering that many of the population growth numbers are now alts, Linden Sinks has the edge on population growth. Maybe that means that there is actually MORE creativity per unique person (uploads) and more classifieds per person.

Either way, I think the growth is easier to ascertain when you start looking at this in the percentages over the previous month instead of these raw numbers.

Gesundheit.

LindeX transactions: L exchanged has seriously flattened out. From January to November, here is the growth per month:

29%
13%
29%
-1%
-5%
-1%
7%
-9%
1%
6%
3%

Growth in L transactions was in high double digits in the preceding quarter. Oct 06 was 21%, Nov 06 was 24%, Dec 06 was a whopping 45% higher than the amount exchanged in November.

It's no secret that growth was cooling but look at it in comparison to the rate of adding population... granted, even taking alts into account, there is a screeching halt in the spending habits... even in spite of the land flood that took place in August, and Land typically makes up the largest base in the L exchanged number.

I'm curious how much the ban on gambling affected the $L transactions. Has anyone seen any information about that?

How do you equate sinks with creativity?

Uploads could count, but I would think that most of that actually comes from snapshots rather than texture or animation uploads.

Classifieds are about commercial ventures, not creativity.

The "Misc" sink is the L$ balances from deleted accounts, L$ paid to deleted accounts (debit permission scripts for instance) and the RISK fines among other things.

Here are the growth percentages for LindeX buy transactions from June 06 to Nov 07:

6%
7%
8%
11%
18%
24%
30% <---Dec 06
16%
9%
21%
2%
-5% <----May 07
-8%
8%
-4%
-1%
9%
2%

of course, this isn't a complete picture, since we don't know how many third-party sites sell L, and what percentage they are of the total financial picture.

It's just a rough guess, Kitty, since we have had a growth and even saturation of certain markets with businesses. Setting aside BIABs, there would need to be an increase of uploads of textures, sounds, animations, etc.

And here are the LindeX sell transactions - who's cashing out, from June 06 to Nov 07:

20%
9%
15%
5%
14%
2%
23% <----Dec 06
8%
2%
25%
1%
0%
-3% <----June 07
17%
2%
0%
-3%
4%

This is very erratic, and may be affected even more by third party markets. But December 06 seems to be the bellweather month in almost all the stats.

And now my favorite: growth in premium accounts.

2005 Dec 12,433 6.88%
2006 Jan 13,403 7.80%
2006 Feb 14,178 5.78%
2006 Mar 15,162 6.94%
2006 Apr 16,535 9.06%
2006 May 18,320 10.80%
2006 Jun 19,685 7.45%
2006 Jul 21,441 8.92%
2006 Aug 24,702 15.21%
2006 Sep 28,253 14.38%
2006 Oct 32,526 15.12%
2006 Nov 42,430 30.45%
2006 Dec 49,776 17.31%
2007 Jan 57,661 15.84%
2007 Feb 66,838 15.92%
2007 Mar 75,714 13.28%
2007 Apr 83,063 9.71%
2007 May 89,845 8.16%
2007 Jun 94,607 5.30%
2007 July 88,797 -6.14%
2008 Aug 90,600 2.03%
2007 Sep 91,054 0.50%
2007 Oct 91,613 0.61%
2007 Nov 92,595 1.07%

This is really abysmal, but I suppose that since the population growth rate has cooled off to 5%, this would have cooled off too. But with land being as cheap as it was for the last few months, I'm very surprised that the number didn't swell disproportionately to the population growth.

Some things to consider.....

I think the upload sinks have taken a hit not because of fewer creative people but people being more creative. Once word got out that you could test upload animations and textures on the beta grid for free while you were tweaking things a lot of people opted to go that route and they only uploaded to the live grid the final time when they were done with their tweaks. Given that one animation can take dozens of uploads (some hundreds) this would take a lot of normal sinks off the grid.

I would also suggest that classifed expenditures may have take a hit as store owners began opting for bot farms to drive traffic search results since it actually costs them nothing. There was also probably a significant loss in classified expenditure as casino operators left the grid.

One statistic I find interesting is the Estimated In-World Business Owners. The amounts for Positive Monthly Linden Dollar flow have generally increased across the board in June - Nov comparison, taking a little bit of a hit in Aug-Sept and then rebounding in Oct only to decline slightly in Nov. Whatever is going on with LindenX and the population numbers it appears that SL business in general has been showing a good degree of stability.

Thanks, Isablan. I forgot to look at that page. Why don't they include that in the Excel/etc. formats?

Here are the growth percentages for PMLF: (I hope this is readable)

USD Equivalent PMLF Jun-07 Jul-07 Aug-07 Sep-07 Oct-07 Nov-07
< $10 USD 23,159 24,292 4.89% 22,185 -8.67% 23,336 5.19% 24,132 3.41% 25,591 6.05%
$10 to $50 USD 11,544 12,540 8.63% 12,281 -2.07% 12,811 4.32% 15,213 18.75% 14,156 -6.95%
$50 to $100 USD 2,697 3,006 11.46% 2,929 -2.56% 3,001 2.46% 3,528 17.56% 3,145 -10.86%
$100 to $200 USD 2,040 2,149 5.34% 2,089 -2.79% 2,131 2.01% 2,477 16.24% 2,210 -10.78%
$200 to $500 USD 1,685 1,788 6.11% 1,711 -4.31% 1,814 6.02% 1,984 9.37% 1,848 -6.85%
$500 to $1,000 USD 645 727 12.71% 681 -6.33% 683 0.29% 872 27.67% 820 -5.96%
$1,000 to $2,000 USD 422 441 4.50% 391 -11.34% 432 10.49% 473 9.49% 484 2.33%
$2,000 to $5,000 USD 273 279 2.20% 295 5.73% 285 -3.39% 320 12.28% 297 -7.19%
> $5,000 USD 132 145 9.85% 129 -11.03% 138 6.98% 157 13.77% 154 -1.91%
Total Unique Users with PMLF 42,597 45,367 6.50% 42,691 -5.90% 44,631 4.54% 49,156 10.14% 48,705 -0.92%

They know that people who use Second Life are escaped mental patients


|
| *
| *
| *
| *
|*
|_______

(number of escaped mental patients playing Second Life [in millions] over time - official graph)

As can be seen from the graph SL is now full of loonies.

