Doomed Secondlife

[garey Solo]

Yes we've all heard that SL is slowly declining. But why?

Because people are so reluctant to spend.

No customers no creators , no world. Go figure.

Have you noticed lately that the larger more established businesses don't advertise in search anymore, Their traffic stats are ridiculously low.

Its a real shame...  SL winding down like an old worn out grandfather clock. Slowly ticking,ticking away and then one day  shuddering to a halt.

So do something about it ... support the creators who make SL what it is.

[Requiem Lytham]

Yes, spending money on Secondlife is what primarily keeps it afloat, but so does the population. In my opinion, if they wanted to keep Secondlife running and making money, they shouldn't have raised the age limit. I agree with the General and Adult labels and I think they should keep that, but make it so that younger members can still play and experience all the same things as the Adult users... With filters of course. Once the younger members were kicked off, I noticed the decline.

 The above is just my opinion. May not be completely correct but, as I said, my opinion.

[Chelsea Malibu]

While the gold rush, balloon is behind us I really don't think it's doomed.  It has just adjusted to what it really should be.  We saw a lot of corporate hype which I too was part of by bringing in many adult companies into SL.  Changes often create declines in enthusiasm which over time corrects itself.

The platform will continue to change over time and concurrencies will go up slowly over time but yes, we have seen a rapid decline which I feel is do mostly to the evacuation of corporate America.

One of the most famous towns in North America is Aspen Colorado.  Aspen now has around 6,000 year round residents but during the silver boom, it had over 100,000.  Aspen is not doomed by any sense of the imagination and now it is exclusive.

It was also said that FM radio would kill AM radio and that TV would kill radio all together.  However, they all still survive, have stabilized to their appropriate markets and now all serve specific needs.  As SL changes, I see a lot of new ideas that will no doubt attract new users.  Mesh is a great example.  We now have many talented true 3D designers in the game that where not here before nor would they be as they don't build like we used to, they use 3DS and other systems to build and use mesh.

I for one will be in this for the long haul.  I am excited and motivated to see what SL becomes as I am sure many do.  We have new friends, new things to do and so much more yet to create. 

Yes, things are slow at the moment but I don't expect them to be for much longer and if they are, then we adjust.  This is OUR world and we all have not only the ability to change it, but the responsibility to do so.

 

[garey Solo]

I  post as my alt. I have been in sl 5 yrs now and own one of the largest design companies. I have watched the steady decline in sales & custom and also numerous first class creators leaving. Mesh will not keep existing creators here when there's no money to be made. They don't want to send their time again learning how to create mesh objects. I understand that LL need to improve & update. But they need to advertise not upgrade! I would urge all creators to stress this to LL asap. Otherwise Secondlife will soon become a pleasant memory to us all.

[Chelsea Malibu]

So, I guess the OP is less a question and more a statement of your belief which, though I understand the feeling, I don;t completely agree with.

Trust me, I too have seen the decline as I was the builder for SexGen and I have been in much longer than 5 years since this actually my second account.  I made over 100k a year in SL from my enterprises and yes, I barely can pay tier now but I have been in business long enough to know, there are edbs and tides.  Sometimes businesses go under but a good idea never ends,  I think SL is a good idea and even if SL did go, I believe it would be replaced with something else.

 

[garey Solo]

and so as an esteemed creator earning 100k a year to one which can now barely afford tier. I'm sure you must feel as dishearted as I Do you ever feel it will pick up again? Or are we as they say flogging a dead horse? SL was and probable always will be at the forefront of  virtual worlds. But not in the way we know it. I think the great creators will give up and LL will be forced to turn sl into something very very different.

[Chelsea Malibu]

Now that I agree with.  Yes, I too think many will leave.  Seeing my business partner and good friend, turn his animations base into full perm then delete his account, was tough and I was so ready to say goodbye.

But we also need to consider the economic times. In RL I am an attorney that works with Adult Content companies.  If you want to see a decline in revenues, you should look there as it's a disaster.  But, that is not to say everyone is hurting.  My RL business is as good as ever with two strong years of growth. In SL I have seen several of my friend's businesses sky rocket lately from new ideas which means there is still some breath left in this place.

However, I too think the great creators will give up while new ones emerge.

