Prokofy Neva

Nelson, I don't think you do yourselves or anyone else favours by removing key figures that used to be transparently available in these tables on a daily basis on the website, and now are pulled. And that's the number of "positive montly Linden flow" accounts, i.e. accounts that monthly had more Lindens than they spent. This number was tanking, and maybe that's why you wanted to stop showing it, but it's important because it tells us whether large and small businesses still find SL a place to operate. I'm also asking again whether "economic participation" means "spent $1 or more" or what it means. It used to be reflected in those terms, i.e. whether or not a person had spent more than $1. Thus buying Lindens but not spending them, or getting a stipend on the premium account and not spending it would not count as "economic participation". You also used to show these figures in terms of expenditure categories, like how many people spent $50 a month, how many spent $2000 or $50,000 a month. And that was also tremendously helpful for merchants to know, in terms of pricing and market size. But now you've hidden this, and needlessly. Another thing I find confusing abouty your numbers is the question of concurrency. Repeat log-ins is something different. So what is concurrency and how has it ranged over the month? You also seem to forget that some of us have been around a long time following this, and can compare the figures from past years or even just a few months ago. So a statement like "1 percent growth" in log-ins seems incomplete, when we know, from having seen this figure perched up in the upper right hand corner of our log on screens for years on end, that the figure of repeat log-ons was 1.5 or 1.6 million or more. So it dropped from 1.5 million to 795,000. Ouch. Why? If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say: Viewer 2.x. It's a commerce-killer, it undermines sharing, it hurts.

Hi, Rodvik, all that sounds neat. Roman toga -- perfect outfit for this game. Well, here's a few cheats and walk-throughs: On the mailbox, there's a way to make those scripts less laggy so they don't "listen" all the time and lag your sim but "sleep" -- I think Ordinal Malaprop will know how to fix this, and I hope you get things running so that she would want to come back. Talk to Ordinal, get all her free scripts, then go back to your camp. On the cabin, don't use actual logs as they take up prim space, put on a texture instead. Go to The Alchemist's, get some potions, go back to your camp, grow some flax, then cross the ocean on the raft with the potion and the flax, making sure to dodge the man-eating sharks and then...I forget. I have to go look it up. Stay right there until I come back. P.S. You don't need to buy the flax or seeds because you can just make them yourself. While you are waiting, you should get a bear made. Every Linden has a bear. This is essential. You can use Nicole Linden's template bear and add some one feature that says "you". Oh, and maybe this is a test they give you, I'm not sure, but I think you're supposed to hack into the code that makes the accounts say "Linden Lab Employee" and add your own special title. Your predecessors had "Il Presidente" or "El Chefe' or something like that I recall. So that's your next quest. Also, in order to make your population happy you have to build some more community buildings. Also five friends are needed to make it snow. Back soon, I promise.

Yes, I insist on having open groups. There should be a toggle -- invite only or open. The one boon I would like is to have the ability to ban people even from open-membership groups. I'd like to keep the convenience of open groups for the majority of people who are law-abiding, but still be able to keep out frequent-flyer griefers who just join open groups "because they can" to be annoying.

Great news about the groups! I'm always having to leave groups every day and go through the nuisance of rejoining them again, even my own groups for land and activities, because of the limitations. So this will really be a huge boon! Thanks! In fact, I'm surprised not to see more gratitude here because people have asked for this for years, furiously. Guess it's the rising tide of expectations! I realize you are following the stampede everywhere on all the platforms to increase traffic and sales by linking Facebook. But I do wonder if these new web profiles can EASILY be an OPT-OUT or even better, an OPT-IN (always preferable) for *Google*. Currently, avatar profiles show up in Google. Do they have to? Yes, there is a check mark that I know can be eventually accessed to shut this off. But is it really easy for everyone, especially new people? For all those preparing their little lectures to the effect "Don't go on the Internet if you don't like exposure," um, no, I don't need to do this. I'm all over the Internet, with my blogs, and with my RL and SL unfortunately linked (because of vicious people long ago on the forums who forcibly linked me, so I've had to resign myself to it). The reason I ask is that recently, as you must know, there was a lapse and an exploit. Hidden groups that people checked off as hidden as founders/owners, i.e. groups that *themselves* are not in inworld search (as distinct from any group that an individual may chose to hide on his profile) were suddenly visible via the web -- and visible in Google. This was fixed within a day, but still, it's disturbing. Second Life is a world; it is not a web page. If we wanted to be on web pages, we'd be on Facebook or a forums. The other issue I have to raise (since I continue to be arbitrarily blocked from the JIRA) is the loading of groups. In a word -- they don't. The chat issue is one thing -- but name lists and land are yet another. Currently, in groups with lots of land and lots of people (I have about 600 in one of my largest, and about a quarter million meters or so in it), the list of people are never searchable by alphabet. I can type in a person's name in the box, and even if they are in the group, they will not return as a search answer. I can sort by alphabet and try to search, but the group hangs, shows blanks, and sometimes then finally aligns, but often is unusable. The land also never loads so you can see if all the tier is covered and tell when someone has pulled or added a donation. It says and never shows. So how do you think that will go with 42 groups -- will the land groups also load?

