What is the True Growth of Second Life?

by prokofy on 13/12/06 at 4:18 am

Growth


By Prokofy Neva, Virtual Estate Desk

The real numbers of Second Life’s growth are constantly presented, corrected, misrepresented, and hotly debated. That’s because there are different factions and interest groups that have different things they want to achieve by reflecting the numbers. For some, growth of land ownership is significant; for others it is greatly downplayed — because the relationship to land ownership itself is highly emotional and contested. Even the Lindens feel so ambivlaent about land sale as a business that they remove it completely as an occupation and set of transactions from their copious documentation of inworld economic activity.

Following the well-trod path of Sir Bruce’s reporting on MMORPGs, the Lindens want to be able to show the millions of subscriptions, which they define these days disingenuously by sign-ups — something Tony Walsh has parsed and critiqued briskly and and Clay Shirky has dissed heavily. Tony complains this week, “despite the number of sign-ups doubling and tripling, the number of those who actually participate in Second Life’s virtual world isn’t following suit.” Shirky sniffs that SL is just suffering from a TryMe Virus. But they both miss the real picture: SL is growing, growing substantially with real people, and while the numbers are inflated, growing at very fast rates.

It’s just that SL shouldn’t be measured like a MMORPG because it’s an open-ended world more like a country, and more care should be taken to study the other factors that characterize it — like wealth per capita, GNP, transactions, and IMHO, numbers of premium accounts who own land.

A problem with SL is its vast memory hole — we have lots and lots of statistics, but only displayed for this month. So you have to get up early in the morning and do a lot of copying constantly each week and month to try to track the world. Let’s hope that Adam Reuters will be able to probe more on things like what these richest 58 avatars *do* to get rich? Gambling and sex? Or interesting communications inventions?

A number I have long sought from the Lindens is the number of premium accounts. For various proprietary reasons, they didn’t want to come through with this number for the longest time.
Finally, today, they have produced what is likely an accurate number.

Back in June 2005, when I and other land owners really drilled on this, in a community meeting I asked the question, and I finally got a senior Linden to reliably later give me a figure: at that time, when the Lindens claimed 40,000 sign-ups (using a different monkey-math to weight the figures than they use now), they had 9,000 premium accounts. Of these, only 6,000 opted to use land.

I was stunned. A game model that had land purchase as its main entry-point for its main businesses, a world that claimed not to be a game but even a future business platform, and a lousy 6,000 people — a mere 15 percent — bothered to buy the land?!

That was worrisome. I pointed out, as did others, that there were just too many factors discouraging land sale — everything from a cumbersome and wierd tier chart, to wonky land tools, to oldbies delivering homiles to new citizens that they “don’t need land to have fun”. The land baroning-industry that Philip unleashed at a town hall in September 2004 (Anshe had already made a killing selling snow by then), encouraging people to start real estate agencies, was controversial and remains so — people bring to bear their most fervent religious and political convictions about land and wealth and justice when they discuss land ownership and policies in SL.

Still, what’s operative now is to find that the figure of premium accounts has now grown to 36,000. Of these, an unknown number do *not* own land but hold 512 free tier for land. There are likely less people who do that now, however, because it’s no longer rational to buy a $9.95 account to pay for $1200-$2000 worth of currency (depending on the account start date), since purchases on the LindEx are now cheaper at the current rate of around $270 L/$1.00 US.

So let’s posit that the number of landowners grew from 6000 people 18 months ago, to 36,000 people today — a factor of 6. Why is this important?

People are more important than square meters because one very large land owner might own 300 servers or 600 servers, of course, but 36,000 people (even short of their alts and divided by a third) is a significant number of constant log-ins. This figure includes the lowliest newbie who buys a 512 m2 in first-land hell all the way up to millionairess Anshe Chung.

And most importantly, it’s the middle class — and the middle class does exist unlike the claims of a recent Dutch survey which sampled only 246 people, and claimed that only the very rich and very poor lived in SL.

The 36,000 land-holders of SL represent a variety of important, often overlooked stabilizing factors:

o they are people likely to log on more because they have a “stake,” a home, a relationship, a job, an entertainment, a business, a non-profit cause — something they are willing to pay money to hold in 3-D

o they are more likely to shop and purchase from others to place a home or office and furniture and other objects so they are engines to the economy

o they are more likely to be creating or selling objects because most major creators have their own stores or at least a sky workshop to make things in

o they are not hacking around in sandboxes or worse, flying around clubbing, shooting, and griefing, but they tend to have either found an occupation or a relationship in SL and have a reason to wish to keep coming — they are the backbone of virtual civilization just as in RL.

This class of people are not the only economic engine of SL — so are the masses of TryMe sign-ups and basics who Zee Linden claims are more than 90,000 unique Residents who have bought currency on the exchange. Still, the middle-class of land-owners are an important and often overlooked number.

The number includes every new big business or institution, from Harvard to Reebok to Reuters to Warner Brothers to World Vision, who buy either whole islands, continents, or at least an acre (4096 m2). The “RL in SL” phenomenon is contained in these 36,000 landowners.