In more detail - the list below shows the loony % over time in SL

67% <----June 06
9%
10%
15%
14%
21%
23% <----Dec 06
28%
32%
35%
41%
50%
63% <----June 07
67%
72%
80%
92%
98%
100% <----December 07 (all loonies)

Take your meds you loonies.

Isablan has a good point. When the SL Clothing Previewer got developed by Johan Durant and increasing numbers of people started using it, uploading textures for test clothing became superfluous, and like Isa said, there's always the free uploads with the test grid. A typical outfit would take at least 10 uploads (usually more like 30, if you have 3 pieces: shirt, skirt, undershirt) but with SLCP, I only upload 3 times, or maybe 6 tops.

Also, so many building textures are out there now (TRU's collection alone is staggering) that there isn't a huge need to upload one's own textures. Even a year ago, TRU was a lot smaller than it is now.

Creativity may not be diminished, but the physical need to upload has definitely diminished.

I hate to admit it, but gambling WAS a nice boost. If someone dumped $10 into gambling, lost most of it, but ended up with L$1000 at the end of the day, they might be more inclined to say "wooo hoo! I didn't lose it all, might as well go spend it!"

Only some of us, dear.

Crap, not very readable... but the percentages are there...

In comparison to the total population, the percent of avs that have PMLF is flattening out or decreasing.

Percentage Population with PMLF

June 07 0.5511%
July 07 0.5307%
Aug 07 0.4614%
Sep 07 0.4651%
Oct 07 0.4650%
Nov 07 0.4358%

Is half a percentage point of 11 million avs signficant?

Fair enough on the Linden Sinks. There is no way to really look at that number fairly considering these other factors affecting it.

I wish we had the PMLF from prior months to look at the old percentages of population with PMLF. It's amazing that even with so many businesses on the rise that there would actually be less people on any given month with PMLF.

More people = more businesses = less profit for each person. Markets are getting saturated. My own niche is rapidly becoming busier with wonderful designers of ethnic stuff. I used to be one of the only games in town. Now I'm competing with many others. Therefore, my share of the income from these types of items goes down. It's a bummer but it also challenges me to stretch my own abilities. I've also found myself MUCH more involved in charity works, like auctions and stuff. While it doesn't improve my bottom line, I feel much more involved in SL communities, which is why I'm here in the first place. I'm still fighting nickel and dime and by God I'll advertise, but like I said, it's much more of a challenge now.

The way I see it, the wheat will be winnowed from the chaff through perseverance, effort, and ingenuity. Same as RL. But that's just one girl's opinion.

Forgetting the numbers for a second, it's pretty obvious the world got enamored with SL, popped in, got confused, experienced lag, crashed and left.

Along with lag and crashing, existing avatars before the boom have been pummeled with VAT, the casino ban, the flood of sims, stupidly high tier fees, inventory loss and most recently, new search.

Corporations are leaving. Islands are being sold. Avatars are tiering down. Fewer folks are going premium.

I have no idea what the future holds, but it doesn't take a statistician to see there's trouble right here in Felonhall city.

archive.org is your friend .

http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php (June 2007 through November 2007)

http://web.archive.org/web/20070616135402/http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php (December 2006 through May 2007)

http://web.archive.org/web/20070616135402/http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php (June 2006 through November 2006)

http://web.archive.org/web/20061203043632/http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php (May 2006)

Should give you a total of 19 months worth of figures .

You rawk, Kitty. I'm too tired to do it all now but that's awesome.

Well, I wouldn't call it trouble, really, if the growth we saw was of mainly fly-by-night people who clearly are not a good fit with SL. I think we saw people realizing that they couldn't get rich quick, and there is some exodus that flattens out the growth numbers.

We can see this from the user hours... how is it that user hours are flat, even taking bots into account, with 5% growth in avatar population? Downtime, for one. Lack of interest for another, has to be.

I see you people are still playing funny numbers game……shakeshead you expect us to believe “Countries By Active ” and “Countries by Hours “. Again LLABS is proving their numbers are fake. cencoring the blog is just proof of that. Frankly speaking it seems llabs workers are posting ( as fake blog posters ) in the blog more then the population themselfs.

The inventory loss problem has been a factor in the slowdown.

What?

What Cristalle posted had nothing to do with "country by" whatsoever. Reread her stats.

I think "user hours" is more telling, even WITH regard to alts. I personally (and I know this is OT, sorry) think that LL should reintroduce the 5 alts/unique user limit. I understand that this can be circumnavigated via free email accounts (aka Hotmail, Yahoo, etc) but it might SLOW the creation of alts.

Yes you right but look at the population stats and you see why all the numbers throught the google stats are faked.

Have you seen them? I mean look at what the top users are from JAPAN? is higher then some countries twice as big as others lower themselves? No this is not correct.........Korea have many more ONLINE game players then japan does. Even first time users are more from korea then japan. These number could not be correct. But look at the graphic indicators? If i not seeing this correct explain why Japan always landup in the top part above others countries?

if japan is in the top users listing stats then you think they are also the top money spenders on sl as well. That is very hard to believe.