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From the days when there was 69k people logging on, god knows what it is now, but for sure it def has dropped to what I think is critical levels, the other day myself and my partner decided we go and look for somewhere to dance, I could not belive how many places were empty and I not talking about low turn out times, I think we hopped to about 7 clubs then decided to quit looking, I own a club but its more for my 24\7 blues radio and a place for newbies to chill out,I aslo sell tats

on market place and at my club, again sales are so low to the extent of maybe one a month, dispite my add's

I really want to know what LL's are doing about this, keeping us in the dark and thinking we cannot see this and the amount

of friends that have left SL either for new worlds or just quit dues to the cost, Its about time LL's told us what thier future plans are and how they tend to get things back up to the levels it was, and before anyone say I am moaning, please dont

forget I do pay £££ to play this game so I have a right to express my views, I really dont want to leave SL as I have made many friends which is the main factor I am here, but thier will come a time when I will also hang my boots up,

I like to here anyone views or better still any LL's employee's as the projected future plan of SL

 

 

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The decline hasn't been a secret at all. In the early days, the LL owners had a vision for the future of 3D environments, which included the inter-grid TPing. They even got as far as actually doing the inter-grid TPs. But over the years, they have seen that this kind of environment isn't going to take off so they've changed their vision to what it is now - extracting as much money from customers as they can, while they still can.

Usership peaked with the concurrency in the high 80ks, where it was for some time, and occasionally reaching into the 90ks. That was significantly reduced when traffic gaming was banned, and most traffic bots disappeared. But the disappearance of most traffic bots didn't account for all of the the decline. LLs actions and practises towards their paying customers accounts for a good deal of the decline, as does people simply getting bored with SL.

None of it really matters though (except LL's abysmal treatment of their paying customers). SL is what it is. It doesn't have mass appeal and it never will. Like many other things, it's just a thing to be enyoyed by those to whom it appeals, and to be ignored by those to whom it doesn't appeal. It's no big deal.

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thanks for you input as I tend to agree with you, but what i dont understand is I belive there is massive potentual in 3D worlds, when I look at facebook and other networking sites, I see only 2 dimensional, The fact the SL can offer as much bewilders me that no massive Company had looked at this and invest in the abitly to make this a massive social network

site,

the fact aslo I belive masses are leaving is the stabitly of the viewer and the bugs that consitantly bear on us, there is not 

day when I crash without any warning, and the bugs I encounter whiles in SL, I could write a chapter on it LOL

I def enjoying being in SL but how much stress and playabitly there is, I wonder when the the status que will diminsish and 

call it day.

It needs a CE to take the reins of SL and re-vamp it sort out the bugs and of course make a profit but offer the service

to go with it, taking profits without a quality service will be a downfall and in the end I think

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"Display names" was LL's attempt at attracting people who enjoy social networking, but it failed because SL isn't a social network type of system. It initially attracted sign-ups, but it didn't increase the actual usership (concurrency), which still continued to decline, albeit at a slower rate. If a person wants social networking, there are places to enjoy it, and SL simply isn't one of them.

SL is completely different. It appeals to some people but it doesn't have the mass appeal of, say, Facebook and Twitter.

LL is a company that merely potters around with things, adds things that only partially work, with no regard for their customers, and simply makes some money while they can. There's nothing more they can do because the SL type of system doesn't have the appeal that things like Facebook and Twitter have.

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Correction to the above post:

Actually, there is something positive that LL could do if they weren't too dumb to see it. They could take their paying customers into account instead of their usual practise of alienating them and driving them away. It's an "us and them" environment instead of a "we" one, and that's entirely due to the practises and poor attitude towards customers of LL as a company.

What they've created is something that is greatly, and publicly, criticised by their own customers, but they are too dumb to realise that such public criticism, from such sources, is bound to have detrimental effects on SL as a whole. Personally, I don't care - LL has literally caused me not to care in the slightest whether SL survives or not.