By the same token, the old immersionist world of everyone from elves to furries to Goreans to modern suburban hotties are also contained in this 36,000.

This figure in fact grew by possibly as many as 8,000 in November alone, if we look at the “land purchase” sinks on the economic pages. (This figure of payments to Governor Linden for land includes first-land purchases for $512 each; it’s not certain whether it also includes auction purchases denominated in Lindens). THAT is why there is such a land shortage — growth exponentially of this class of people, and the Lindens desire to serve them mainly with the more lucrative private island sales — Robin Linden said that the amount of land in SL would increase 50 percent in these six weeks since the new prices were announced and people scrambled to buy under the old prices.

36,000 of anything doesn’t sound like much; it’s not food for Sir Bruce to salivate over; it’s not impressive to Clay Shirky who is bored and skeptical by the concept of 3-D shopping; it’s not anything to ring Tony Walsh’s chimes because it’s just not enough information about what people DO such as to merit any real ecstasy about SL.

Still, I feel it represents not only significant growth, but significant commitment to going the distance with SL not easily dismissed. Each one of these 36,000 has likely at least 1 other person — and more likely 10 — they are supporting within SL by their activities. By various real estimates, log-ins are now likely 100,000-120,000 per day — and many of those log-ins are owned by Anshe Chung, as they live in her Dreamland, and other land-owners.

Thus, factoring in that behind the figure of 36,000 are hidden thousands of tenants who don’t outright own land in the sense of having purchased it from Governor Linden, the real contours of the people of SL start to emerge.

It is not 2 million. It is not “Logged In Last 60 Days: 789,440″ — precisely because among those 36,000 are some who logged right out again, some for more than 30 days, because their land simply wasn’t working, had a build returned, was too laggy to use, or couldn’t even be reached by teleport. And of these 36,000, 1,916 had a total of 8,081 parcels for sale today — either because they were tiering down in disgust from SL’s poor performance or were the happy winning bidders on an auction and were chopping and re-selling — and how can we know how many in each category?

Still, the huge buzz of newbies around first-land fields who are *not* all swooping baby barons, and the more matter-of-fact buying of land with less fear than a year ago on the auction by many genuinely new people, means there is solid growth. This goes against the naysayers, of course, and it’s not pleasing to those who would like to see SL be described not in terms of an old meat-world concept like geographical contiguous space and suburban tracts, but innovative communication tools participated in by wacky avatars wrapped in Moebius strips 500 m2 up in the air discussing bleeding-edge technology.

As much as it grates some to hear it, the land model developed by the Lindens and emulated by thousands of residents old and new is working to grow and stabilize the world. Among those 36,000 land owners are the publishers and editors of the Herald.

44 Responses to “What is the True Growth of Second Life?”

  1. Just a thought

    Dec 13th, 2006

    You know as much sense as this actually makes (I’m shocked by the by) there is something you’re msising here:

    The mentors and others are right, you don’t need land to have fun, or for that matter to get a real use out of Second Life. I and my co-conspirator (read: partner in this project) cannot afford a 3D modeling system at this time and thus development for our game project has been at one hell of a standstill – still only in the initial phases of being wirrten in terms of story and characters.

    Now that may not mean much to you but it does to anyone I have to buy avatar parts and accessories from in order to actually make 3D renderings of these characters.

    Now with this said, buying land or for that matter getting a premium account really is not something that I need to do now is it? There are bound to be others that build or contribute in some way, perhaps in buying from others or in doing free work …. In fact one of my friends in Second Life builds and scripts for free.

    So while your article makes sense (again I’m shocked at this), it still smacks of a bias in the direction of paying accounts. Yep, they are needed. Yep, some of them need land.

    But basic accounts are important too …. an issue I have yet to see anyone at all bother with.

  2. Prokofy Neva

    Dec 13th, 2006

    I’m all for basic accounts. They make up many of my customers. I have absolutely no critique of them; I do not ban any status from my land; I do favour the Lindens’ policy; I don’t discriminate and don’t sneer at basics; I also happen to know first-hand that some of the most severe griefing in SL is done by well-known, paid, premium account holders — not the majority of law-abiding basics, many from Europe or Latin America or Asia who cannot access use of the American-accepted credit-cards so easy. They’re welcome to me.

    So that’s not at issue.

    What’s at issue is that for far too long, we’ve had to view SL through this warped and ideological prism that you keep pushing over our eyes.

    I can look at the map. I see land. I see growing meters so fast I couldn’t even explore all the new ones in a day. I see green dots. These green dots are *gasp* on…land.

    They aren’t in a sandbox or holding thinky discussions about Snowcrash on a lame Linden public place.

    Your experience, the experience of the minority of geeks now in the world, is merely your experience. It’s just your clan, your posse. It’s not something we can extrapolate from. The 90,000 people who bought money used it primarily to go rent on land with or go in clubs which are on…land.

    Like I’ve so often said, they didn’t go climb a Moebius strip in a sandbox and geek out on planar angles.

