But yeah, I agree about your point. We are all still beta-testing as it were to see what numbers are meaningful.

Linden Lab does correct known errors. The problem, of course, is that there’s so much room for little errors.

In this case, this is hardly a case of Linden Lab gaming the number, but it’s probably more of a case of Linden Lab not fully thinking through the meaning of the number. Remember how long it took Linden Lab to post “past 60 days” stats — I remember at least a year of discussion on the forums before they started actively releasing that. This is likely the same case; we just need to give them more feedback on what’s valuable and what’s not. Maybe it just needed a story like this to really focus attention on it…

again – so what? we all know that on average there are only around 12-14000 logged in at any one time…

“or both”

sounds good to me…..

Now, what that number *doesn’t* tell you is this:

Accounts logged in over past 60 days: 533,852
Accounts registered over past 60 days: 646,059
Registered/Logged in: 1.21 (i.e. over the past 60 days, 21% more users registered accounts than actually logged in)

So, at least 18% of new account registrations will not log into SL even once.

Digging deeper, we can determine that if 80% of all registered accounts *do* log in at least once, then only 4% of accounts that existed 60 days ago have actually logged in over the past 60 days.

In fact, in order to get even 30% of 60-day-plus old accounts logging in over the past 60 days we need no fewer than 50% of all new registrations abandoning SL without ever logging in.

So, what we have in actuality is either extremely low user retention or an excessive amount of junk accounts. Or both.

the bottom line is that if a corporation (cos thats what YOU lot are essentially talking about) is thinking of coming into sl and is using those figures as the basis of wheher they will or wont then they deserve everything they get

i know people around here dont have a lot of time for rl businesses coming in but does anyone honestly really think that the financial controllers, accountants and bean counters arent going to want to see some decent figures other than whats on the front page?

as for everyone else its absolutely meaningless and all its doing is giving you lot something to gas about

I hope someone will test this, as Uri suggests.

As for transaction taxes, I would hate to be taxed whenever I use my alt to test my products by buying and deploying them.

coco

Something interesting to note:

Those accounts logged within 60 days, look padded to me too. If we even go by them logging in for just 1 single hour, 370 unique accounts are logging in each hour. 800,000 never even logged on. (We are starting to see the stagger, now that 60 days is no longer pre 6/6/6.) Period. As for alts, I know people after the creation deal that went from 1 alt to 7.

With a good comp, you can run 2-3 SL’s at once. I’d like to see numbers on unique IP’s logged in 60 days.

Those accounts logged within 60 days, look padded to me too. If we even go by them logging in for just 1 single hour, that means that 800,000 never even logged on. Period. As for alts, I know people after the creation deal that went from 1 alt to 7.

With a good comp, you can run 2-3 SL’s at once. I’d like to see numbers on unique IP’s logged in 60 days.

Thanks for the correction!

Here is a link from the beginning of 2006 discussing similar issues. It is worth a look at:

http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2006/02/secondlife_reac.html

Niko