Dear Rod, I love your name, it sounds like a Second Life name and I hope it speaks volumes! Don't give yourself an alphabet name like "M' and the marketing suits who came before you, call yourself "Humble Linden," find 10 ways of listening to customers every day, be it a drop in to the forums, a blog post answering queries, or an in-world townhall, and I guarantee you will have many eating out of your hand, after 7 years of Arrogant Linden. I couldn't be more pleased that you're from the Sims. I'm a refugee from the Sims Online myself and I kept my account there until the last "GAME OVER" sign. Think of Second Life like the Sims on Free Will, and without having to go to the bathroom, and you should do fine. Please please please can we have job objects? I'm serious. This is the single most common request of newbies, a job in order to make money. Hire some of those Sims coders to modify the pizza or map games into SL collaboration and exploration games for at least shopping tokens if not real money, and you could have a game-changer. I would say that rather than focusing on fixing viewer 2.x, where the chat chiclets are still in a clusterfrak, or rather than fussing with mesh, which nobody really asked for, you should concentrate on fixing one thing tht will fix up many other things: SEARCH.

I've had the same critique, for longer than Deltango Vale, and about many other things (the outrageous tolerance of the ad farms and grief cutting of sims for four long years, starting with the "Impeach Bush" guy, devaluing people's land terribly. But I don't view this as a problem that has to do with "negligence" or one manager's poor performance, nor do I believe that the departure of Jack himself would somehow fix this problem. That's because these issues aren't functions of negligence or poor management, but an inherent contradiction in the nature of the business model: it's in Linden Lab's interests to sell more and more land and make more and more sales and permanent tier arrangements as possible, but it's not in our interests as secondary retailers of this land to have them keep glutting our market. At the end of the day, they have to care less about landlords and more about themselves, and finding a balance has not proved possible in six years, and probably is not possible because of the exigencies of the Linden land revenue model. The reason why I said that Jack could put on his resume for the next job opportunity things that I criticized and cost me income is because *those policies made revenue for his company*. That's the hard, cold fact. The shortage of snow and the real estate bubble that occurred in 2004; the domination of the market by Anshe Chung and the inflation of prices as a result -- that might have been fixed by Linden Lab, and to some extent *was* fixed by the acceleration of land supply in 2005, but ultimately the Lindens had to face a reality -- more land and more customers and more customer service costs? Or let this big real estate service provider shoulder the cost of customer service for the Lab? And they chose the latter. Land wasn't undersupplied in 2006 -- the Lindens bought and laid out servers as fast as their hands could type, but there were determined buyers like Anshe and like Adam Zaius who were cornering markets and jacking up prices -- and again, it was in the Lab's interest to let the land barons pay for the Customer Service State which is what Ed Castronova told us we would expect in virtual worlds and real life. The Customer Service State costs a lot of money to staff. Then in 2006-2007 the hype began to die down, the land barons began to find they were overstretched with a land glut and now the Lindens were faced with a big problem: how to make revenue? They had a stagnation, but they still had to keep making money. They had to keep growth and revenue or they wouldn't make bank and pay back the VCs. So they had to glut, it was in their interests to glut -- first by slashing prices to build up volume, a common sales tactic, then by building up prices again. They had to encourage more people to buy more land for less, so they had to flood the market and break the back of barons who were now also in the same, mirrored land business, trying to maximize revenue for themselves and not low prices for their customers. The Lindens, in my view, could have pluralized the market and made it more stable by a simple thing: not making the Mainland a garbage scow and immediately setting a firm policy on the ad farms issue. But here it was purely ideological -- it isn't that they made money from ad farms (as far as we know, unless they had alts on the take). Instead, they were enforcing Philip Rosedale's vision of maximalist hedonistic freedom on your space to "do WTF you want" within the TOS without any sense of community obligation -- Communist Standards No. 2, that thou shalt not interfere with the enjoyment of SL of another, was something Lindens couldn't and wouldn't interpret to mean (as they should have), "No to extortionist ad farms". It took them FOUR LONG YEARS of massive losses for us and driving away customers before finally new managers could get Philip Rosedale's anarcho-hedonist sandbox vision to be put to rest. But then, no sooner did they begin to prettify the mainland and make new continents with nicer stuff, the Lindens had to listen to the screeching lobby of the land barons in a crunch with too many islands -- they hated like hell that the Mainland now competed with their overpriced services ($50 US for a 4096 