    Your notion that you don’t need to do this is your tiny, sectarian notion. Try to understand that. It hurts, I know. You’d like to be not only “everyone” but “running everything”. But…you don’t. You are among the tiny minority of content-creators and developers in the top 5-10 percent who are “beyond land”. They go to sandboxes or mooch off friends.

    My article counters this persistent myth of the “don’t need land to have fun” gang-banging that constantly forms a hobble to both perceiving reality (most people DO need land to have fun and most people ARE having fun on land lol) and also making policies.

    I don’t believe in making policies for a world based on the haughty dismissal of a tiny clique of teks with a bias against land, who tell you with immense snorting and superiority, that um, it doesn’t rain in SL, so you don’t need a roof, or your wall isn’t any fence for privacy. They are. For thousands of people.

    So please, get off it. Go fly up in your friend’s tree or fly in a cloud on a sandbox or talk in AIM or whatever, just have some common-sense recognition that the overwhelming majority of people logging on regularly want land and love having land and they form the mass public opinion, not you.

  3. Just a thought

    Dec 13th, 2006

    You know it’s funny … again I’m polite and again I get needless venom and grouped into some little ideaology that you seem to use for every person that doesn’t fit your notion of “the way it should be”.

    do yourself a favor and in the future if you are unable to respond to a person’s comments without grouping them together …. well before actually knowing anything about them mind you … then don’t bother to respond.

    with me, you’ll get your ass verbally handed to you for daring to opine without first knowing the person behind the keyboard or sitting back and taking to time to find out/figure out thing one about the other person.

    with you, I don’t need to do that, your personality comes out quite well in your postings and lack of ability to look at individuals.

    Now for the verbal asshandage:

    “I can look at the map. I see land. I see growing meters so fast I couldn’t even explore all the new ones in a day. I see green dots. These green dots are *gasp* on…land.

    They aren’t in a sandbox or holding thinky discussions about Snowcrash on a lame Linden public place.”

    Land? No they’re on a section of rendered *solid* DATA. The house I live in – in real life – is on “land”. And a newsflash for you …. everything in a Sim, unless floating in the sky or set on top of this solid layer of data is part of the ground that you seem to thnk is holier than holy. try thinking before responding, please. It’s no fun engaging in a battle of wits with someone that badly disarmed.

    “Your experience, the experience of the minority of geeks now in the world, is merely your experience. It’s just your clan, your posse. It’s not something we can extrapolate from. The 90,000 people who bought money used it primarily to go rent on land with or go in clubs which are on…land.”

    See above Prok – and by the by, your citing clubs in there doesn’t work at all. do you know why? They don’t own the club! Imagine that! So no, the people that go clubbing don’t need land – the people that OWN the club do.

    “Your notion that you don’t need to do this is your tiny, sectarian notion. Try to understand that. It hurts, I know. You’d like to be not only “everyone” but “running everything”. But…you don’t. You are among the tiny minority of content-creators and developers in the top 5-10 percent who are “beyond land”. They go to sandboxes or mooch off friends.”

    This just goes to show you don’t know a damn thing about me Prok. when it comes to not making baseless asumptions … you fail horribly.

    “My article counters this persistent myth of the “don’t need land to have fun” gang-banging that constantly forms a hobble to both perceiving reality (most people DO need land to have fun and most people ARE having fun on land lol) and also making policies.”

    Hmm …. a section that has nothing to do with my comment at all. try again Prok and keep it on topic, in context of the comment you’re responding to, polite, and … oh hell with it, you’re incapable of any of it anyway.

    “I don’t believe in making policies for a world based on the haughty dismissal of a tiny clique of teks with a bias against land, who tell you with immense snorting and superiority, that um, it doesn’t rain in SL, so you don’t need a roof, or your wall isn’t any fence for privacy. They are. For thousands of people.”

    This doesn’t even enter into my comment so for want of a better way of putting it, it’s meaningless posturing in an attempt to put word in my mouth. Nice try – you fail.

    “So please, get off it. Go fly up in your friend’s tree or fly in a cloud on a sandbox or talk in AIM or whatever, just have some common-sense recognition that the overwhelming majority of people logging on regularly want land and love having land and they form the mass public opinion, not you.”

    sorry, I ascribe to common sense. You do not – otherwise you’d know better than to needlessly group individuals together, just because you don’t agree with them. see, I don’t have any problems with any of the members of any group you may be with …. just you.

  4. Prokofy Neva

    Dec 13th, 2006

    Just a thought, you can derail this interesting discussion with the usual tekkie sectarian rant, or take what I said as a significant and valid challenge to your worldview.

    You’ve just slammed me and put me in a box in your initial response with snide comments like, “The mentors and others are right, you don’t need land to have fun, or for that matter to get a real use out of Second Life.” Huh? Like…the majority of people don’t get a “real use” out of SL and I’m one of them? Like…your hacking around with 3-D tools constitutes “more real use” than my use or my tenants use or anybody’s use? Huh? This smacks of the worst kind of creator-fascism, the kind of thing that someone once plaintively protested against on the forums by writing, “What about the people with no talent?”