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Yes they could and should do a whole lot better for their customers, especially women.  I don't think LL has a clue on HOW females shop.  They definitely could use a lot of female input to make SL better.  Women tend to be the largest consumers in the world in general whether RL or SL, so female input is definitely needed (exclamation point).  I mean just take no wish bar area on Marketplace... I have lost so many items I would have liked because I couldn't store them and now cannot find them.  When creating a business, you need to take your largest demographic consumers into consideration. 

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To address this about empty sims, yes I too find them a lot.  However, there are a few clubs that are so popular you get grey bots or eggs not to mention way too much lag because there is just frankly too much stuff and too many avi's in them.  They should set up some kind of "room limit" with a message that says 'sim is full at the moment, try again later'.  That would help people search for other clubs and also help with the lag problem and/or the crashing or freezing on the sims that just have far too many things going for any computer to load that much stuff.  I've been to some clubs that are so jammed, they do need a waiting list.  lol 

But definately female input is needed.  I'm always saying to myself, SL was designed by a man who doesn't understand that women are by far the largest consumers in the world period.  Male avatars often have like 5 to 10 outfits, if even that.  In comparison, women have a lot more than that; at least 500 or more, not to mention we need more shoes than a male avi! 

However, "room limit" is a good idea also, that gives people incentive to seek out the empty sims and have a better overall experience with SL and their computer.  However, clubs do need to hire Dj's that play music as described in their description, so that's why I assume some clubs are so full and other's not, it's just bad Dj hiring.  In the wanted section, people should say what type of music they are looking for when placing a want ad either for a Dj or for other jobs.  Sure, we can find new names of clubs by searching the wanted hire section, but they say nothing of what type of music it is, so I don't bother seeking out their club.  If they said what type of music they play in their want ads and it's a type of music I like, THEN I would seek them out.   If a want ad just had a name of club and Dj and hostess wanted but no type of music listed, I don't bother to seek them out as they failed to provide info about the club and it's music. 

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Mayalily wrote:

  I mean just take no wish bar area on Marketplace... I have lost so many items I would have liked because I couldn't store them and now cannot find them.  

On any Marketplace item you can use the 'Add to Favourties' option (underneath the prmission to the right of the description).

You can view anything you have added to your favourites in the future by going to 'My Marketplace' (top right) then 'My Favourites' :)

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greek Wingtips wrote:

From the days when there was 69k people logging on, god knows what it is now, but for sure it def has dropped to what I think is critical levels

 

Your answers can be found here (check the various concurrency and residents logged in metrics)

http://www.gridsurvey.com/economy.php

Which, while it does show a drop that occurred around April last year, shows a relatively consistent number of users since then (bearing in mind that we are also in a predictible slight summer dip). I'm not sure how you can say it has 'definitely dropped to critical levels' but the evidence shows that it's far from critical.

I'd love to see the trend grow again obviously but, as user numbers are consistent, there is no cause for panic. Give me a shout if the actual evidence shows a consistent downward trend and then I'll panic with you! ;)

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I've seen that favorites option when I need to look at my transactions log, but have not found 'favorites' yet.  If it had a bar that says put in favorites, I might have found it already.  So, exactly where is the favorites option and how do you work it? 

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          Hi Greek,

     I agree that LL could and should do a little more when dealing with their customers. There have been many instances where their actions have flown in the face of what would seem to be popular among the residents. Some of these have had little or no real consequence to our actual lives here while others have had a more pronounced effect. Some that are upcoming will have similar effects both for the good and the bad.

     With respect to concurrency in general and club traffic specifically, I have some thoughts. First on concurrency. Several things have changed which factor into the drop. The banning of bots as well as basically removing traffic as an element of search. Now, it isn't nearly as attractive for a club/shop owner to have 19 alts parked over their sim on a platform all day every day. That in and of itself brings the daily numbers down. Club traffic is a fickle thing. A club can be wildly popular and then for unknown reasons not be. Also, we have to consider that there are new clubs opening everyday, diluting the existing resident base further. The first has little or no bearing on anything, except the daily concurrency numbers as these alts were created for the sole purpose of generating traffic and contributed nothing to the grid. The second only means that club owners must be energetic and proactive in seeking and keeping their guests.