In the end, I am here for one thing, I love to build.  It relaxes me and is my alternate to TV.  If someone likes my content enough to buy it and use it, I feel privileged to have my things in their home.

[Carole Franizzi]

---

garey Solo wrote:

Yes we've all heard that SL is slowly declining. But why?

Because people are so reluctant to spend.

No customers no creators , no world. Go figure.

Have you noticed lately that the larger more established businesses don't advertise in search anymore, Their traffic stats are ridiculously low.

Its a real shame...  SL winding down like an old worn out grandfather clock. Slowly ticking,ticking away and then one day  shuddering to a halt.

So do something about it ...

support the creators who make SL what it is.

---

I've a sneaking suspicion that, with the global crisis which is upon us,  people are more concerned with supporting their RL families. People are odd that way.

[garey Solo]

Thanks Chelsea. Your response has made me realise my original intent here. To create something I love , and if I sell then its a bonus,  but practically I just dont want to put in the same hours and time as before to receive a third of my income. If things don't pick up soon I think I will sadly have to throw in the towel and leave something that has been such a huge part of my life for 5 yrs now. Very hard. I'm sorry to hear that you went through difficult times, and you stayed, good on you!  I do hope things will improve for all,  but right now personally  I'm hanging by a thread..time will tell

[Carole Franizzi]

Just read the subsequent posts.

If there's 100k (we do mean usd and not L dollars?) a year to be made, no offence, but rather than contribute to helping you make that sum, I rather fancy earning it myself.

 

 

[garey Solo]

I think Chelsea was referring to 100K in real life. Correct me if I'm wrong. But feel free to make it yourself, and when you do post and tell me how

[Carole Franizzi]

---

garey Solo wrote:

I think Chelsea was referring to 100K in real life. Correct me if I'm wrong. But feel free to make it yourself, and when you do post and tell me how

---

Not ruddy likely! I'd be too busy lying in the sun calling the waiter.

PS Don't you think that maybe your marketing plan will have to be a bit more sophisticated than "Customers! Spend more money!"? Could it not also not simply be that SL as a money-making scheme has done its time?

[Prokofy Neva]

I think you have several premises here that aren't necessarily tested well with a broader set of data.

In fact, the only number to watch on the SL economy, for my money, is "number of people who spent more than one dollar this month inworld". And that figure, after dipping, is now steadily climbing toward the half million mark, and that's what you're dealing with: half a million people, quite a few of them alts/mules, who are willing to spend on your business. So plan accordingly. You don't have millions. You have half a million. Before, we used to get this figure disaggregated. The lion's share of them spent the equivalent of less than US $10 inworld per month; only a tiny cadre of 300 or something would spend US $2000 or more (big landowners). The demographic that you as a rentals agent or a content maker would have to aim for is those people in the US $40-80 a month bracket with disposable income, not free accounts, not large businesses that might not even buy content anymore (or make their own) but consumers. And that figure was something like less than 100,000 people. So there's your reality -- a very small pie, with a lot of people fighting for it.  A pie that's growing, but not fast enough given the pent-up creation and especially freebies and Linden offerings competing in the market.

Rather than tell everybody to buy more, you'd be better off to lobby against freebies or start reselling transferable freebies to get people to stop glutting the market with them.

So -- as for your premises. First, is this idea that "the big businesses aren't advertising" in search.

Search is still broken and not working, i.e. the old concept of a data table with search working well for this small world (as distinct for the wide Internet) is no longer used, the Lindens use the Google Search Appliance and it's not really well adapted. People used to search easily in search/places. Now they can't. That means that people like me don't put in search/places ads at $30 a week as much because it's so pointless, the content can't surface easily and well.

Second, you note that traffic is low. But no one has any incentive to have high traffic anymore, now that traffic is basically removed as a relevance factor in search. Before, people like me who reject bots as a method would at least put in things like events or sales or whatever to get higher traffic. Now, there's no point. Traffic doesn't make sales; sales make sales. To make a sale, you need people inworld in a circle who buy from you, or you need to be visible in search. The SL Marketplace has started to kill off some of the inworld store traffic and sales.