    As for clubs, I explain amply in my piece: each landowning member of the cohort of 36,000 supports 1 or 10 or 1000 others. A club-owner provides for 40 people, night after night. And you’re going to tell him he doesn’t need land to have fun? And you’re going to pretend that even those landless clubbers dancing haven’t *taken advantage of* someone’s willingness to have land and own it even through the not-fun times???

    >Land? No they’re on a section of rendered *solid* DATA. The house I live in – in real life – is on “land”. And a newsflash for you …. everything in a Sim, unless floating in the sky or set on top of this solid layer of data is part of the ground that you seem to thnk is holier than holy. try thinking before responding, please. It’s no fun engaging in a battle of wits with someone that badly disarmed.

    No, they’re on land. It’s a virtual world. They accept it. And land of course means the air rights above it and the entire 3-D space, no need to word-salad with it.

    There’s lots more that can be said here but let’s spare Mabb’s delicate eyes, and I’ll simply look at a silly thing like this:

    with me, you’ll get your ass verbally handed to you for daring to opine without first knowing the person behind the keyboard or sitting back and taking to time to find out/figure out thing one about the other person.

    and note that my ass is not handed to me at all, and you have already explicated who you are — you are someone who does not need land to have fun, and who fools around making 3-D stuff in sandboxes with your partner — or planning to, and saying you don’t have enough money.

    Read what you put, take responsibili9ty for your words:

    “buying land or for that matter getting a premium account really is not something that I need to do now is it?”

  5. Just a thought

    Dec 13th, 2006

    Prok, all you’re doing is making me, and anyone else with a single neuron left in their skull for that matter, laugh at your absurd and really quite foolish attempts to dissect my comments.

    again, either keep to the context, content, and topic of this headline or of the comment you’re responding to or please don’t bother respnding at all.

    Your ass HAS been handed to you and you did EXACTLY as I expected you to do.

    Checkmate Prok: You’ve proven who you are and proven that you cannot be civil to anyone you thik has slighted you in the least. if you have so many problems with people on the internet or in second life please, by all means do the logical thing and disconnect your computer, sell it to someone else, and go on with your real life.

    This concluded this installment of “who are you really?” Join us again next time when we post, for all to see, the personality data that has been amassed from these interactins.

    (which by the by is soemthing you sadly missed. You don’t eem to be able to gather much from what someone else puts up here Prok, whereas you can be read like an open book with the way you respond to anyone that dares to disagree with you. Next time you presume to tell me what I think … don’t. You do not know me, you do not know how I think and quite frankly from what I’ve seen you have a hard time wrapping your head around the fact that everyone thnks differently.)

  6. Just a thought

    Dec 13th, 2006

    Oh and by the by – next time you want to try and flame me with such piss poor things as assuming a meaning within one of my comments that is not there in any shape or form (except to your biased mind) … well kindly remember to place your hands in the shredder first to prevent yourself from further showing a lack of basic people skills.

  7. Prokofy Neva

    Dec 13th, 2006

    How old are you in RL?

  8. Just a thought

    Dec 13th, 2006

    I’m old enough to see that you’re simply looking for an excuse for your own actions and words Prok. Move on – this is one debate that you’ve lost due to your own sheer lack of civility, people skills, and common sense and/or decency.

    If all you can do is put words in my mouth and misinterperet what is being said so badly … well then once again you’re not worth my time.

    My comment at the beginning of this was the second attempt to have a civil discourse with you and this is the second time you’ve failed to remain civil and not bring your biased opinion into the matter.

    You only get one more chance to show you can be a normal huma being before I consider you to be a part of the problem …. and I go out of my way to combat people like that Prok.

  9. Prokofy Neva

    Dec 13th, 2006

    Say, I have the perfect date for you — csven Concord!

  10. Just a thought

    Dec 13th, 2006

    Sorry Prok, already spoken for.

    are you done with your rambling yet?

  11. Seola Sassoon a.k.a Random Writer

    Dec 13th, 2006

    “”"”"Your experience, the experience of the minority of geeks now in the world, is merely your experience. It’s just your clan, your posse. It’s not something we can extrapolate from.

    Umm.. double standard much? Why is it, you defend your experiences as the norm, regardless, yet shoot down others for thiers?

    “”"”The 90,000 people who bought money used it primarily to go rent on land with or go in clubs which are on…land.”"”"”

    Prove it. Show me how you came up with this number. *waits* All your numbers, and figures in several stories… has NO basis, but a guess.

    “”"”"with me, you’ll get your ass verbally handed to you for daring to opine without first knowing the person behind the keyboard or sitting back and taking to time to find out/figure out thing one about the other person.”"”"

    And you think that people don’t know a thing about you by all your ramblings, yet you can judge someone on thiers? Ironic.