     What I think many overlook or discount too much are the main causes of a certain level of stagnation in SL. First, the fact that LL does seemingly little to actually advertise and promote their product. This is something that can't possibly be overlooked. Another is that while people may talk to their RL friends and co-workers about FB, twitter and the like, I'm sure that for various reasons, those same individuals would be unlikely to share their activities in SL with the same group. If you would like to test this, just think about how many people you personally have told about SL versus your FB/Twitter account. This is a large factor in the growth of those platforms.

     I believe that the largest factor contributing to this now 2+ year decline is one that I have raised before and which always gets dismissed. I want to borrow a line from an American politician here and this is not directed at you it merely fits. "It's the economy stupid." No, I don't mean the SL economy but the RL world version. I live in the states, which by best guesses accounts for about 40% of residents. Here our official unemployment stands at a bit over 9%, with the "real" number likely closer to 13-15%. Add to that a fairly significant number of people who now find themselves underemployed and it isn't a stretch to say that 1 in 5 people have less money to spend than they did 4 years ago. This affects inworld spending, in that these people have less discretionary income to put into a virtual world. It also affects concurrency, as aging computers, not able to run SL in it's current state can't be replaced with newer systems. I saw a graph in a discussion a year or so ago, imposing SL economic and concurrency numbers over a graph representing US employment figures and economic health. The fact was that the decline followed almost exactly the failing US economy, lagging it by about 3 - 6 months.

     So, while there are some solutions to falling numbers in the SL economy, even the one controlled by LL would have a marginal impact without a global economic recovery. Sorry if this was a bit long, but it was rather hard to condense these ideas into a smaller format.

       Brynn

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I find the customer service great, they are very helpful everytime and always resolve what ever the problem is right there and then, they do care. That is by calling and not using a support ticket, I think that has been canceled or put on hold, not sure.

As far as the shopping goes that's up to the stores owner not SL. Clubing: look in the events, join groups that put on shows or use the map to find traffic.

The decline is due to two factors, first the lack of direction and coherency. There are no main inworld resorces to fall back on as we would have in the real world. In the real world if you want to do something you know where to go or how to find out. In SL one finds there way to the support system or in the forums, answers, knowledge base... all in text form not inworld. Correcting this would not be overwhelming but it would require a set of well thought out and intregrated features, (hint: stops to make sure I do not get logged off).

Secondly is the inability to make an operational system operational. Occam's razor has been lost.

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Mayalily wrote:

I've seen that favorites option when I need to look at my transactions log, but have not found 'favorites' yet.  If it had a bar that says put in favorites, I might have found it already.  So, exactly where is the favorites option and how do you work it? 

When looking at an item you can add it to your favoruites from the listing by clicking the 'Add to Favourites' option (see red arrow below):

Add to Fave.jpg

 

You can then view anything you have added to your favourites in the future by going to 'My Marketplace' and choosing the 'My Favourites' option (see red arrow below):

Faves.jpg

 

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greek Wingtips wrote:

From the days when there was 69k people logging on, god knows what it is now, but for sure it def has dropped to what I think is critical levels, the other day myself and my partner decided we go and look for somewhere to dance, I could not belive how many places were empty and I not talking about low turn out times, I think we hopped to about 7 clubs then decided to quit looking, I own a club but its more for my 24\7 blues radio and a place for newbies to chill out,I aslo sell tats

on market place and at my club, again sales are so low to the extent of maybe one a month, dispite my add's

I really want to know what LL's are doing about this, keeping us in the dark and thinking we cannot see this and the amount

of friends that have left SL either for new worlds or just quit dues to the cost, Its about time LL's told us what thier future plans are and how they tend to get things back up to the levels it was, and before anyone say I am moaning, please dont

forget I do pay £££ to play this game so I have a right to express my views, I really dont want to leave SL as I have made many friends which is the main factor I am here, but thier will come a time when I will also hang my boots up,

I like to here anyone views or better still any LL's employee's as the projected future plan of SL

 

 

I'd argue about log in levels dropping to "critical levels", although if you're seeing a drop in sales and empty venues, then it's probably because Tiny Empires is taking over the grid, and they don't purchase much besides their Tiny Empires stuff (go look in the oceans around Nekko for example, lots of clusters of these, and a skybox at Ilithyia, although he seems to run some kind of a business - maybe he's found the secret of business success or something?!).

