Q4 2011 Economic Report

[Chelsea Malibu]

It seemed that LL was pretty fast on the Q3 2011 financials but it seems that there has been a delay on the Q4 2011 Financials.  Did I miss it or has it's release been delayed?

[Qwalyphi Korpov]

The resident who provided the previous content, if any, has replaced it with this generic statement.

[Daniel Voyager]

No more quarterly or annual Second Life economy reports, says Lab

“We don’t plan to publish a Q4 2011 economic summary. We are discontinuing regular reporting of aggregate economy-level data, because landowners and merchants have told us that the information is of limited value to them. Moving forward, we will instead focus on improved reporting tools that help individuals better manage their businesses in SL.”

[Toysoldier Thor]

---

Daniel Voyager wrote:

No more quarterly or annual Second Life economy reports, says Lab

“We don’t plan to publish a Q4 2011 economic summary. We are discontinuing regular reporting of aggregate economy-level data, because landowners and merchants have told us that the information is of limited value to them. Moving forward, we will instead focus on improved reporting tools that help individuals better manage their businesses in SL.”

---

TRANSLATION....

"Each of our quarterly results are getting more and more negative and shows how LL's SL business is eroding.  And unfortunately even with out spinning of the results is not tricking the smart SL residents that can read the truth in the results we put out.  So its better that we dont show the bad news for everyone to see and critique."

[WADE1 Jya]

oh lol... thats kinda lame really. its obvious lots & lots of us liked seeing that report :catsad:

all i can think from this is it must have been a really bad Q4 for them. sorry to be negative, but thats really all i can assume when i read this. it reads as a poor excuse?

anyone who works with retailers/sales partners in the real world knows many businesses everywhere saw an exceptionally poor quarter. its nothing to be ashamed of or shy about to try & hide it.

actually, whatever possible motivations the lab may have, i can't help but see this behavior as a likely bad omen for SL's future. i'll formulate my strategy appropriately.

[wrable Amat]

SL is  starting to get ...I duno...I almost wonder when I am going to  log into SL and fine the ability to cash out is gone..I have a little 512 I use for back up servers ,it is just a box that looks like grass.I know  when I bought it years ago it was in the middle of thriving  mainland region..I never look around much outside the box until last week I noticed the land next to me was clear.As I pan out my cam...There was only a handful of very small plots of land owned any more. The  sims around me are not  occupied.That is no joke and as I pan the cam out more and more it was just sims after sim of land for sale...

[Marcus Hancroft]

---

Toysoldier Thor wrote:

---

Daniel Voyager wrote:

No more quarterly or annual Second Life economy reports, says Lab

“We don’t plan to publish a Q4 2011 economic summary. We are discontinuing regular reporting of aggregate economy-level data, because landowners and merchants have told us that the information is of limited value to them. Moving forward, we will instead focus on improved reporting tools that help individuals better manage their businesses in SL.”

---

TRANSLATION....

"Each of our quarterly results are getting more and more negative and shows how LL's SL business is eroding.  And unfortunately even with out spinning of the results is not tricking the smart SL residents that can read the truth in the results we put out.  So its better that we dont show the bad news for everyone to see and critique."

---

^This

You're exactly right, Toy dude.  

I'm starting to wonder if we are going to try to log in soon and SL won't be there.  

[WADE1 Jya]

I hope Rodvik addresses this promptly and they rescind this poor decision. He does tend to be very forthright & observant, so I am half expecting this to happen. I think he would agree that the data should continue to be released.

I would praise them for their transparency to release a Q4 of poor results & always appreciate very much their honesty to present the info - whether it be good or bad.

I am always thinking long-term, so seeing a bad quarterly result would not be alarming. However, a sudden lack of transparency is, quite so.

I treat my investments in SL like holding stock in any company. If i can't read the ticker to see if movement is up or down, but instead it somehow becomes a blank, what exactly are my choices?

Lindens, please take note & address this issue, many people of your community are very concerned.

[Darrius Gothly]

I think you've nailed my feelings quite well here WADE1. It's not the content of the reports, it's the fact that they are suddenly being hidden.