    “”"”I’m all for basic accounts. They make up many of my customers. I have absolutely no critique of them; I do not ban any status from my land; I do favour the Lindens’ policy; I don’t discriminate and don’t sneer at basics; I also happen to know first-hand that some of the most severe griefing in SL is done by well-known, paid, premium account holders — not the majority of law-abiding basics, many from Europe or Latin America or Asia who cannot access use of the American-accepted credit-cards so easy. They’re welcome to me.”"”"

    Of course they are… not on principle… on money. And those in that country can easily purchase pre-paid debit/credit cards but choose not to. Some do and I’ve helped them do it. It’s a matter of laziness. If you are in an area with a computer good enough to handle SL with the connection to match… then you’d certainly have the means to get verified.

    Obviously tribes in Africa and the like don’t have the means for access to these items, but they don’t have access to SL to boot.

    I do like how you question someone’s age/maturity, then ramble a child’s line. Good call.

  12. Loki Eliot

    Dec 13th, 2006

    I guess id be classed in this middleclass of SL. Im still on a basic account after arriving in SL over a year ago. I rent a comfortable amount of dreamland from Anshechung where i build homes for me and my regular friends in SL. I have shops all over SL where i make enough linden to pay the rent and live comfortably in SL (all be it for the degrading functionality of SL). All this and im not on a premium account. Does this make me a bad person?

  13. Nacon

    Dec 13th, 2006

    Stop yer whining about your own profit loss because you can’t do your business, Prok.
    We all know you can’t do a damn business without putting your money into SL while better people like me can make profit without paying a cent or more! A lot of people are like that, you should know people are different, not clones.

    I think you’re too old to play non-sense in a made up visual world with your own fart-joke theories. Get off.

  14. Cocoanut Koala

    Dec 13th, 2006

    You know what else besides land you don’t need to have fun?

    ANYTHING.

    You don’t need CLOTHES to have fun. I didn’t buy any clothes at all until I had been in SL for over a year. I enjoyed my freebie clothes, mixing and matching them up, and I had plenty to keep me clothed. Yet, I have had plenty of fun. But I do have more fun now that I have bought clothes.

    You don’t need HAIR to have fun. I still wear my default hair, which, by the way, means never having to say you are bald by object culling.

    You don’t need SKINS to have fun. I never bought a skin and don’t particularly want to, yet I have fun.

    You don’t need POSEBALLS to have fun. I never bought a poseball, except some Tiny ones to stick in Tiny furniture I made.

    You don’t need ANIMATIONS or SCRIPTS to have fun. I have friends who buy these, and have fun with them, but I never bought one myself, or felt the need to.

    You can have SKADS of fun without ever buying a THING in SL. I know, because I bought maybe three things for $10 each (outside of textures) in my entire first year in SL.

    There WAS one thing I absolutely had to have to have fun, though, and that was land, or, at least, a home.

    First I had a free apartment. Then I had a very cheap (and grim) apartment.

    Then I saw a notice on the forums about two guys who were starting something where even a basic could “own” land, and since I was a basic (seeing how far I could get as a basic, as a sort of challenge to myself), I popped right over.

    That was when Adam and Nexus had Meins. Took me about ten minutes of talking to them to decide I wanted to “own” a piece of their land. Then they moved to their first island, and I moved with them. I’ve lived there ever since.

    I literally could not have fun if I didn’t have a home.

    That wasn’t enough, though. I also had to have my own land, for my shop. I started with a free 512, and moved up from there. THAT is how I have my fun.

    And it’s even more fun to have my very own land. If I had to choose between the two, and couldn’t have both, I would choose to have my own land rather than “own” on Azure Islands.

    I imagine that for many people like me, it’s not true that you can have just as much fun without having any land. Just as, for some, it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun without hair.

    ***

    He lives with his parents irl, Prok.

    coco

  15. Tom

    Dec 13th, 2006

    “By various real estimates, log-ins are now likely 100,000-120,000 per day”

    Just a bit of a correction here. Using the 7, 14, 30, 60-day login numbers, we can calculate an approximate number of daily logins. Basically, the publised uniques follow a very clean curve which we can extrapolate back to t=1 day. When we do this, we find daily unique logins of around 73,000 per day.

    With 18,000-20,000 new accounts registered each day, that suggests closer to 55,000-60,000 existing accounts (i.e. those that are not zero-days-old new registrations) logging in each day. Roughly 2x smaller than your estimate.

  16. salivatore

    Dec 13th, 2006

    Nice article Prok. Actually surprisingly good.

  17. Prokofy Neva

    Dec 13th, 2006

    Tom, I’m happy to accept your numbers — except they are yesterday’s numbers and it grows every day.

    I was just taking a basic eyeball snapshot every 3-4 hours. It happens that I log on to SL at all wierd hours as I fit it into others things I’m going. So I see 15,000 logged in here; 18,000 logged in another time; 7,000 yet another; but even in the wee hours I sometimes then suddenly the next day see 10,000 — and so it goes. We’re told by Lindens that the average log-in is 4 hours long. So I just take 15,000 or 20,000 or whatever I see up there and multiple it by 6 — that gives me 90,000-120,000.