My cynicism aside, there still seem to be plenty of new people joining Second Life every day, and I just think that the majority of long-term users go through periods of "plateau" and break away for a few weeks or months here and there. Some return, some do not.

Linden Lab are constantly working on new features "backstage", and I see no signs of Second Life dying really. Far from it. Once mesh is rolled out that will draw in another type of user, and for a lot of people, will change the way they feel about Second Life.

Clubs and products can get stale, which can account for drops in numbers and sales too.

The link to the grid survey website in Suella's post is definitely one to watch; Tyche Shepherd keeps the stats up to date.

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Suella Ember wrote:



When looking at an item you can add it to your favoruites from the listing by clicking the 'Add to Favourites' option (see red arrow below):

You can then view anything you have added to your favourites in the future by going to 'My Marketplace' and choosing the 'My Favourites' option (see red arrow below

I just looked on the Marketplace and I don't see the red arrows.  What am I doing wrong?

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To Marigold Devin reply

As I agree it's not gloom but the fact the numbers are droping and people are getting frustrated is a fact, clubs,shops, ect

are going through hell, lets not forget that sims owners relied most of there fee's being subsisdise by ,renting shops and

homes, but with the search engine being crap for search for merchandise and the fact that marketplace has been thrown

in the forfront agaist privite shop owners, does not help, once you start loosing the big spenders then it has a knock on affect,I dont be grudge LL making profit but frustating the land fee owners and spenders but makin it more diiicult to sell

or rent in-world and pushing everyone to use market place, ( and we know why) well dont help.

I would like to see an open forum were LL can openly come forward and tell us excatly what is going on and what the propose to do, I dont wnat to hear proganda but what is really going on and what projected future is on the table.

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I don't know what is happening with SL!   I don't have any particular problems, I go to clubs that have a healthy number of visitors, lag isn't usually too bad.  A Linden IM'd me and offered me some land adjacent to my home for L$ 1 per sq metre the other day - and I bought it.  We even have a search that works well again now, at least on the latest Beta viewer and 2.0 has had most of its problems sorted.  Soon we're getting mesh imports and our profiles are going to include a personal message board.  It's all gloom and doom :matte-motes-big-grin:

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greek Wingtips wrote:

From the days when there was 69k people logging on, god knows what it is now, but for sure it def has dropped to what I think is critical levels, the other day myself and my partner decided we go and look for somewhere to dance, I could not belive how many places were empty and I not talking about low turn out times, I think we hopped to about 7 clubs then decided to quit looking, I own a club but its more for my 24\7 blues radio and a place for newbies to chill out,I aslo sell tats

on market place and at my club, again sales are so low to the extent of maybe one a month, dispite my add's

I really want to know what LL's are doing about this, keeping us in the dark and thinking we cannot see this and the amount

of friends that have left SL either for new worlds or just quit dues to the cost, Its about time LL's told us what thier future plans are and how they tend to get things back up to the levels it was, and before anyone say I am moaning, please dont

forget I do pay £££ to play this game so I have a right to express my views, I really dont want to leave SL as I have made many friends which is the main factor I am here, but thier will come a time when I will also hang my boots up,

I like to here anyone views or better still any LL's employee's as the projected future plan of SL

 

 

 

 

 

 

it takes me about 5 minutes to find a place to go dancing..i just found a really great club the other night that has me going back to it..

i think a lot of bullcrap has been weeded out is all..

because finding one before was harder to find actual people in it..sifting through the bots was a pain..