As an old work-mate used to say "Perception is 110% of reality". This action gives the "Perception" that things are going very very badly. Or like mom used to say "Be honest and it's a rougher path, but a much shorter one. Lie and the path lasts your whole life."

[Anaiya Arnold]

Oh wow.  This raises a couple of questions.

Which landowners? 

Which merchants?

I'm both and they never asked me.

I agree that this feels like Linden talk for "the stats do not look good but if we say that's why we won't release them, then we might as well release them".

[Dartagan Shepherd]

I think they were pretty much worthless, I'd be hard pressed to call any of those stats useful to a merchant or landowner. Not only were they worthless, they also didn't mesh.

How helpful is this?:

Signups are up, user hours are up, but regions are down, concurrency is down. The ups never matched the downs never matched the flats. In fact, it made no sense whatsoever other than to show that you can get a whole bunch more people to sign up and even less of them to log in than before.

There's nothing there to help a merchant other than perhaps that gross marketplace sales apparently grow, while the missing stat that it's at the sacrifice of in-world sales and established merchants.

Supposedly this will be replaced by numbers that are more meaningful as "reporting". If these however leave out the realistic chunks of data also, they will be as meaningless.

Hopefully these won't include the term "economy".

In a real economy prices go down. While land we sell goes down in value, land provided by LL does not. This doesn't happen in a real economy. Sinks remain the same. Sinks don't even follow a fluctuating tax model.

In short, the economy is nothing more than an advanced game mechanic to siphon funds in multiple areas, while "economic stats" do nothing but mask meaningful data and to obfuscate anything financial.

There's absolutely nothing financial in those stats. Even when there was more data to them, they tended to either focus on L$ values (which mean less than nothing without real world values), or a blend of real money further obfuscated by blending it with more L$ stats and the biggest thing ... none of these would reconcile with each other. Nothing balanced, matched or bore out the validity of any other stat.

Which is why you could debate about what they meant for weeks on end and get absolutely nowhere in terms of bottom line numbers or get any closer to them making sense of painting a clear picture.

Repeat after me: There is no economy ... there is no economy.

It's the gamification of real funds for profit and an attempt to display that gamification in a real world way, nothing more.

[Toysoldier Thor]

Although I understand all that you have said Dart.... and I would agree that a lot of the LL Quarterly facts and figures were obscure and/or spun positively (I did a whole blog entry on this), you are forgetting one big factor that cannot be overlooked.

If the quarterly report is helpful, useless, positive, negative, etc....   there is one thing that it has been consistently.....

IT WAS RELEASED EVERY QUARTER!

The fact that LL decided all of a sudden that they did not want to release this information anymore say more than the facts that would have been in the report.  What message it sends which is very dangerous is...

LL IS IN BIGGER TROUBLE THEN ANYONE ALREADY THOUGHT ! 

THEY HAVE TO NOW HIDE THEIR CURRENT STATE !

What message they are sending out to anyone that is investing in THE GAME is ... maybe now is not the time to buy a sim.  Maybe its not wise to invest weeks / months of time and month developing content for SL.  Maybe learning Mesh is a waste of time if LL is potentially so unstable that they have decided to hide their quarterly stats.

Dart, you know as well as I know that regardless of anyone's opinions on the actual value of the quarterly states, PERCEPTION IS REALITY. 

So all  your points are moot to the bigger issue.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

I get that, sure.

In the real world, you'd introduce the new or replacement feature or reporting before you nixed the old one, but this is LL.

Tend to agree that there was no longer a way to spin the stats for even a "just flat, nothing here to see move along" scenario, in time to introduce anything more meaningful.

In a shopping cart that doesn't get delivery or reporting solid in the first place, new reporting without breaking or delaying things like direct delivery isn't happening.

Lost faith that we're heading toward a company that doesn't play nickle and dime games with amateur products, while I enjoy a pretty much flawless shopping/selling experience everywhere else on the internet and have for years.

