The Alphaville Herald

Today In Second Life

by prokofy on 14/05/07 at 8:29 pm

By Prokofy Neva, Accumulator of Masses of Meaningless Statistics That Might Render a Clue, Somewhere

o Actually, this post could be about any time in the last two years of Second Life, but who’s to know?

o Inventory was borked. I had 12,427 out of 18,673 items. A guy got really mad at me for returning his ride ‘em poseball when he particle bombed an apartment building, and it got lost. How many ride ‘ems will support@ be looking for today?

o Mystery of Second Life, awaiting enlightenment: 1) In the last 24 hours, $1,598,377 was spent (real life dollars!) but 2) only $235,246 was shown in LindEx activity in the last 24 hours and 3) only 302,665 people spent more than $1 in SL last month; 1,007 of them 500,001-1,000,000 Lindens whereas 4) 10,858,472 transactions were made, of which 2,035,045 were only L$1 and only 240 were $L500,000 dollars. I have a feeling that I’m glad my math isn’t better, because I don’t think all these figures add up.

o Fortunately, a few weeks ago, Zee Linden told us during an office hour that he “never pays attention” to that front-page inworld transaction number. We all recognize that it reflects things like casinos pouring from Lost Wages to Los Vegas and back again 24/7, plus bouncing payments on rentomatics and shifting Lindens among alts.

o What is the true, Gross National Product of Second Life, such as it it? Answer: a) $47,838 per day, b) three Coke bottle tops in a mash-up with 2 real, one virtual, and one having a “free Coke” as a prize and the others saying SORRY; c) that, and $3.70 and you can still buy a grande mocha skim soy peppermint latte.

o Look at the map. How many green dots do you see paired up *really really close* (or sometimes 3). How many orgasms per day is SL able to facilitate as a percentage of total log-ons? a) 30,729 b) none, they are only pixels they mean nothing; c) 7,805 because people use porn pages on the Internet and porn movies inworld so no fair saying it’s all SL’s credit. For extra credit: how many of those green-dot pileups will be flagged to adult? a) 42 b) none c) 15,798

o Supply Linden sold only 189,258,555 Lindens in April, or about US $700,256, down from that first million he made earlier this year in sales and the $800,000 he totted up in March. This was due to his manful efforts to fall on his sword and Keep the Linden Stable during what was likely a massive casino owner cash-out. Question: why wasn’t it more, given what had to be a big cash-out? a) Supply Linden is buying, not just selling; b) casino owners bought up all the Linden-denominated land on the auction; c) casino owners didn’t cash out because they are all still in business.

o Why does the LindEx drop a whopping *10 points on average* every coupla days, from 266 to 276 (i.e. more Lindens means value against the dollar drops): a) those are Anshe Chung’s tier days and she takes a lower price on her cashout to pay tier; b) those are Supply Linden’s sale days; c) those are Prokofy’s menstrual periods when fits of pique cause him to cash out of SL or d) Ginko or WSE is dumping those days.