Archive for 'Virtual Business, Finance and Economics'

Love and Love Seats

What do you do when you come home and find a couple humping in your bed? by Wendell Holmer, metaverse home and garden reporter Prim Perfect publisher Saffia Widdershins and a pet In one day, Prim Perfect’s blog got as many hits as the number of magazines sold in the previous month—and three new advertisers [...]

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Linden Lab’s Metaverse Maths: 1 + 1 = 10

SL must grow constantly to be profitable – a sophisticated Ponzi scheme?3000 servers for 50k simultaneous users – 1/3 of LL’s income from selling new servers each month by Gwyneth Llewelyn, mostly harmless meta-resident We believe Linden Lab is a profitable company, at least since April 2007, because Jeska Linden blundered that out in a [...]

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That’s Cold. Have the SL Haters Gone Too Far?

First it was Forbes, declaring the meatspace corporate invasion of SL to be a bust. Then it was the LA times, which reported the departure of several feted meatspace projects (like American Apparel and Starwood — “there wasn’t a compelling reason to stay”). Now the Wall Street Journal Online and c|net are piling on as [...]

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New York Times, Dream Houses, and SL

by Espresso Saarinen Shopping in SL is not quite like RL Yesterday’s New York Times had a very positive article about Second Life, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/09/garden/09second.html that helps explain the appeal of the metaverse to an audience unfamiliar with the concept. Instead of sex and gambling, or the mega-corporate flopping while trying to duplicate RL marketing in [...]

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Ginko Financial’s End-Game

L$200,000,000 in obligations, no liquid assets — queue up and wait by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk get in the Ginko queue Sunday afternoon, GinkoTec and Ginko Financial honcho Hinoserm Rebus sent a notecard to customers who have deposited Linden space bucks in the role-play bank known as Ginko Financial. The notecard and announcement at [...]

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Ginko Financial’s AVIX Buyout Blocked

Cash crunch and opaque accounting limits Ginko’s appeal by Jessica Holyoke The SL financial market was roiled today by news that the Ginko Financial Group, owned by Nicholas Portocarrero was attempting to buy a controlling interest in AVIX financials, owned by Investor Allen. After previous reports of Ginko’s inability to cover withdrawals from the “bank”, [...]

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Boxed In: A Nation of Landlords

By Prokofy Neva, Dept. of Virtual EstateThe other night I attended an off-the-record meeting of inworld business people who, for some reason I couldn’t fathom decided to use the new outworld Crowne Plaza meeting space (claiming to be the first such private meeting facility in SL!) under the theory that this was “safer” or “more [...]

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Second Life Economic Statistics Analyzed

by Curious Rousselot, metaverse numerologist As many of us are no doubt aware; Linden Lab publishes statistics about Second Life. Conveniently they also make the historical data available in Excell and OpenOffice, and Google Docs format. This gives us here at the Herald a chance to see how the economy of Second Life is doing [...]

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New Logo for SL? Or New Business Model?

By Prokofy Neva, KremlindenologistIf you look closely at the new SL Brasil web page that will launch the Brazilian community in Second Life with official Linden support tomorrow, you’ll see an interesting new logo: “Second Life Grid”. It’s a logo separate from the Kaizen Games: SL Global Provider” to the left of it, and appears [...]

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Gambling on the Virtual World Trade Center

by Rhinestone Bling, business reporter …coming soon to a metaverse near you Friedman- SL Entrepreneur LukeConnell Vandeverre is gambling despite the recent Linden discouragement of the practice. His brand of gambling doesn’t involve cards or dice, however, it involves stocks and buildings; namely, it involves his holdings in the Second Life World Stock Exchange and [...]

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