Every time you get an impression that SL is "winding down like an old grandfather clock" you have to remember that it is only winding down for old grandfathers. New sons and grandsons come into the world, start businesses like pets or low-prim furniture or mesh stuff and sell up a storm. The rapidity and nastiness with which this happens, given that people's livelihoods are at stake, is of course disturbing, but it's usually the case that when one person feels like SL is dying, it's only dying *for him* and someone else has taken away his business. There isn't enough of a customer base to go around, and that sort of becomes a vicious circle -- in one respect, if people felt they had a steady flow of customers or more customers coming in the door as new signups they might do more to attract them, but it's difficult for them to first innovate and have a better mousetrap and then get that visibility to the outside world of new signups -- Destination is state-controlled by the Lindens; and even their state control (or especially their state control) can't give visibility to more than a keyhole's worth of people.

You can't just exhort everybody to support creators and buy stuff, they won't. They're in a recession and cutting back. But there are 10 things that have to be done at once -- search has to do more for people, advertising capacity has to be built up; the ability to land newbies on your properties has to improve, and much more.

[wiked Anton]

its not JUST about the money, it is also the fast decling support from LL, the increasing "watch this or that" in the forums, the griefers and spammers seem to have free reign (instead of banning avatars or email addresses, ban the IP address) here while people that have put many thousands of dollars into SL (including me) get nothing for their investment except ignored. anywonder why LL is doing recruitment drives, if they looked after the people they had, the numbers would steadily grow by word of mouth. Now those that were loyal slowly leave for a better place. LL should have learned this lesson after it has been posted here on numerous occassions. But the "GOD" syndrome of "I know everything" has blinded them to the truth and they continue to stumble and fall, making more silly mistakes after another. ...this post will likely disappear...................................................................................................................

[Chelsea Malibu]

If that cat she has in her arms is a breedable, I can pretty much bank on the fact that she DID contibute to someone making much more than 100k.

[Ann Otoole]

Traffic is meaningless. if people were not lagged out by useless sculpts and garbage they could get what they came for. If the marketplace worked and merchants were paid the money LL owes them then they could make tier.

[Alazarin Mondrian]

Meh, people have been saying 'SL is dewmed' ever since I joined. I must be a bad influence. And, as Carole Franizzi points out, we're in the middle of one serious recession. That's going affect alot of things that aren't life essentials, Second Life being one of them. Second Life is riding out this recession and will continue sailing onward. I see no reason for LL to pull the plug.... yet.

[Phil Deakins]

---

Requiem Lytham wrote:

Yes, spending money on Secondlife is what primarily keeps it afloat, but so does the population.

---

To my way of thinking, it's only concurrency that says whether or not SL is in decline, and concurrency is slowly - very slowly - decreasing. It has been for a long time and that downward trend shows no signs of changing. It doesn't really matter whether or not people spend money in SL, and supporting creators doesn't enter into it. If SL was a place where no money changed hands between users, and concurrency was continually growing, then SL would be the opposite of doomed.

I'm not suggesting that SL is doomed - at least not in the relatively near future. I'm saying that SL will be doomed when concurrency declines to the point where LL consider it not worth keeping going. LL makes money from tier and, for that to be worthwhile, it requires a lot of people to be paying it. When there aren't enough people using SL and paying tier, then SL will be doomed. User to user money is irrelevant. The trend has been very slowly towards that scenario for a long time now.

[Pussycat Catnap]

SL isn't dying and business isn't slowing. Its just moving around.

Sales will be slow for business A because people eventually move on to shop at B instead.

grid survey data shows an overall constant, but the egos involed have changed hands.

http://gridsurvey.com/

People who've seen those they know move on, or the business they deal in fade, or their own personal hangout languish - extrapolate their personal microcosm out to a larger panic as if they were the center of the universe.

Sadly, none of us are that.

For every art sim that closes, for every business that fails, for every blingtard that logs out for the last time - a new one pops in 3 seconds later to fill the gap.

 

There's forum and blog paranoia, and then there's the data:

http://gridsurvey.com/

 

[Carole Franizzi]

---

Alazarin Mondrian wrote:

Meh, people have been saying 'SL is dewmed' ever since I joined. I must be a bad influence. And, as

Carole Franizzi

points out, we're in the middle of one serious recession. That's going affect alot of things that aren't life essentials, Second Life being one of them. Second Life is riding out this recession and will continue sailing onward. I see no reason for LL to pull the plug.... yet.