[Medhue Simoni]

Come on guys! It's not that big a deal. If you knew anything about the SL economy, you don't need LL's quarterly. The main signals for the economy are good. If things were really falling apart, we'd see it in the value of the linden dropping. It's not dropping when compared to the dollar. It is actually the highest value in dollars than I've ever seen it. That, all by itself, tells you alot.

When we are talking about LL losing land owners, we are talking about 1-2 %. They have actually gained land in the Adult regions. Around my sim on the mainland, what was almost 3 full sims around me that were empty, are now all owned. Yeah, they are owned by people who think squaring in their region with mega panels to block the view of their neighbors, looks good. What is the deal with that kind of crap? Don't they understand that they can put their place up in the sky if they want a private sim, and then I won't have to look at the panels. Argh! It just makes the mainland look retarded with huge billboards everywhere.

[Freya Mokusei]

---

Daniel Voyager wrote:

“ We are discontinuing regular reporting of aggregate economy-level data, because landowners and merchants have told us that the information is of limited value to them. Moving forward, we will instead focus on improved reporting tools that help individuals better manage their businesses in SL.”

---

 I'm quite happy with this. Quarterly stats ever since 2009 had basically turned into the following:-

 

1. Read stats
2. 'Outrage' that the definitions of the stats have changed again.
3. "The sky is falling omg!"
4. Life as normal.

 

Maybe now we can skip from step 3 to 4 one final time and stop pretending that anyone was able to make business decisions based on the vague aggregated stats.

I'm looking forward to more focussed, useful reporting abilities for those that utilise SLM or in-world locations.

[Darrius Gothly]

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Freya Mokusei wrote:

I'm looking forward to more focussed, useful reporting abilities for those that utilise SLM or in-world locations.

---

I wouldn't hold your breath Freya. LL's track record is to remove a feature or function, sometimes promise it will be replaced "real soon now" with something better .. and then it never appears.

Remember the emphatic promises of the Commerce Team that the SL Marketplace would not only replace XStreet, but provide many new features and improvements that would knock our socks off? Mine are still on and there's not even a hint about all the features they promised being considered, let alone scheduled or in testing.

I'm not wanting to be pessimistic, or always spouting the negative perspective, but the actions over the past 3-4 years have taught me well what to expect. Besides, if they truly intended to improve something, they'd have developed and tested that something before they deactivated the old something. When they just turn something off without any mention or specs on its replacement, it doesn't take a lot of common sense to realize that the new something is just smoke and mirrors and never intended to be provided.

Seriously, think about it. If you need a new pair of pants, do you throw out your old ones and THEN go shopping for new ones? Or do you go buy a new pair while wearing the old pair then switch at your earliest convenience. (And btw, if you are in the habit of shopping for new clothes while not wearing the old ones, let me know please. *wink*)

[Freya Mokusei]

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

I wouldn't hold your breath Freya. LL's track record is to remove a feature or function, sometimes promise it will be replaced "real soon now" with something better .. and then it never appears.

...

I'm not wanting to be pessimistic, or always spouting the negative perspective, but the actions over the past 3-4 years have taught me well what to expect. Besides, if they truly intended to improve something, they'd have developed and tested that something before they deactivated the old something. When they just turn something off without any mention or specs on its replacement, it doesn't take a lot of common sense to realize that the new something is just smoke and mirrors and never intended to be provided.

---

Haha, as someone who's still waiting for volumetric windlight and parcel-definitions (media, etc) separated by z-height, I'm fairly used to being a little purple in the face.

Mostly I'm pleased that LL have moved on from the  'Look, we've got money! Look, we've got people!' start-up-style advertising/promotional mindset to a more 'We're providing consistant value', introspective mindset where reports and statistics are filtered inward to the userbase (vs. outward to prospective investors). If we come out of it with some new toys to play with, it's all bonus.

[Ziggy21 Slade]

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Freya Mokusei wrote:

---

 I'm quite happy with this. Quarterly stats ever since 2009 had basically turned into the following:-

 

1. Read stats
2. 'Outrage' that the definitions of the stats have changed again.
3. "The sky is falling omg!"
4. Life as normal.

