Rene Erlanger

Welcome on board Rod (aka Rodvik)...i wish you all the best in your new position. I like that you're doing your own research as to what Second Life is all about...that should help you when making policy decisions. I'm also encouraged with the very last sentence in your blog ---> "I look forward to serving you--our customers--in the times ahead."....that recognition of us as Customers has been missing from LL for a long while now! Don't let the VC's pull your strings too hard.....you know what's needed and you have the previous experience of 3D platforms, ....the Investors don't! My only bit of advice to you & LL....is to follow IMVU's example of spending real Advertising & Marketing dollars to grow it's userbase. One can no longer merely rely on growth through viral marketing or Media stories....those avenues have been exhausted over the years. As you can see IMVU has managed to speed past SL in terms of active users and peak logins by advertising at the right moment. i.e durign the Recession. More users---->more income to LL...and hopefully for SL businesses too, which means expansion and more Land (sims)! I hope you're our "Shining White Knight" which was very much needed within LL.

Yep another classic Linden Lab own goal!! rofl VirWox service (from real representatives in-world & via their Website support) leaves Lindex & Xstreet for dead! I joined up 3/4 months ago and i have no complaints whatsoever. The VirWox product is far superior in every way...not just the speed element of transfers to Paypal, but also the reports and information available on the site, not to mention its multi-currency. I've exchanged 100k at a time...no problem! It's governed by LL's own Risk API If you're in business in SL....it's a no-brainer and i presume it's pretty good for Consumers too.

like i said it was meaningless really.....always was. Maybe it was a guidline for overall health of the economy.....but really you could be in the 5000 + USD grouping and be making a loss if you were an Estate Baron with low occupancy rates.....however for Content Creators it was more accurate because LL fees were relatively low in comparison to sale receipts. There's no way 60 -70k had postive cashlfow (or the potential to cash those amounts outs).....once you too take Land tiers & other LL fees into account.....the true figure is far far lower than that! I wouldn't be far wrong in saying 20 -30% of those 60-70k PMLF users would be nearer the true figure (i.e cashouts).

Yay..a fellow Brit! ....Welcome onboard Rod....it's comforting to know you have a background in Gaming development and maybe a deeper understanding for what is required for SL I'm sure under your own steam, you'll make a fine CEO. Don't let those VC's pull your strings like they did with your predecessor...they partly the reason of why so many things went wrong in SL over the last 2+ years...with one bad strategy after another! Hopefully this time they'll stay out of your hair and allow you some time to rebuild , re-vamp and market Second Life to the masses! I wish you good luck and a Merry Christmas!

It was just another irrelevant and misleading LL statistic....as it represented Gross Profit as opposed to Net Profit. The closest thing to Net profits are the cashing-out amounts What those old stats represented was the net-off of Lindens recieved to Lindens paid....but it does not account for any USD payments like SIM/ Land Tiers or Premium subscriptions. Example : An Estate Baron collects 5000 USD in tiers & rents from his residents during the month, that figure will be the amount represented in those Stats (less any expenses or purchases he made durig the course of the month). What it doesn't tell you are the 4000 USD he has to pay in USD to Linden Lab for SIM tiers.....hence his Net Profit would actually be around1000 USD. Those misleading graphs would show this particular Land Baron earning 5000 USD...and would be in the top category, when in reality he should be in the 1000 USD category i.e Net Profit and the amount he's likely to Cash out with. In effect you could be in the top 5000 USD bracket but actually making a Loss for the month if you have low occupancy rates and pay more LL SIM tiers than you collect from the Residents.

When I spoke to the VirWox Representative....they told me there were no limits to the amount of USD that could be transferred to Paypal. I'm not sure where you (and I noticed Prokofy mentioned it too) came up with this 156 USD limits. I think that must apply to another part of their system....certainly not USD cash-outs though.

Well Jack...I'll give you Kudos for being one of the few Linden employees to interface with the Residents regularly at your Office Hours meetings....and acting very professionally despite the difficult questions thrown at you. So respect for that! Aside from that, one must hold you part responsible for so many damaging and awful LL strategies of which you had some input into....starting with oversupply of Mainland Sims during 2007.....and now ending up your tenure with a total balls up of in-world Search and to a lesser degree Marketplace. So being totally honest....I won't be shedding any crocodile tears, imo it was long overdue. I only hope Second Life can now make a recovery!

