Q4 2011 Economic Report

[Josh Susanto]

On the one hand, I can see how quarterly reports can always be spun from some paranoid angle by someone like myself, and that providing them to me is just a form a encouragement which doesn't really help anyone else.

OTOH, discontinuation of the reports is pretty much handing me a free pass to spin what isn't being said any way I want, so it's not really an improvement.

LL certainly has the data anyway, and probably even has the report more-or-less formatted in the way previous ones have been formatted for release to us, so this can't easily be a question of additional work, especially inasmuch as it is also extra work to explain why it will not be released.

In order for the risks of not releasing the report to be outweighed by the benefit of not releasing it, I should think the data would have to be profoundly discouraging. That is: either the data are profoundly discouraging or LL has failed to calculate the comparative risks and benefits of release and non-release (just think about that for a second, please).

The most favorable scenarios I can see are that LL just can't get reliable data together (yeah, um, great, huh?), or that they have become convinced that the data do not reflect any useful pattern or non-pattern (which I can believe, since the utility of such data would in any case fly out the window as soon as they have some kind of day-long SLM outage, which is becoming somewhat regular at this point; it happens when no one expects it except me). 

So, really, there's nothing positive I can see in their decision not to release the report, even as I strain to give them the benefit of a doubt in the matter.

But I probably shouldn't even need to point this out.

What if Microsoft or Coca-Cola abrupltly stopped letting anyone know where the company stood?

What would happen to their stock value?

And what could possibly be some kind of problem large enough to offset the comparatively smaller problem of sending stock value into free-fall?

LL either has big problems, or they want everyone to think that they do.

Which seems more likely to you?

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Yes, but the stats given were nowhere near the stats that LL uses to analyze it's business. It'd be a different story if they were publishing their own financials and stats that affected that.

What they were giving us was cotton candy. Everyone spins optimistically where they can, but public companies like the ones you mention have numbers that can be verified, audited and actioned against falsehood.

This was none of the above, and the most important stats, which would be company earnings, profit and loss etc., were nowhere to be found, ever.

To the user, organic and personal data is more accurate than what comes out of LL. Mass experience has generally proven to be as accurate as we can hope for.

I don't think anyone disputes that it's in decline. Why would you want numbers that don't even accurately portray the decline?

If you want proof of that, you don't have to look any further than the land stats last week, which indicated more private regions lost last week than we've had since 2008 after the homestead fiasco.

Why do you need to theorize about what most people already know with or without quarterly reports that never contained real financials to begin with?

[Toysoldier Thor]

I will not respond / counter- point your entire posting to me... it will just go back and forth....

but

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.

 

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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.?

 

So you say that NONE of the aboce is reasonable suspicions he?  So without and release of the quarterly results from LL to prove your point... how can you post that my points are not reasonable?  Because they go against your reasonable optimistic opinions which in your mind "must be facts"?

Your statement on my suspicions are not provable since ... like the rest of us... you have no stats from LL to prove that them wrong?  And since my suspicions an extrapolation of the trend of the results from the past few quarterly results, how could you make a statement that mine are wrong if they were trends from a proven pattern?

Since you say and somehow believe I am wrong then that means you believe and have proof that LL's SL statistics have somehow magically bucked a multi-quarter trend and completely changed directions.  Show us this proof on your belief.

 

As Josh said.... since LL decided to hide these stats from the population from now on.... they have given all of is the freedom to make what ever speculation of the real results for this quarter that we want.  I personally believe the SL stats are following a proven downward trend... you seem to believe LL has mgically turned it around and is on a growth swing after 2 years of bad stats.  the difference is that I am not going to call you a liar or wrong - I just dont believe you predictions.

[Josh Susanto]

Moreover: If they had turned it around, why wouldn't they tell us?

Doesn't it seem like exactly what they'd like to have told us all along?

What would be the point of suddenly hiding the exact information they've almost certainly been waiting to be able to report for at least a couple of years now?

The only reasonable conclusion to draw without some kind of theory even more convoluted than what I could produce is that the report, if issued, would show a situation substantially worse than what stands to be projected from the existing trend of decline. 

 

[Darrius Gothly]

One of the stats in the quarterly reports was the number of new user signups, wasn't it? So how's this for a Conspiracy Theory .. of sorts?

When they eliminated Last Names and went to the single name signup, they crowed loudly how much it had increased the number of people no longer abandoning the signup page. But that was at the outset, and as many of us have mentioned, was primarily due to all us existing residents that went and created alts with single-word variations of our established company and main AV names ... to prevent someone else grabbing those and deceiving our customers.

But now it's been another quarter down the road, the hew and cry to bring back last names has reached a level of exasperation that is near the top for user outrage events in SL's past. LL is still maintaining though that the reason they don't want to bring back last names is that the single name format prevents abandonment of the signup page and that it hasn't changed since the changeover.

Well, what if this quarter's stats show that new user signups is drastically down. In fact, what if it shows it's lower than it ever was with the original format First and Last Name process? That would knock the last peg out of their argument to retain single user names. And wasn't the number of signup page abandonments also part of the quarterly stats? What if that showed abandonment was up instead of down? Again that would fly counter to their argument.

Granted, they could have just done as they've done in the past, eliminate that stat and just ignore the wailing when it vanished, but maybe they just got tired of whittling out more and more stuff ... and finally realized the remaining stats they could publish would be along the lines of "SL didn't close this past quarter. Thank you for reading the stats."

Just pondering ... y'know. (And putting more shot in Josh's scatter gun LOL)

[WADE1 Jya]

The Vital Nature of Transparency:

To me, transparency is paramount. It is a pillar that can not be removed. Once again, I'll reiterate my request to Lindens. Please rescind this poor decision & agree that you will release your usual company data. You have misunderstood in thinking this information was superfluous to us.

In any business relationship, a continuum of transparency is vital to trust. I know some of you guys are through this forum so please someone pass the message up the chain that people still wanna see those quarterlies :catfrustrated:

[Freya Mokusei]

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

Well, what if this quarter's stats show that new user signups is drastically down. In fact, what if it shows it's lower than it ever was with the original format First and Last Name process? That would knock the last peg out of their argument to retain single user names. And wasn't the number of signup page abandonments also part of the quarterly stats? What if that showed abandonment was up instead of down? Again that would fly counter to their argument.

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I'm sure you're aware of both Tyche and Tateru's statistics. Both show a fairly good raise in sign-ups since last names were killed, especially since about April last year.

Most of the 'user' related metrics still exist, and continue to be mined and analysed. The missing component is mostly the economy data (without having compared). The fact that LL is allowing just as much data 'out' (for third-party analysis) as it has done since 2010 probably means there's nothing new worth hiding. They've just moved away from doing the publishing because it was no longer useful now that they're no longer in the 'hype' phase of development. As I said before, all it ever did was provide 4 sell-out performances of Chicken Little every year. That the current management recognises this is - in my opinion - a good thing.

[Josh Susanto]

Having pondered the matter just a bit longer, I now realize that the non-report might really be the most useful report for me so far.

My response to it is to start editing my listings to make more conspicuous the fact that my data are almost all ready on the contents tabs of my products, ready to be exported for use on competing grids. 

[Rene Erlanger]

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

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.

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1800 sims abandoned since Jan 2011 from 32k.......I'd call that 6%...and it's still falling. (or $4.75 Million USD annualised lost revenue)

Don't forget you're looking at a company that probably only has 10 -15% profit margins. Tateru thinks if 6000 more sims were abandoned, it would see the company go into "red"....i think it's nearer 4000.