    Is that scientific? Of course not. But it’s no less scientific than the Lindens’ stuff. This 30-day and 60-day stuff just strikes me as being for the birds. It doesn’t feel real. I can’t see it. Whereas I can see when I glance at the web page at any given time of the night or day a solid 10,000 — and actually that was last week’s it is now much greater.

    Yesterday, a mere Tuesday, the LindEx reach its highest volume ever — 37 million. To be sure, some of it is Supply Linden devaluing our labour and stipends cashing out but it’s also purchases — it just shows a lot of people doing a lot of stuff if nothing else.

    It’s not politically correct to say that the Lindens have 100,000 real people. But they do.

  18. Tom

    Dec 13th, 2006

    I’m not disputing that there may be 100,000 real people using SL. I’m just saying they’re not all logging in on any one day.

    And, just for the record, the 73,000 figure I calculated was using the stats as of midnight last night, so they shouldn’t be terribly far off the number from today. Claiming that my numbers represent “yesterday’s values” is just splitting hairs IMHO — the one-day uniques as I calculate it has varied between roughly 59,000 and 79,000 over the past month without a steady increase evident.

  19. Just a thought

    Dec 13th, 2006

    Seola, unlike some I actually read into a person through more interaction than just a blog or message board posting. since you haven’t seen me in world yet, and since you already seem to think you know me through these postings I’ll answer your question:

    Yes, I can.` I actually do more than just read a blog post/message board entry/chat(or IM) log and react to the content …. Now if you or anyone else can honestly say that you’re reacting to the person and not the content then perhaps I’d be willing to back off in telling you not to judge without doing your homework.

    Until then, I’lll continue to do so. (Notice how I haven’t said anything about you personally or your character?)

    As for you coco …. I was wondering how long it’d take you to rush to defend Prok (or attempt to anyway). Please don’t bother in the future,it’s a waste of your time and a waste of space.

    Need a home to have fun? since you haven’t explained why it was a requirement to own a home or land within Second Life I can only assume your reason for posting here was to attempt to make a point. Owning land to have a shop isn’t needed ….. rent a space and use a vendor. heck, find a group that has a shop and use that.

    As for where I may or may not live in real life coco – that is information for me to hand out, no one else.

  20. Petey

    Dec 13th, 2006

    aaaaah stop arguing about a video game oh god just stop

  21. Tom

    Dec 13th, 2006

    I’m not arguing about a game — I’m arguing about statistics. I’m not sure if that makes me more lame or less… :P

  22. Cocoanut Koala

    Dec 13th, 2006

    You did hand out that information, Just a Thought, on the SL blog. (Also your real SL name, but I didn’t copy that down.)

    Yes, I do need a house to have fun. That’s just all there is to it. Lots of people are that way.

    It’s also true that a lot of my fun comes from having my own shop, too. It wouldn’t be fun for me to rent a space and have a vendor. Just no fun!

    Course, should the day come when I decide I want to stop giving LL money, I might just do that, but it wouldn’t be much fun at all. (A lot more hassle, too.)

    But really, I do need a house and a shop to have fun. Other people need a house. Nobody can tell me I don’t need these things to have fun in SL, because they would be WRONG.

    Other people really, really need hair and skins to have fun. Now, I don’t get that, really, as it’s not something I need to have fun.

    But – I wouldn’t tell them that they really don’t need their hair and skins to have fun.

    coco

  23. Just a thought

    Dec 13th, 2006

    Coco, let’s see if you can understand something here: I and I alone decide when and where any personal information gets released. Not you.

    as such I have already said that my personal information has no relevance here whatsoever.

    Now, if all you’re going to say is that you need a house and shop to have fun … then say it once (IE your prior post) and leave it at that.

    I’ll just continue to think that you cannot properly explain why you need a house and shop to have fun (which seems to be quite true. The old method of “just because” doesn’t work with me.)

  24. Cocoanut Koala

    Dec 13th, 2006

    Why, don’t you need a house and shop to have fun?

    If not, why not? And don’t tell me, “Just because!”

    coco

  25. Just a thought

    Dec 13th, 2006

    I already explained why in an earlier comment coco. go read it.

    Nice attempt to dodge the question by the way.

  26. Cocoanut Koala

    Dec 13th, 2006

    You said you didn’t need to buy land, but you didn’t explain why it is you don’t need land to have fun!

    coco

  27. Just a thought

    Dec 13th, 2006

    since you seem to be missing it coco I’ll repost it and bold it for you – then perhaps you’ll ceae your attempt to dodge ezplaining your own comment.

    “The mentors and others are right, you don’t need land to have fun, or for that matter to get a real use out of Second Life. I and my co-conspirator (read: partner in this project) cannot afford a 3D modeling system at this time and thus development for our game project has been at one hell of a standstill – still only in the initial phases of being wirrten in terms of story and characters.

    Now that may not mean much to you but it does to anyone I have to buy avatar parts and accessories from in order to actually make 3D renderings of these characters.