for a month instead of $25 or even $12), and they wanted to see the Mainland remain a garbage dump, and themselves openly took part in the destructive ad farms, or used alts. We all know that. Some land barons openly advertised by showing the negativity of the Mainland to drive people to the islands. Anshe Chung first cornered prime new waterfront, then slapped very high prices on it and put portal objects on each parcel for sale that said "Tired of blight and high prices on the Mainland? come to the islands" lol. Brilliant little campaign, there -- that was in 2005-2006. As for the "homestead" fiasco, there's no fiasco. The Lindens behaved properly. Greedly landlords interested in a low-cost and no-work option to flip land and reroute customer service back to Lindens grabbed hundreds of these cheap things, made their tenants have estate powers, and told them to call the Lindens if their overloaded content made the server fall over. Great racket. The Lindens said, sorry, you can't put 20 rentals on a homestead and then make us hand-hold it, we're jacking up the prices to shake you loose. And that was the end of that. As for Linden Homes, here, the Lindens own ideologies crippled them on new-user experience, where again, due to that hippie libertarian stuff, they wouldn't delete miscreants out of the welcome areas and made landing a horrible experience, and they couldn't or wouldn't make the viewer usable, so they had to make landing in a house a smoother experience from the sign-up process. So given the hand he was dealt with, that included some rigidly orthodox hippie technocommunist doctrines that he couldn't jump over (nor could others), and given the exigency of having to make money for his company (he wasn't free to be a sharebie hippie to *that* extent), Jack performed the ultimate hat trick -- turning communism into capitalism and turning capitalism back into communism again, when and as needed. Truly, it should be captured in powerpoint and textbooks and taught to business management classes for decades to come, it's that brilliant. Many a Metaversal myrmidon is going to want to learn how to replicate that neat trick the Soviets couldn't quite master called "We pretend to work, and you pretend to pay us" -- but still collect some tier. Here, again, is the riddle: had Jack managed the Mainland the way it needed to be managed, he wouldn't make money, the island barons wouldn't buy and keep sims, and newbies wouldn't keep coming, given the hippie stuff he had to work with (ad farms must be allowed, etc.) However, in my view, had he been able to prevail against the ad farm disruption, he could have created the middle and low market for newcomers that would have kept them coming and prevent the land from being devalued and encouraged commercial and art areas, while still having the islands as a higher-end option for residences, classier shopping, and combat and RP sims that needed more controls. But for that, he would need the option of better controls over welcome areas, and given the Lindens hippie tendencies there, he couldn't act without a bunch of oldbies screaming about Black-Ops in the landing areas. There was another thing that Jack did that was hugely problematic -- allowed auctions to lose their names -- these all got hidden with "new software" but of course, software is eminently rewriteable -- this was just a policy disguised as a technical exigency. So that meant that anonymous alts with no accountability could come on the auction and force up your bid -- yet not buy the land, or even return it to the Lindens later. There was an enormous amount of that going on. The Lindens couldn't seem to stop this practice because they needed the land barons and the griefers to come on and make lots of bids to keep their system at maximum performance of revenue.

Dear Jack, Second Life will leave you with a better resume leaving than you had coming in, which can't be said for all Lindens: o group tools and communities o new user experience o ending ad farms and traffic botting o Concierge, estates, Homestead crisis o Linden Homes, Atlas All of these programs, features and "solutions" to challenges are all or in part to your credit and you can proudly list them. I don't agree with some of them obviously as they harm *our* business, but for *your* business, they were a good thing. But there's one thing that should accrue to your eternal shame, and you know that: SEARCH. Goodbye, Prokofy

I've decided, on balance, this is an initiative that has to be welcomed: http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2010/12/thank-you-grant-linden-rip-thank-you-nelson-linden-may-you-live-forever.html It's a breakthrough for the Lindens to share their precious eyeballed ad space with us, even if the first pancake always turns out lumpy, as the Russian proverb says it. (Pervy blin komben). I can't quite tell the prices here -- are they really saying it would run me $12,000 US to run an ad on their auction page for a month? Well, that wouldn't be something I could do, but a large land owner might find it valuable. So I can only say -- go for it, and improve and expand it. I view this as the first step to the Lindens eventually parting with ad space to sell in infohubs and welcome areas and roads on a network, and I hope that's how it works. Even if not. ads are what business is about. I love them; they bring me money. My customers love them; they click on them and find something they want. Time for the technocommunist stranglehold on SL to end.