---

Hiya Alazarin.

Bad, bad moment in the RL economy right now. Really bad.  Not to be under-estimated. So many people have little money for essentials, go figger something as frivolous as an Internet game. Priorities will be RL rent not virtual land rent, RL dentist bills, not SL shoes. And if that were not the case, they need their heads examined.

I can't thnk of any business which has lasted for more than a century and a bit. Here in the UK you sometimes see shops or articles with "Established 1890" over the door or on the label, however, the vast, vast, vast majority of businesses have a waaaaaaaay shorter life-expectancy.

It's like human life - you start dying the moment you are born. Same thing for businesses - they're all dying the moment they start up. It's just a question of when. The more you mess up, the quicker that end will be, obviously, but even closing after a good 5 or 10 year run, in business terms, is not actually the sign of having failed. You simply shut up shop when it stops being profitable. That's good business practice. LL will pull the plug when it stops earnng a decent amount of dosh for them. It may not happen any time soon, but when it does, I do hope they give a decent amount of prior warning to its clients.

Those who believe SL will last forever need to get into the queue to get their heads looked at, together with those who spend money on SL land but do without something essential in RL

 

 

 

[Carole Franizzi]

---

Chelsea Malibu wrote:

If that cat she has in her arms is a breedable, I can pretty much bank on the fact that she DID contibute to someone making much more than 100k.

---

Breedable??? Gawd no. Poor old moggy has had his thingies chopped off.

[Carole Franizzi]

It is beyond my powers of comprehension to grasp how a Western economic crisis of such proportions hasn't affected an entity in the non-essential goods category.

This kind of thread pops up with great regularity. Call me daft, but if I were LL and if I had hard facts and figures to prove the utter stability of SL, I'd be rushing in here posting them. What better way to encourage people to invest in a crisis-proof business and to avoid clients influencing other clients with their needless worries? You ever seen a post like that? I haven't.

My suggestion would be to open your mind to the teeny-weeny possiblity that one day SL might just close. That way, IF it happens, it won't be such a shock to you.

[Ceka Cianci]

---

Carole Franizzi wrote:

My suggestion would be to open your mind to the teeny-weeny possiblity that one day SL might just close. That way, IF it happens, it won't be such a shock to you.

---

 

this is the stage i have come to myself..since the first doomsday or sl is dying thread that i had seen all through the rest after it..

if it closes what would happen?

or if you had so much time left what would you do?

the first answe would be ..probably get on with life and survive it..the second answer would be..i hate long good bye's so i would probably pack what i could that was actually mine and log off..why wait for the blackout..

it's gonna close someday..just like RL will.. only we still get to breath after this one closes..so thats a plus hehehehe

[Ceka Cianci]

---

garey Solo wrote:

Yes we've all heard that SL is slowly declining. But why?

Because people are so reluctant to spend.

No customers no creators , no world. Go figure.

Have you noticed lately that the larger more established businesses don't advertise in search anymore, Their traffic stats are ridiculously low.

Its a real shame...  SL winding down like an old worn out grandfather clock. Slowly ticking,ticking away and then one day  shuddering to a halt.

So do something about it ... support the creators who make SL what it is.

---

i've supported the ones that charge  for their content more times than i can count..

if it was not enough ..sorry..

i don't knock them for charging for their content ..i was happy to pay for it..

i do have a problem with them getting all the credirt for sl being alive or dead..the economy didn't start to decline because they all of a sudden decided to start leaving..it started long before..

so if it dies..they will only be a percentage of the reason..not the reason..

if they are leaving so fast then why throw good money after bad? maybe we should start investing in the ones just getting here that are wanting to start up..the ones with that eye of the tiger so to speak..

wouldn't that be less of a risk and more of a chance on life than someone almost ready to leave?

maybe saying in so many words. spend to support or they are gonna leave is not the best way to go about getting support..

[Randall Ahren]

---

Chelsea Malibu wrote:

This is OUR world and we all have not only the ability to change it, but the responsibility to do so.

---

It's not our world, it's their world, and they do things with it such as eliminate last names, copy the wall from Facebook, let spammers run rampant on the forum, post at SLU, and require profiles to be G rated.  When Philip Rosedale said he was building a new country, he didn't necessarily mean a country with a government that operated in the best interests of its residents.