“Popular Places” is equally useless. Just because a group of sex-mad zombies decided to stand “dancing” (translated: cybering) at a nightclub all day doesn’t make the place a landmark worth visiting.

Traffic and number of people visiting a sim means nothing. Each person will find their own value. Rather than relying on bogus “traffic” figures, word-of-mouth should draw people to various locations. That is the most accurate and most effective method.

Get rid of traffic– and the camping chairs will vanish overnight… as well as the people taking up system resources by sitting in them.

Hey, but y’know LL… ghead and keep traffic and camping chairs. You’ve kept them this long. Why do anything logical now? Just another nail in the ol’ coffin, far as I’m concerned. XD

One thing SL lacks to be a true economy is the bottom rung. The newbie has camping, money trees, and prostitution. And that’s pretty much it.

Artemis answered that well. Two things: 1) Any corporation with a lick-o-sense can read demographics and realize that only 5-10% of the claimed “residency” is active and 2) As Artemis pointed out, if they are acquainted at all with SL, they know the Freebie users take up a lot of bandwidth and assets without contributing monetarily to the system.

Being businesses, they may also consider that someone who doesn’t pay for membership might not be willing to pay for real world goods either. Not much draw there. They’re not interested in those who don’t spend money; they’re interested in those who do.

Curious> How exactly does “actual L$ purchase” contribute to the economy? By that I am guessing you mean using the LindeX to buy L$ for US$. Based on what I read about the LindeX that would actually take away from the economy of SL since LL takes a cut from the seller and charges the buyer a fixed price. So, the buyer has less L$ to spend in-game than the seller had.<

I misspoke– other ways to contribute to the economy is by purchasing Premium memberships and by paying tier fees, of course. However, when someone buys L$, a handling fee goes to Linden Lab. That’s profit for them, which helps keep SL alive. Although the seller loses a little in the transaction, that’s just cost of doing business (the same is true in RL). The buyer uses those L$ to make the seller richer, and the seller in turn pays fees to LL (or to someone who pays tier to LL) as a cost of operation. Thus, purchasing L$ enriches both LL and its paying customers. If not for marketing, I think it is safe to say that LL wouldn’t be renting near as much land as it is now; merchants cover a large chunk of the grid. And if not for people who purchase L$ or gain them through Premium memberships… there would be no merchants.

Mind you, that’s not how I’d do business if I were LL. It’s somewhat self-defeating, as their operating in the red fo so long indicates. Just out of curiosity, I once worked out a business plan that indicated profitability within 90 days… but I’m not about to let them in on it. XD

Well said, Ordinal

>it just shuffles change from one pocket to another.

Free markets don’t make judgements like hothouse guild economies. They don’t decide that money given as a loss-leader by a casino to a newbie to buy hair is “shuffled” from one pocket to another, but money purchased off the Lindens from another resident cashing out from his hair creation, and then used to buy hair for that buyer, is now somehow sanitized and “not shuffled”. In a free market, all the transactions are good, and as the old saying goes, “money doesn’t stink”.

You could argue that people spending money to pay out in camp chairs are foolish, but why are they lesser human beings than those who create free hair for newbies and pat themselves on the back that they are a Friend 2 Newbz? They’re not. They’re just getting people hooked on their stores to buy the more expensive stuff, just like the casino owners want you to buy at the vendors at the casino or play the slots. The camp chairs are the starter fluid the economy still needs.

I don’t oppose unverified, free accounts because the reality is, I see them spend money all the time:

o they are alts, and the mains transfer money to them so they are merely extensions of a verified account that wants more anonymity

o they are Europeans and Latin Americans and others without easy PayPal solutions, trying to get adjusted, and they usually wind up in the economy somehow

o they are dependent people — people who are either having a boyfriend pay for them, or a university professor, or even a big corporation — so what of it?

If they are just mall rats, they bring traffic, they create opportunities for business, they often work in fact, and work hard for Lindens, not just as campers but at other jobs that other people look down on like sexscorts and DJs and bouncers.

I’m not interested in making the unverified campers pay for the CPU. I’m interesting in having the Lindens *charge the landowners with the camp chairs* for their draw on the CPU and their veto on the FPS for everyone else on the sim. Once they have to pay for swiping our FPS and CPU, we’ll see a quick end to this form of starter fluid.
o

Actually, if I remember right, quite a few corporations were already involved before the free account shift over of the apt date 6/6/06. IBM I believe was one of those that was around for a while (as Jessica Qin certainly was) albeit hidden, and there was American Apparel of course, and other such ones that really started their own flow for bringing corporations over.

Certainly then, if you want to argue that point that the bragging rights of having a ton of “users” (albeit most of them dead accounts) brought over corporations that paid for their stay, then I could say how now, because of all these users clogging the grid, they’re scaring away otherwise interested corporations who see all the lag, grid crashes, and service problems and decide to pass.

How exactly does “actual L$ purchase” contribute to the economy? By that I am guessing you mean using the LindeX to buy L$ for US$. Based on what I read about the LindeX that would actually take away from the economy of SL since LL takes a cut from the seller and charges the buyer a fixed price. So, the buyer has less L$ to spend in-game than the seller had.

Wayfinder also said, “No, I can’t say that Free users contribute in any way to the economy. Granted, I may be overlooking something, so if I am… I’m open to other thoughts.”

As for non-paying residents they are indirectly contributing to server up-keep. The bragging rights that LL has on the number of registered accounts is what gets the corporate advertising money (remember IBM, Dell, and Toyota).

All that being said, I as one of the non-paying residents don’t expect the same ‘rights’ in the game as a paying resident gets. And that has been spelled out pretty clearly, I can’t own land. I don’t get a weekly stipends and now I may not be able to log-in during peak hours (all weekend maybe). So be it. I accept that. If the new restriction becomes a problem for me, I will leave and not return.

I also have a few ideas that might help improve the ‘grid’ but they aren’t trivial to implement and if LL wants to hear them, they can contact me in whatever manner they wish but I’m not going to bother posting here (since I doubt LL reads the Herald).

WHAT AM I SAYING???

Spend your money on something else instead. Trust me, you’ll be better off and won’t feel like you’ve just blown $80 down a lag tube. XD