    Now with this said, buying land or for that matter getting a premium account really is not something that I need to do now is it? There are bound to be others that build or contribute in some way, perhaps in buying from others or in doing free work …. In fact one of my friends in Second Life builds and scripts for free.”

    Like I said,I already explained it in a prior comment. try again.

  28. Cocoanut Koala

    Dec 13th, 2006

    Yes, you can’t afford it – I got that. And it is smart not to think you just have to have something that you can’t afford in order to have fun. (I certainly have never thought that way! That’s a sure way to be unhappy.)

    But since I can afford to have land, I wouldn’t be feeling I was having enough fun – to justify the work spent in SL – if I didn’t have my home and my shop to make it more fun.

    If I couldn’t have those things, I doubt I WOULD do so much work in SL, because it would be less fun. I would probably just come in and horse around, or more likely, play some other online games more. And even in those games, I like the ones where I can have a house, or a place to call home.

    So you can have fun in SL without having land, and so can lots of people – but lots of people wouldn’t consider it fun if they couldn’t have land. Even if they could rent land or a house from someone else.

    coco

  29. Just a thought

    Dec 13th, 2006

    :Nod: Now, something to note coco …. I hate responding the way I do, but I do so anyway (to explain: If there’s even the slightest hint of ab attitude, attack, or any sort of tactic used to deflect attention away from an issue … I tend to become very aggressive).

    Now I can understand your reasoning and thinking. That said, part of the process of making these characters is setting their personality – something that is best done (for me anyway) through Role Play.

    If I had the money to do so I’d have bought up several plots of land to use for homes for each character ….. but then, to me the land and homes would be nothing more than a set and props.

    This is how I’ve viewed nearly every 3D interactive system out there. I’m glad people are making money from this ssytem …. but I don’t see it as anything more than one giant set and a mass number of props (no not the people too).

    I don’t see SL real estate as REAL estate (real land), so the whole issue of it being a business to me is silly. Then again I don’t see Avatar vendors or other such things as anything but props and costumes (with exception to the black wolf I bought. I’m a furry and that is ME). I think of turning that into a real business as silly too ….. but I don’t begrudge the content creators their lindens, nor would I begrudge the realtors their lindens.

    I simply see articles like this – no matter how well written or how much I may agree with them – as making a mountain out of a quark.

  30. Cocoanut Koala

    Dec 14th, 2006

    Well, none of it is real, really, except the people behind the keyboards.

    (And the money the LL makes, and the money content providers make, and the money people spend on it all!)

    I don’t know what ab attitude is, but my abs aren’t good enough to have any attitude!

    coco

  31. Just a thought

    Dec 14th, 2006

    … an attitude coco … an atitude.

    got some coffee? I just woke back up.

  32. Cocoanut Koala

    Dec 14th, 2006

    oh

    coco

  33. Cocoanut Koala

    Dec 14th, 2006

    Coffee – never touch the stuff!

    coco

  34. Seola Sassoon a.k.a Random Writer

    Dec 14th, 2006

    “”"”Seola, unlike some I actually read into a person through more interaction than just a blog or message board posting. since you haven’t seen me in world yet, and since you already seem to think you know me through these postings I’ll answer your question:

    Yes, I can.` I actually do more than just read a blog post/message board entry/chat(or IM) log and react to the content …. Now if you or anyone else can honestly say that you’re reacting to the person and not the content then perhaps I’d be willing to back off in telling you not to judge without doing your homework.”"”"

    Ummm… I was responding to Prok, hence the quoting. What does that have to do with you?

    And where exactly does it say I know people through a blog?

    What the heck are you trying to debate?

    *walks off scratching her head*

  35. Seola Sassoon a.k.a Random Writer

    Dec 14th, 2006

    “”"”Then again I don’t see Avatar vendors or other such things as anything but props and costumes (with exception to the black wolf I bought. I’m a furry and that is ME).”"”"

    And that’s not them, but it can be you?

    *scratches head again*

  36. mktgemail

    Dec 14th, 2006

    http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420.html

    Topic 420 – Bartering Income

    Bartering occurs when you exchange goods or services without exchanging money. An example of bartering is a plumber doing repair work for a dentist in exchange for dental services. The fair market value of goods and services exchanged must be included in the income of both parties.

    Income from bartering is taxable in the year in which you receive the goods or services. Generally, you report this income on Form 1040, Schedule C (PDF), Profit or Loss from Business. If you failed to report bartering income on returns you have already filed, you should correct this by filing an amended return, Form 1040X (PDF), for each year involved. For information on amended returns, refer to Topic 308.

    A barter exchange is any person or organization with members or clients that contract with each other (or with the barter exchange) to jointly trade or barter property or services. The term does not include arrangements that provide solely for the informal exchange of similar services on a noncommercial basis.

    The Internet has provided a medium for new growth in the bartering exchange industry. This growth prompts the following reminder: Barter exchanges are required to file Form 1099–B for all transactions unless certain exceptions are met. Refer to Barter Exchanges for additional information on this subject.