 

Maybe now we can skip from step 3 to 4 one final time and stop pretending that anyone was able to make business decisions based on the vague aggregated stats.

I'm looking forward to more focussed, useful reporting abilities for those that utilise SLM or in-world locations.

---

 I agree, it's strange how the posters here who are most disturbed by the discontinuation of the statistics are the ones who have fervently and consistently claimed in the past that those same statistics are a bunch of lies (or words to that effect).

Toy in particular wrote lengthy blog posts, dissecting, dismissing and re spinning every aspect of the last report to his own weird doom and gloom agenda. Every single part of it was apparently either a fabrication or a sign of imminent disaster. 

This thread is a perfect illustration of why the statistics are in fact of no use, the reaction to 'no economic report' is the pretty much identical to the reaction to all previous economic reports i.e.  LL are trying to conceal impending doom.

The only reason I believe any of the doom and gloom mongers even care is because now they have one less thing to complain and create drama about.

[Darrius Gothly]

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Ziggy21 Slade wrote:

The only reason I believe any of the doom and gloom mongers even care is because now they have one less thing to complain and create drama about.

---

You may have hit on the reason LL pulled them .. but most likely not. (As mom would say "If you kids won't stop fighting over that toy, I'm gonna take it away!")

Not all of us Doom and Gloom Mongers are so shallow though Ziggy. *doffs hat* Some of us are frustrated that the only method of improvement seems to be "disable, delete and discard".

[Phil Deakins]

It doesn't surprise me. As long as things are good in reality, they report them. When the reality looks bad, they sdtop reporting them. While concurrency was on the up, they showed it on the login screen. When it finally becamse obvious that it was in downward trend, and attempt to turn it around had failed, they stopped showing it on the login screen. This is just another stage in the same direction.

[Toysoldier Thor]

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Ziggy21 Slade wrote:

---

Freya Mokusei wrote:

---

 I'm quite happy with this. Quarterly stats ever since 2009 had basically turned into the following:-

 

1. Read stats
2. 'Outrage' that the definitions of the stats have changed again.
3. "The sky is falling omg!"
4. Life as normal.

 

Maybe now we can skip from step 3 to 4 one final time and stop pretending that anyone was able to make business decisions based on the vague aggregated stats.

I'm looking forward to more focussed, useful reporting abilities for those that utilise SLM or in-world locations.

---

 I agree, it's strange how the posters here who are most disturbed by the discontinuation of the statistics are the ones who have fervently and consistently claimed in the past that those same statistics are a bunch of lies (or words to that effect).

Toy in particular wrote lengthy blog posts, dissecting, dismissing and re spinning every aspect of the last report to his own weird doom and gloom agenda. Every single part of it was apparently either a fabrication or a sign of imminent disaster. 

This thread is a perfect illustration of why the statistics are in fact of no use, the reaction to 'no economic report' is the pretty much identical to the reaction to all previous economic reports i.e.  LL are trying to conceal impending doom.

The only reason I believe any of the doom and gloom mongers even care is because now they have one less thing to complain and create drama about.

---

As I already did mention in this thread and that Ziggy pointed out, yes I did make a very long blog posting to show how  badly LL spun or downplayed the bad news stats that were in the released quarterly results.  And I pointed out how some of the posted statistics had little value based on its context.  And unless anyone wants to read my blog posting and its observations / opinions and debate that they were illogical or invalid, then painting a negative slant on my blog has little relevance to the points being made in this thread.  I stand by my blog.

Secondly, the observations and points made in my blog were not rare / uncommon observations of the LL quarterly stats.  In fact, I challenge Ziggy or anyone else that feels my comments were out-of-norm from the general consensus of the SL Population / Observers / Bloggers / Forum Posters of the same stats that I blogged.

You all are making it sound like my past comments on past LL Quarterly results were generally a negative attack on what would generally be considered a good news report.  If this is true.... prove it.

Finally, you are all once again missing the point that is being made in the thread.

It doesnt matter if the quarterly results were good or bad or what the general opinion was on the quarterly results..... the point is that LL has decided for no specific logical reason at all to STOP RELEASING ITS SL GRID HEALTH RESULTS.

