Thank GOD they are not all mindless sheep!

Arsheba Nasu Says:
August 14th, 2007 at 8:24 PM PDT

Let me set the record straight regarding the so-called Second Life Economy. There isn’t one. Not any longer.

You only need to look at the Popular Places list to see what the vast majority of active accounts in SL are doing. They’re camping.

The first and last impression most new sign-ups see is the camping farms. This is what Second Life has become, and Linden does not seem to mind at all.

These camping farms, largely driven by the too-good-to-be-true idea sold to advertisers that there is some value in advertising to zombies, have completely taken over not only the ebb and flow of the money supply, but also the overall trend that accelerates away from the days when real people spent real money developing real virtual content that real people wanted to find. Now all they can find is camping farms. And those who have invested large sums of time and money creating content, whether social or commercial in nature, are finding it more and more difficult to reach the few genuine customers left.

Businesses are gasping for air. All the methods of advertising and publicity that once allowed us to thrive, based on our own merits, no longer function. Does it really take the collapse of Ginko to make it obvious that the SL economy is in a death spiral?

The traffic-point system has been completely corrupted to the point that there is a seemingly endless supply of advertisers who have been duped into thinking it’s a no-brainer to fund these camping farms in exchange for Top-20 advertising. When one realizes the money was wasted, there are hundreds more waiting in line to advertise to the chronically AFK.

There seems to be no end in sight to the camping farms’ control of Search and Popular Places, and the air’s getting quite thin for the rest of us.

Joseph Woolley Says:
August 14th, 2007 at 8:39 PM PDT

Linden, since you don’t want to publish my blog regarding the land sales. I will repeat it here, if you keep it out again, i will publish it on the world wide web.

1st - forget about the good old day land price of average 2.5L per sqm. Linden stop ding first land sale of 1L per sqm now.

2nd - Forget about wanting to have land price below 5L per sqm. The lowest possible start cost for a sim now is 5.84L per sqm. Minimum bid of US$1250 plus Tier cost of US$195 equal to US$1445. Take that multiply by 265 linden, you get 382925 linden. Divide that by 65536 sqm, you get 5.84 Linden per sqm. This is assuming you can sell the linden at 265 linden after deducting all the necessary cost charge by lindex or other exchange. More often than not, you will sell at 275L.

3rd - Linden is the only one to really profit substantially. They remove the first land sale, then they increase the minimum bid to US$1250. They put out more land auction than now during period when the average land price is more than 10L. Check back few months. They just choose to put land as and when they can profit the most. There is no systematic approach.

4th - They are just pumping more sims into their pathetic infrastructure to gain more profit in terms of land sale but more importantly the tier charges.
They will be just happy that you keep buying the auction land. This greed is now starting to come back to bite them. More sims with items vs inadequate infrastructure = more bugs & problems = slower user growth.

5th - I dare them to be transparent about their infrasructure support. Eg. Sims per Server now compare to 1 year ago. The network bandwidth, database asset, etc, etc compare to 1 year ago. What have linden done to support the EXPLOSIVE growth in the number of regions. All of us premium users are paying to support them. Instead of providing good service to us, Linden is ripping us off by having indiscriminate land sales.

6th - Linden, if you are so “noble” compare to those land barons, then i dare you to stop charging for land sales, since we don’t own them legally anyway. Charge just the current tier. Can you do that? Nah, i don’t think so, cause you want to profit more & more. You guys are just getting farther & farther from when second life first started, but towards the bad side of it.

7th - Yes, linden control the SL economy. However the land price tanks, they can simply ignore it. So long as the auction land & islands keep getting bought and they keep getting the tier charges. My dear fellow SLers, this is the real BIG BUCKS. Not their so called SL economy or the Casino guys, the land barons, these are small peanuts.

FINALLY, I AM QUITTING THE SO CALLED PREMIUM USER, I NEED TO STOP BEING A SUCKER. good luck to you all.