Not directed to you Zeek...d'amn blogforum All the quality services like SLEX Land Sales, SLEX forums, SLEX Exchange that Linden Lab inherited, they've killed off.....instead they dedicate their resources to provide you useful shinies like Display Names and Voice Morphing I suggest using VirWox...that will eventually be the new SLEX Exchange (the original one which LL bought). In fact if you look at their website, you'll see it's superior in functionality and information provided than both XStreet & Lindex ever were.

WADE1 Jya wrote: Could this be for Risk API reasons? Xstreet may have been less secure and Linden Lab is just stepping up security to combat fraud? I criticized Linden Lab earlier for making the move of removing MassPay, but just now it crossed my mind that there may have been a very sensible reason for the action! ....they don't do "sensible" (Xstreet Exchange was originally SLEX exhange which LL purchased...it's been around 5 years and worked fine!)

Hi Catriona Get a Virwox account , the website and the functionality is more professionally done than both Xstreet or Lindex. Cashouts to Paypal are instant, tons of different reports, mutiple currency exchanges. https://www.virwox.com/index.php Don't be Lindened!

A team of 5 working on Search....tinkering every other week justifies their salary i presume! I'm not sure they know what they're doing anymore or what direction it's suppose to go in. Merchants and SL Businesses need a stable environment to operate in......changing the Search algorithms every other week....or at least once a month, does not provide any stability whatsoever!

If you want to know exactly how many TP's you got from Advertising campaign...just create a Landmark with a different landing point to your main ones......drop an invisible unique visitor counter underneath and see how many visitors you get. If you can get a Counter that records actual avatar names....even better as you can then match to your Sales records.

i would love to see the split in terms of percentages in "total sqm" between Commercial plots of Land and others (Residential, Public areas, RP & Entertainment) . I know on Mainland there are tons of shops & malls and the % percentage would be high...whereas Estates sims are more geared towards Residential & Others, ...however it still has a good amount of Commercial too.

Oh i know the resident-to-resident transaction figures were a nonsense to begin with. I have 2 Premium Subs a/c that each individually own land.....i'm forever transferring money back and forth to pay tiers etc......so i knew they double or triple counted. The problem is that you're average resident is none the wiser.....and believes in those figures......and trust those figures. Who is going to invest in SL, if they knew there was shrinkage in the key parameters & stats? Would you continue buying Sims at the rate of knots if you knew the true picture ?

Rene: "I can't see how in future one can maintain a whole sim (for a Main store)....when people are shifting away from inworld shopping towards Marketplace. In the long run, I cna't see how LL comes out ahead on the income curve.....i would have thought Tier income from shops & SL businesses would be more in value than Marketplace commissions." Words of truth. What I have to wonder: how can everyone clearly see this... except Linden Lab? I posted the same thing earlier in this blog-- that with SL Marketplace Linden Lab is competing with and destroying their primary income source: in-world land. How do they not understand that? Mind you, that's fine with me. I don't own now and never intend to own their ridiculous $295, 15,000-prim, crippled-building-tools properties. My group does... in order for the group itself to function, but hanged if I'm going to spend Porche prices for poor and crippled performance. So bring on the Marketplace! LOL The impact of Marketplace finally dawned on me last night! ( I know, I was slow to realise!) I have this residential SIM that I've recently filled out with new Residents. I provided a Christmas theme as per their request. They were also interested in decorating their own plots with Winter Houses, Ice Rinks, Christmas trees..and all kinds of festive stuff. Instead of searching & visiting shops in-world....all of them to a man decided to go via Marketplace (and yes, there were the usual delivery problems too) to purchase these items. It's at that point ...i said "sh!t" to my myself and realised the impact it's going to have on in-world shopping. These new breed of SL residents want it quick and want it now!....whereas i've always enjoyed the experience of visting new sims, new shops and discover new types of products.....quite often getting side-tracked with nearby elements and go off exploring the neighbourhood. This concept seems dead in the water.(or maybe I'm odd!) IMO the in-world economy is no longer sustainable....I can foresee Commercial sims and commercial regions eventually falling off the table......and being left with mostly Residential sims...few for Clubs, Art Galleries, public areas and RP sims. Another thing i noticed with these Winter Prefabs...normally they would have sold for a few thousand Lindens of which I'd be happy to pay that sort of money.....instead they're selling a few measly hundreds. A lot of work for little return.!!! (eeeek ) The SL economy is skewed...its geared towards selling at ultra cheap prices and from Marketplace at high volume (if you can be found in the first instance using another borked LL Search facility!)......but the problem is that you can't really obtain these high volumes because concurrencies are still appalling!. The game hasn't grown in 2 years! The future doesn't look bright....it's hard to see how any of this can be reversed or corrected once you go down this slippery slope!. If you're a Merchant selling houses for a few hundred Lindens, I can't see how this Advertising beta program will yield an adequate return. Wade mentions its useful for brand recognition......I say with this new breed of consumer...brand recognition goes out of the window (it would have held true during SL earlier days when a Brand name meant something, maybe for Avatar related items like Skins & Hair it still holds true!). Consumers want their desired products quickly and they want it now, doesn't matter who made it...that's the impression i got last night when my Residents went about decorating their Lands!