If they did... the logical question and related fear is.... WHY?

LL has endured criticisms of their results in the past and still released.  Why did they decide to stop? 

and since the results are no longer available to the public, one has to reasonably suspect that it was because this quarter's results would have showed that the already negatively trending stats on a declining SL Grid was declining much faster.  It would have likely shown that:

 

• the pace of SL sims being abandoned is increasing faster than a linear pace.
• the marketplace sales were flat or even declining over past Year / Quarter and/or that the sales are not a net positive to the inworld transactional sales (i.e. it would prove what most of us have already realized that MP is eroding inworld sales and having a negative impact on inworld sim usage - closings of stores and malls)
• Rodvik's arrival as CEO has done nothing to stem the decline in SL resident registrations and hours logged in.

This is likely the reason that LL stopped reporting.  It would have proven that Rodvik was not the miracle man to turn LL's SL service decline around. 

And as was pointed out before, since LL is not hiding these quarterly results and that logical assumptions / concerns like was mentioned above would naturally occur, then LL has to understand that their decision to hide these results (even if they are bad news) will only further reduce confidence on many that want to consider investing in LL's SL service.

 

Maybe many of you all think this is a responsible move made by LL to stop reporting quarterly results.  Maybe many other RL companies should take LL's lead and stop reporting results of their business activities when the results are just getting so bad that they want to avoid criticism.  That sounds like such a wise idea that some of you are endorsing here.

[Madeliefste Oh]

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

 

If they did... the logical question and related fear is....

WHY?

LL has endured criticisms of their results in the past and still released.  Why did they decide to stop? 

---

Apart from not wanting to reveal declining figures, a reason might be they don't focus any longer on businesses as customers.

For a long time LL aimed to sell SL as a business platform, where corporations can hold their meetings, meet businesspartners, advertise their products and so on. In my opion the aim from these quarterly reports was not to inform current customers and merchants about the in world economy in the first place, but they were a marketing tool for pulling new corporations into SL.

Now the targetgroup LL aims for has changed. It is the consumersmarket that they focus on now. This target group doesn't need to be convinced by economical figures to get them as customers. So the marketing tool 'quarterly reports' became superfluous.

 

 

 

 

[Toysoldier Thor]

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Madeliefste Oh wrote:

---

Toysoldier Thor wrote:

 

If they did... the logical question and related fear is....

WHY?

LL has endured criticisms of their results in the past and still released.  Why did they decide to stop? 

---

Apart from not wanting to reveal declining figures, a reason might be they don't focus any longer on businesses as customers.

For a long time LL aimed to sell SL as a business platform, where corporations can hold their meetings, meet businesspartners, advertise their products and so on. In my opion the aim from these quarterly reports was not to inform current customers and merchants about the in world economy in the first place, but they were a marketing tool for pulling new corporations into SL.

Now the targetgroup LL aims for has changed. It is the consumersmarket that they focus on now. This target group doesn't need to be convinced by economical figures to get them as customers. So the marketing tool 'quarterly reports' became

superfluous.

---

That is a good possible theory assuming that within the last 3 months Rodvik has officially determined within LL management that "LL no longer sees the corporate customer / enterprise customer to be a viable primary target customer for the SL gird"

This would be interesting as to why LL has officially admitted defeat on attracting the corporate customer in the past 3 months when their outward visible strategies to target this base of users were abandoned a long time ago.  LL's enterprise SL in a box product from 2010 was dropped only months later.  Many of LL's largest corporate supporters already left SL last year (like IBM).  So.... what made Rodvik decide in the past 3 months that SL will no longer attract the corporate customer and therefor there is no longer a reason to cater to them (like these quarterly results).

As such, I do not believe LL dropped Quarterly Reporting because they decided to stop catering to the Corporate customer.  Even if you are correct and LL was only producing these results as a marketing tool to encourage and attract and retain corporate customers.... (sorry but i need to LOL here) their recent quarterly reports in the past year would be the worst marketing tool they could come up with!  

i.e.  Attention potential and current Corporate customers of SL.... look at our sliding / sinking usage and popularity results!  If this doesnt convince you to stay.... nothing will

[Luna Bliss]

What?