Nelson, This looks great. I'm in. I'm not one of these hippies or Leninists who thinks there shouldn't be advertising all over the place, I love advertising, it gets media paid for, and that's why we're all here! And I also don't care if you charge a lot, because this is prime time, your properties, eyeballs out the wazoo, such as we can never get from classifieds, which are likely invisible after the first two pages, or search which is, well, broken. Now, I just have a few questions: 1. Do you mind if I put an add for my rentals next to your Land Auction pages? I know it might sound counterintuitive, but work with me on this. If people are browsing to BUY land but they are still a little scared and gun-shy, RENTING for instance MY LAND instead will help them get a taste of what it's like, and then they may go buy on the auction later. 2. Could you just put up a chart of your rates, you know, like all magazines do, so I don't have to click through a bunch of menus and add to my shopping cart and pick flight dates (flight?) etc. Like I said, I don't care if it costs a lot, just tell me. Now that you're breaking the mold on the web pages and finally after all these years cutting us in on your eyeballs, I know that you may come to finally see my point (made for six years) that you have to sell advertising in the welcome areas and infohubs too. Yes, I see all the screeching above from people who hate ads. But...the reality is, everybody clicks on them. So put them inworld. In fact, I can envision a Linden-run ad network all along the Governor Linden highways and byways on the Mainland that could help you -- and us -- get paid again on the Mainland. Don't give up, Nelson.

I'm starting to see the new people come in now on 1.23 as "Mildred Resident" or "Herbert456 Resident" and then I see them in my transaction as just their first name like "Twinkletoes". But what happens if multiple people chose the name "Twinkletoes"? They can't have two "Twinkletoes Residents" and more to the point, they can't have a unique name for their creations, should they make them. How will that work? Or does the system reject you if you type in "Joe123" and there is already a "Joe123" as a user name?

Thanks a bunch, Jack. I heard that people could now make new avatars with just one name, and so people were taking business names to harass others. I logged on to find that both "Prokofy" and "Ravenglass", the name of my business, were taken by day-old avatars with no payment on file. So, I imagine you'll tell me I can't do a thing about this because I haven't trademarked my names in RL? I expect you to do that, because you are cynics and you did this deliberately to shake us small businessmen loose. Getting a trademark isn't that hard, but it's costly and time-consuming and may not work. It's worked for some avatars; it might not work for all. Second Life gave us the promise of a kind of soft trademarking regime by having these features that enabled us to create a unique name that no one else could take, and use that name in business, and create unique groups that no one else could take (although you've started violating that with my group Free Tibet, letting another group take the exact same name just because you felt they should have it). I can't go making extra accounts because I'm at the account limit -- if I give my real life name and address and payment information honestly, I am denied the ability to make a new account. Meanwhile day-old griefers can endlessly make accounts to harass me now. More frustration than ever with viewer 2 -- no immediately available instructions on how to activate group titles now -- or are they gone? You can't have group titles anymore? The inworld panel "help" is exasperating, telling you the meaning of terms, but not how to do things. I'm also going to have to go hunt on all your annoying wikis to figure out how to even make display names, because that's no inworld either.

This is a welcome development. I tried the test but got neither option, I couldn't EXPLORE or JOIN but just play the video again. When I refreshed the page, I got a different video. One thing that really struck me: how silly all that typing animation stuff looks. Especially in an ad. You might think of filming the ads without that typing because it's hard to understand for an outsider. One thing I liked was the sort of flourish that went swirling around and then turned into the design of the SL hand. I thought that was really cool. It took the hand away from its culty mystical beginnings and made it more Disney in a good way.