Your results from 8000 impressions doesn't surprise me. In-world Classified adverts use to be effective, but they're going down the same panner. The whole shopping expereince i've found of late....is done off Marketplace. I can't see how in future one can maintain a whole sim (for a Main store)....when people are shifting away from inworld shopping towards Marketplace. In the long run, I cna't see how LL comes out ahead on the income curve.....i would have thought Tier income from shops & SL businesses would be more in value than Marketplace commissions.

Ah Well.... where to start? Basically..Jack is it? Well you've ah managed to ruin SL single handedly. Lets think about this.... Back in what....April/May you released the completely fubared GSA6 search and ever since then you have tweaked for the worse. Single handedly you have killed off what SL Economy there ever could have been and quite frankly while your sweating now hoping they dont back track the utter failure of SL to you so as you can get another job in a couple weeks when SL goes belly up. I'd like to thank you for displaying that there is no one more ignorant about business then you. Thank you for killing off thousands of peoples incomes and that of your co-workers, I'm sure most will be thanking you in a private way a couple weeks from now. ....that imo, just about somes it up.....but i would go further back to 2007 and include screwing up Mainland with oversupply of Sims from which Mainland has never recovered. Sorry Jack...you should have been outed way back in 2007 imo. You have really balls up All Search, Classifieds, Events & Land Sales in V2 ..which are now filtering through into some parts of 1.23 Viewers too. I say "you", although not a technician or developer...you lead those Teams and therefore should ultimately be held accountable. The buck stops with you! (as the VC's cannot be disconnected from interfering in policies & strategies)

The SL economy is in serious trouble - serious trouble. In four years, I have never seen things so bad. I question my sanity for not pulling out while there is still time. I guess I am a silly romantic living on hope and a miracle. You saw Desmond's analysis in another blog. The fear is spreading to the big players now. Confidence in Linden Lab is at an all-time low. The company has made terrible mistakes over the past three years that have undermined investor's faith in the whole enterprise. Linden Lab is in trouble and it knows it. The VCs see it all slipping away and they don't know what to do. Ergo Philip's panic secondment and the drive to create a workable SLM and SLA. I will be very frank. Without SLM and SLA, I would be dead in the water. I would have had to bail out of SL with huge losses. I hang on by a thread only because of SLM and SLA - two projects that finally add value to SL instead of the litany of failures (VAT, OS, AU, V2, mainland supply, AC, Zindra, Teens) that have been gnawing like termites at the entire political-economic infrastructure for the past three years. Linden Lab have only themselves to blame.....from being on the brink of becoming something large...it manages to score own goal after own goal. You can't lay the the blame on the "Recession"....as that would contradict and not explain IMVU's rapid growth over the last 18 months along with it's buoyant economy. (I've communicated with some of IMVU Content Creators) That's the problem of accepting VC money.....it can serve as a "noose around your head" in later years......hence some of the wierd strategies we've been seeing!

Hope you didn't spend too many USD as a guinea pig!

Good post Sylar ! I'm curoius if theres a way to count impressions and how many click-throughs. That part is essential.

IMVU is terrible in every other regard, but "Simple" is the one key factor it has that Second Life has been lacking so far. In the 21st century, simplicity alone is the "killer app" that often beats out a product with superior features. Second Life needs a simple version for all the people who just want to relax, play, and not heavily engage their higher thought processes. Nearly everyone that is! Most people already did difficult stuff all day & just want to chill out, chat, share LOLs, etc... The new web SL player looks promisingly like exactly this kind of thing, very stripped down and simplified in extreme, hopefully its the solution Second Life needs! Correct, I've always maintained LL from the outset should have developed 2 types of viewers....a full version downloadable and a "Lite version" . I would bet retention rates would be somewhat better. IMVU has a low retention rate too...2 million active accounts out of 50 million. Approx. 4%....about the same as SL (800k out of 20 mill)