You withhold more and more statistical information each month so we can't make sense of it.

Then when we say it's not useful anymore (because you kept withholding more and more each month) you say you will stop giving stats entirely BECAUSE WE SAY IT'S NOT USEFUL?

 

What kind of mind game is this?

[Ziggy21 Slade]

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

---

And unless anyone wants to read my blog posting and its observations / opinions and debate that they were illogical or invalid, then painting a negative slant on my blog has little relevance to the points being made in this thread.  I stand by my blog.

---

I like your blog, I didn't agree with many of the observations you made in that particular post, and I believe we debated some of those here. I would have liked to have gone through it all and battled it out with you, but as you say it was pretty lengthy and since we are never likely to agree on much, the effort was too great.

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

Secondly, the observations and points made in my blog were not rare / uncommon observations of the LL quarterly stats.  In fact, I challenge Ziggy or anyone else that feels my comments were out-of-norm from the general consensus of the SL Population / Observers / Bloggers / Forum Posters of the same stats that I blogged.

---

I think thats partly true, there are plenty of residents who share your domesday outlook, very few if any would have studied the details to the extent you did or entered into the conspiracy theorising etc. My point as always is, you and the SL population are and have been consistently wrong on this, "People are leaving in droves" is a phrase I have been hearing for over 2 and a half years now, yours and theirs predictions of the end have not come to pass.   

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

You all are making it sound like my past comments on past LL Quarterly results were generally a negative attack on what would generally be considered a good news report.  If this is true.... prove it.

---

I think you would agree your interpretation was much more negative than LLs. I think you should be careful with the idea that you are somehow speaking for everyone, this is unlikely to be true.

---

Toysoldier Thor wrote:

It doesnt matter if the quarterly results were good or bad or what the general opinion was on the quarterly results..... the point is that LL has decided for no specific logical reason at all to STOP RELEASING ITS SL GRID HEALTH RESULTS.

If they did... the logical question and related fear is.... 

WHY?

 

---

The reason given is because they arent of much use to residents, I think this is true, all the report was ever used for was ammunition with which to attack LL, no matter what was in it.

---

Toysoldier Thor wrote:

and since the results are no longer available to the public, one has to reasonably suspect that it was because this quarter's results would have showed that the already negatively trending stats on a declining SL Grid was declining much faster.  It would have likely shown that:

 

• the pace of SL sims being abandoned is increasing faster than a linear pace.
• the marketplace sales were flat or even declining over past Year / Quarter and/or that the sales are not a net positive to the inworld transactional sales (i.e. it would prove what most of us have already realized that MP is eroding inworld sales and having a negative impact on inworld sim usage - closings of stores and malls)
• Rodvik's arrival as CEO has done nothing to stem the decline in SL resident registrations and hours logged in.

 

---

None of the above are reasonable suspicions, they are fanstastical and fanciful.

Where does the idea of a MUCH faster decline come from.?

Why do you feel Rodvik would need to conceal his personal poor performance from you, you don't employ him and the people that do know full well what the economics figures are.?

 

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

And as was pointed out before, since LL is not hiding these quarterly results and that logical assumptions / concerns like was mentioned above would naturally occur, then LL has to understand that their decision to hide these results (even if they are bad news) will only further reduce confidence on many that want to consider .

---

I don't think so, before you had 4 opportunities each year to make a fuss about economics, now you have until this thread goes cold and then we won't have to listen to any of that ever again. Do you think anything LL publish could damage confidence more than your analysis of what they publish, your raison detre seems to be to damage confidence at every available opportunity.

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

---

Maybe many of you all think this is a responsible move made by LL to stop reporting quarterly results.  Maybe many other RL companies should take LL's lead and stop reporting results of their business activities when the results are just getting so bad that they want to avoid criticism.  That sounds like such a wise idea that some of you are endorsing here.

---

Privately owned companies like LL do not publish quarterly results anyway, even the annual accounts can be pretty meaningless without a load of other information to go with them.