    If you are in a business or trade, you may deduct any costs you incurred to perform the work that was bartered. If you exchanged property or services through a barter exchange, you should receive a Form 1099-B (PDF), Proceeds from Broker and Barter Exchange Transactions. The Form 1099–B or other statement generally will show the value of any cash, property, services, credits, or scrip you received from the exchange during the year. The IRS will also receive the same information.

    If you receive income from bartering, you may be required to make estimated tax payments. Refer to Topic 355 for additional information.

    Additional examples of bartering, and information on how to report the income, are described in Publication 525, Taxable and Nontaxable Income.

  37. mktgemail

    Dec 14th, 2006

    http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420.html

    Topic 420 – Bartering Income

    Bartering occurs when you exchange goods or services without exchanging money. An example of bartering is a plumber doing repair work for a dentist in exchange for dental services. The fair market value of goods and services exchanged must be included in the income of both parties.

    Income from bartering is taxable in the year in which you receive the goods or services. Generally, you report this income on Form 1040, Schedule C (PDF), Profit or Loss from Business. If you failed to report bartering income on returns you have already filed, you should correct this by filing an amended return, Form 1040X (PDF), for each year involved. For information on amended returns, refer to Topic 308.

    A barter exchange is any person or organization with members or clients that contract with each other (or with the barter exchange) to jointly trade or barter property or services. The term does not include arrangements that provide solely for the informal exchange of similar services on a noncommercial basis.

    The Internet has provided a medium for new growth in the bartering exchange industry. This growth prompts the following reminder: Barter exchanges are required to file Form 1099–B for all transactions unless certain exceptions are met. Refer to Barter Exchanges for additional information on this subject.

    If you are in a business or trade, you may deduct any costs you incurred to perform the work that was bartered. If you exchanged property or services through a barter exchange, you should receive a Form 1099-B (PDF), Proceeds from Broker and Barter Exchange Transactions. The Form 1099–B or other statement generally will show the value of any cash, property, services, credits, or scrip you received from the exchange during the year. The IRS will also receive the same information.

    If you receive income from bartering, you may be required to make estimated tax payments. Refer to Topic 355 for additional information.

    Additional examples of bartering, and information on how to report the income, are described in Publication 525, Taxable and Nontaxable Income.

  38. Just a thought

    Dec 14th, 2006

    seola, this section right here in your comment:

    “”"”"”with me, you’ll get your ass verbally handed to you for daring to opine without first knowing the person behind the keyboard or sitting back and taking to time to find out/figure out thing one about the other person.”"”"

    And you think that people don’t know a thing about you by all your ramblings, yet you can judge someone on thiers? Ironic.”

    Was directed at me – unless you thought prok was saying he/she would be handing someone their ass.

  39. Just a thought

    Dec 14th, 2006

    And Seola, if you knew anything about furries this comment wouldn’t have been made:

    “”"”Then again I don’t see Avatar vendors or other such things as anything but props and costumes (with exception to the black wolf I bought. I’m a furry and that is ME).”"”"

    And that’s not them, but it can be you?

    *scratches head again*”

    Please do some research.

  40. Dale Luna

    Dec 15th, 2006

    I just read the new and final(thread locked!) comment on the blog by Robin Linden, these people must be legally retarded. I wish they weren’t, but they are seriously limited by their beliefs and IQ. I am sick of this ‘watermelons rock’ kind of culture(ffs hire some smart ppl instead of happy mongols who love colors), and this;
    “We recognize that counting the number of registrations is only one number, and not a particularly meaningful one with respect to the actual population of Second Life.”
    Well crap – get counting again, and stop promoting your BS numbers, Signora Doubletalk. We don’t all believe that you have to touch everything you count, some of us are aware of technology. More aware than you it would seem. Read your logs, and here is a really really novel idea which is sure to take off….read the feedback!

  41. Seola Sassoon a.k.a Random Writer

    Dec 17th, 2006

    On the first one JaT, yes, I read that wrong, so that was my fault, but then yes, it’s sorta true but not in the way it was presented… if that makes sense.

    As for furries, I still don’t see how the comment of “avatars are props and costumes except for ME”. I have a very good friend, who IS a furry and long time ago sat down and talked to me about it all (I had some odd questions and it came up in the conversation).

    Who are you to say that’s not who ‘THEY’ are but it is ‘YOU’?

    What makes you so different than others represented as fury avatars?

  42. Just a thought

    Dec 17th, 2006

    seola, you misread that one as well. I’m reffering to the OTHER avatars I use – nothing more and nothing less.

    All the other Avatars I’ve used simply do not fit me at all …. the black wolf does, so in essence it is Me.

  43. Seola Sassoon a.k.a Random Writer

    Dec 18th, 2006

    Oh oh oh oh, k, that’s much more clear… the way you made it sound by what you typed was that it was others that were them was costumed but you were who you are.

    I get it now… my apologies on the furry.

  44. Just a thought

    Dec 18th, 2006

    ‘s ok Seola – I myself get a little …. rabid when posting on some topics. My apologies for jumping down your throat.

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