To undo that billing, there's another thing that has to happen or it will keep billing you even if you fix up your land/deed problem. You must go into the group and take out the 512 you donated on top of that land that was deeded. And make sure that in that group your contribution is only 512 with an excess of 512 showing (that's the 1024). Then WITHDRAW THE 512 EXCESS from the GROUP -- otherwise it keeps billing. It doesn't know this is excess and not applied to land. Then go on the website, and move the tier down -- check off 512, not 1024. It will say "512 available" but you must move the check-off in the box down so it stops saying that. As long as you keep seeing "512 available" on your website account page, you are going to be billed. Make sure the land/tier deeded inworld is all that is taken by that group. Indeed, the entire reason you keep experiencing this is that your land is in the group with its tier attached (512), and your donation of 512 is also made to the group on top of that to equal 1024 m2!

I realize with all your exhaustive ministrations, you believe the KB is "correct". But it's wrong here. You don't need to have the ability to deed land to deed the land. You can CHECK THE BOX making the option to deed available WHICH GROUP OFFICERS can then use to deed. So the contributor can set the land to the group he wants to deed to, check off the box, and leave it for the officer -- that way officers/founders of a group don't need to have each m ember be able to deed land -- which means they could steal any piece of land out of the group and deed it away elsewhere. Furthermore, the contributor has to check off "make contribution" or the group has to have that tier to cover the land, one of the two.

No, that's still not the full story. You have to use DEED to group AND contribute to group BOTH to send both your land AND THE TIER covering it to the group.

If you are donating LAND and not TIER ALONE to a group, you have to click on DEED TO GROUP and also the box ALLOCATE TIER WITH DONATION and then both your tier and that piece of land go into a group. You should not face any other charges then. (The reason you ARE facing charges is because you did both contribute/deed AND contribute via the about land contribution interface -- two separate actions -- and you have to undo the second in the group, and on your web page, or it will keep billing.) The "known issue" sounds like some confusion to me. I haven't seen that. What I see happening is people donate tier they forget is "taken" already, or they deed land and it is taken by a group with excess tier, and they don't allocate their tier with it. If the group you are trying to donate to doesn't have the tier to receive it, the system bounces it and it says "you do not have enough land credits". By referring to both "tier" and "land credits" as if they are separate things (they aren't) the Lindens also ensure confusion with all this. When the Lindens are ready to encourage instead of discourage the sale of land between residents and not just by themselves to residents, they will get rid of this confusion.

What likely happened is that you kept your 512 first land, and didn't release the 512 tier covering that 512 m of land. Then when you tried to donate 512 to a group on top of that, the system billed you for 1024 m2. In order to donate land to a group, you have to first sell or abandon that first 512 you were using, or leave your Linden Home. Then you have the 512 free and clear to donate. I have numerous people who donate 512 or more in tier to my group to get a rental valued at $250 or a discount of $250 -- and nothing bills them any further. There is no mechanism to bill them further in fact. So I think this is a function of the land not having been freed. Tier and land are separate things, and confusing. Tier of 512 covers 512 m2, and can't be used anywhere else except on that 512 until that piece is sold or abandoned.

That's right, Pathfinder! First, build the pipes and flood the reverse-engineered sims -- including one that you are now leading the community at -- and copy, copy, copy content -- from Second Life, from each other, from the Internet, from whatever -- but mainly rip it from Second Life. Teleport around the Hypergrid *which does not currently recognize, maintain or ensure copyright with any sort of copy/mod/transfer system as in SL that sticks* and fill up those empty, sterile sandboxes without commerce on them. That is, you can copy something in one grid, take it with you in your inventory, rez it out on another grid, and nothing stops you. No dialogue comes up to prevent it; there are no TOS to sign; and there is no existing agreement to honour copyright or provide any kind of mechanical permissions. Hypergrid teleportation isn't built on an architecture and on an agreement among the parties that only those grids that do not become copybot havens will allow passage. Instead, like all new media, like Youtube, like many other platforms, there's a nod and a wink and an instruction to "call your lawyer" if you are that upset. And then...people without real names showing on the "about us" on the grid website... So FIRST you are building interoperability and flooding content, THEN you are going to get "thoughtful" some day and "figure out" how to protect permissions *later*. That's irresponsible and even criminal. To urge Linden Lab to return to their commitment to interoperability under these circumstances is irresponsible. I hope LL will in fact develop ways to leverage its powers to impose some kind of trans-grid permissions systems and recognition of only those other platforms *that have built-in permissions systems* not just a vague TOS telling you where to send a DMCA notice. *Yes, that means DRM and YES THAT WORKS in a virtual world, unlike real life (where in fact it works better than you admit anyway).* Rene, as for "would be a unified Search system that encompasses locations from all the different Grids! Who wins the search for all these worlds wins the Metaverse. Don't you think that's up LL's sleeve when they impose this awful GSA on our world, so destructive of the economy? They hope to win the larger multi-world search, that's all, and and they're in a good position to control such a search, once they get it to their liking, by offering it as an opensource feature to the other worlds but one in which they control the development on --- and where most importantly, they control the ad sales, like Google.