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greek Wingtips wrote:

To Marigold Devin reply

As I agree it's not gloom but the fact the numbers are droping and people are getting frustrated is a fact, clubs,shops, ect

are going through hell, lets not forget that sims owners relied most of there fee's being subsisdise by ,renting shops and

homes, but with the search engine being crap for search for merchandise and the fact that marketplace has been thrown

in the forfront agaist privite shop owners, does not help, once you start loosing the big spenders then it has a knock on affect,I dont be grudge LL making profit but frustating the land fee owners and spenders but makin it more diiicult to sell

or rent in-world and pushing everyone to use market place, ( and we know why) well dont help.

I would like to see an open forum were LL can openly come forward and tell us excatly what is going on and what the propose to do, I dont wnat to hear proganda but what is really going on and what projected future is on the table.

People have always been frustrated in SL over one thing or another.  Business owners in particular have always been frustrated, because only relatively few are truly successful, and a lot fall by the wayside.  Everyone has a dream, and Second Life looks to be the promised land where dreams can be realised when we all first log in, and when those dreams turn to dust it seems LL always get the blame.  LL are not our mum and dad, and are not there to subsidise our hobby/desires/dreams.  If we have a good enough product to sell or venue to see, do we really need to spend thousands of USD? No we don't. That is our individual choice.

The projected future is there for all to see, if a person chooses to see further than their own store front.  Yes, Linden Lab do put out a lot of propaganda, enticing little videos on their home page about what a great world it is to live and love in, lures such as owning your own home and a sign-up bonus.  But I never knew any other "game"/business be quite so open with the users, and it sure as hell does not look to me like the sky is falling in any time soon.  The Linden elves backstage are working hard on getting the grid mesh-friendly, and are attempting to make the much-derided V2 universally acceptable by listening to the residents, and allowing third party viewer developers to have input in how V2 changes are made.  (Look at Viewer 2 how it was a year ago when it was first introduced to how it is now - vastly different already.)

My favourite places in Second Life continue to be as busy as ever, and a store that I love that opened just over one year ago has gone from strength to strength, building up a healthy client base over that period of time that shows no signs of diminishing. Two other stores that I regularly visit have also opened extra outlets recently, so their businesses are obviously successful.

Perhaps it is just a time of change for you. Just like is happening in Second Life; businesses are having to adapt to suit social/financial circumstances.  I had to adapt when Zindra came into being, but something else came along to keep SL fresh for me. I hope this happens to you also.

 

 

 

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It's all about the econemy. People dont have as much to spend on donateing to land or as much to spend on land itself. I've seen lots of places die because of that simple fact. Land is to much and even on the marketplace it's hard to keep a shop because magic boxes need to be rezzed somewhere and if you need to move your box location you need to redoo your marketplace shop.

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Every site out there thinks it is going to be the next facebook.

Well look at FB, biggest game in town, everyone wants a piece of the pie.

 

The problem is that when LL let the kids in, well, SL is not something for a dumb lazy kid. 

Us oldbies know there is a serious learning curve. I mean given the way things are, they cannot simplify it without pissing off creators and vendors.

Kids do not want to learn anything. I mean all they want to do is have their noses up FB's butt so they can post up to the minute replies on what they are doiing.

 

Well that and there are tons of guys in SL who try to lay with every female avatar on there. People don't like being harassed by that.

 

As far as virtual worlds are concerned, there are a ton of MMO games that run on the same V1 viewer as SL, but even the closets second place never has more than 1,000 people at any time.

 

Second life is leading the way right now for virtual worlds, but virtual worlds are no where NEAR the size of these real social networks where you can see poeple post their ugly spouses and kids and brag how they went to NASCAR or got a job at some hole in the wall place or say they had to get a colonoscopy cause they have an ingrown  wart hair on their butt.

 

OK, I will take the virtual world where we can pretend we are rich, beautiful, popular, and never a bad-weather day exist. Sure it is fake but a good fantasy beats the hell out of RL any day.

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