hmmmm IMVU ... I did a little research on this place, and took a little trip over there. Now I see why LL has hidden their stats recently. IMVU has surpassed SL in usership, considerably, to say the least. Firstly IMVU cannot even begin to compare to Second Life....SL is far the superior product no questions about it, but their management seems to be more in tune with it's userbase. You should read an Interview with Will Harvey (IMVU founder) which was quite enlightening (he's far more open, even quotes the actual IMVU income for this year). They tried many (failed) strategies before managing to hit on something that worked. If you dig deeper like i did last night (I joined IMVU for research purposes)...you'll see that the IMVU registration page with single word Username and selection of avatar......is almost identical to Second Life's. So now you can see where LL got this idea from.....they basically followed IMVU's lead and virtually copied it!! Likewise...if you look at Second Life's Marketplace...and then compare it to IMVU's Catalog...you'll see a lot of design similarities. I suggest LL are not being innovative at all....to me it appears they're copying someone else's format and hoping it works! If LL want to copy IMVU, then they should develop & pay for Banner advertising campaign like IMVU....that is one of the main reasons IMVU has grown so much in the last year.

Is this a Chinese Govt run Blog ? Seems like a whole bunch of comments got deleted. I see where LL got the idea of a single name Login name.....its' straight off the IMVU account creation page. In fact there's not a lot of difference between SL's and IMVU sign up pages.....and the same can be said of the 2 shopping sites. LL are not being innovative.....it's just straight copying someone elses format!

I've been considering doing my own advertising in the Real World. Realistically, SL is a virtual world that in and of itself, isn't the attraction. It's about what we've built, the virtual experiences we've created here. Is it really Linden Lab's responsibility to advertise for our businesses? Comparing IMVU to SL is not really much of a comparison. IMVU is really just a 3D chat room, you can't create there. Its simple really! Linden Lab increases its active userbase, it increases it's own revenues and ultimately it's profitability! New users will use Lindex, will buy Land, will take out their premium subscriptions and will buy on Marketplace. IMVU advertises it's product and hence its grown rapidly even in a middle of recession. Second Life spend hardly any marketing dollars....and therefore not grown in 2 years! So which to you appears to be the successful strategy? Incorrect....IMVU does allow user created content, Some of their Devs have earnt 100's of thousands of dollars in a year. IMVU takes a sizeable cut on each sale. Infact there are a lot of similarites to SL's Marketplace and IMVU's Catalog..they both have the dreaded "Cart" . You have to wonder if the SL Marketplace Devs actually tried to copy IMVU!! eg Houses http://www.imvu.com/shop/web_search.php?keywords=houses Despite IMVU's impressive growth....if you read the IMVU forums, you'll see similar complaints as we see here on SL forums. It must be something in the Californian air, that has these companies forever trying to fleece it's customer base! The IMVU regulars complain about bad policies being introduced, or customer support tickets not being answered.........you get a familar picture. +++++++ I see where LL got the idea of a single name Login name.....its' straight off the IMVU account creation page. In fact there's not a lot of difference between SL's and IMVU sign up pages.....and the same can be said of the 2 shopping sites. LL are not being innovative.....it's just straight copying someone elses format!

The problem is simple... There are not enough people in SL that have money; Real World Money OR Lindens to spend. Linden Labs needs to focus on getting NEW users to participate and keeping them here to enjoy all the great stuff we have. They need to crank up the (Banner) Advertising they themselves do a little of (be a Vampire) and until recently, did none of. Take a look at how much Advertising IMVU, Red Light-UtherUniverse and games like WoW, Final Fantasy and a pile of others do. The New Linden VP of Marketing, Kim Linden (Kim Salzer) ((frankly she rocks)) came to LL us from Blizzard http://lindenlab.com/about/management#salzer IMVU claims over 100,000 users logged in, and I will bet you that not many of them are "bots" Kim, please deliver us from this mess. Advertise SL and boost the economy for all of us! Share with us what you are planning and doing. Thanks - Aprille Shepherd Exactly that Aprille.....Linden Lab have been dilly dallying with strategies that did not yield any meaningful growth.....instead of spending real marketing dollars. IMVU invested a lot in Banner advertising around the Internet...it has now surpassed Second Life in terms of concurrency. I've saw it hit 110k 2 weeks ago. William Harvey (IMVU founder) : "Google is one but our most profitable is banner ad display advertising. Sexy avatars are a great way of advertising the product and have a high click-through rate. It works for IMVU." The only way to boost the SL economy...is to increase the active userbase....everything else is pie in the sky!