Those ex-Linden posts were fake, but they could get people believing on that "the residents are losers" stuff because that *was* true. We have that documented in public speeches (Mitch Kapor at the SL birthday party calling early adapters "misfits") and in the "you look good, we look good" efforts of some key Lindens in 2005-2006 who let it be known that they saw the lousy builds and low culture in SL as an impediment to mainstream attractiveness.

Yeah those "ex-Lindens" were fake, and I said so myself, for precisely that reason, that real Lindens wouldn't be obsessing day and night how to block me, or block other Lindens that were blocking me, blah blah blah. I have a fairly popular critical blog. But it's not like I run griefing raids on SL. I run a modest rentals business and a land preserve and wait on customers. I don't think the Lindens could really find fault with me. I suspect the posts were written by someone flogging the new open source grids to get customers by getting across the message that "SL can't scale". Of course, it's scaled already far beyond anything these laggy and crashy and impoverished open sims have done, but ideology is hard to shake. The Prok bit is thrown in to give this overall message a wrapper that would be popular, and also to underscore my thesis which is anti-geek, and burn home the message that LL is turning anti-geek too, so the geeks need to move to the Leninist grids. That's all that's about.

Your view is corporativist -- nay, fascistic -- and repugnant. You're not the one to judge what is "dross" and "quality" -- the market choses, and the market should be as free as it can be, which, of course, is a relative concept in a virtual world where the platform maker controls the economy. The problem isn't that people game search. They will always game it, and you probably merely have your own game that isn't working at the moment, hence your ranting about "ross". The problem is the GSA. GSA is not even something Google itself uses for the big public Google, oddly enough. It's a corporate "solution" that is inappropriate for this relatively small population with an enormous amount of content on a fairly concise number of venues. GSA was forced on us because the Lindens have an eye to owning the search for the entire Metaverse, including the open sims that are reverse-engineered from their code (and please don't let the nerds start in claiming open sim isn't reverse engineered, because of course it is, and the coders admit this themselves.) That the GSA is currently killing this world's economy seems of little interest to our Lindens.

I don't know what's more painful. Watching these terribly sanitized Linden reports shorn of important data that used to be transparent and is now dark, or watching the noble gyrations of people like Desmond. The number of people who spent more than one dollar inworld used to be the only real number in SL. It still is the only real number (496,000 or 480,000), but it's called differently now and it's not clear the same thing is being counted. "Economic participation" could include alts to whom dollars are transferred rather than all accounts who spent out money. This number steadily grew for years and years, no matter what. Then, all of a sudden in February of this year, with the secret 2.0 development and such and the mangling of search, it began to dip. It went back up again. Now it's declining. Not good. Basically, every land baron's story in SL is a microcosm for the problem of Linden Lab. Every land baron succeeds when there is growth, but as soon as there is a dip in occupancy and a slowdown in sign-ups, he suddenly faces fixed cost that eat away his gains and then begin to turn the upside down. What I've always called "mainland mystery math" is when people think that they are doing something "good" by "ploughing the proceeds back into the business" when in fact expanding when there will not be continued growth means getting stuck with a whole bunch of unrented land. Basically, this is what has happened to the Lindens, writ large. They have no choice but to use the same methods that land barons have had to use to try to pull out of their death spiral: o lower prices o raise volume of sales o offer more freebies and loss-leaders o redesign and repurpose o spend more on advertising o tighten up customer care to retain customers o diversify offerings for different tastes o increasing content sales o supplementing with consulting o abandoning land The Lindens have done all that. And -- I'm not sure it will work.

Oh, dear. Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. Try googling the term "stock market" and "pyramid scheme" and such with the term "Second Life" and you might broaden your horizons...

Good work on the detachables, Esbee. Now fix the chat chicklet clusterfrak.

That's awful. And no, you can't get it back, unless you have a lawyer and determination and the willingness to pursue what is a relatively small amount through small claims court, but most small claims courts wouldn't deal with $18 US in a virtual world. So you should put the name out on Twitter, blogs, inworld groups, etc. to warn others. I can offer you a free 4096 for 4 weeks if you like. IM me inworld. No purchases, just move in. I only rent land, I don't sell it, and I think that's really how it should be done. I also believe in refunds, and I find most landlords in Concierge dealing with islands will not give refunds.