Please Tell the Truth, M Linden

I could have put in the headline, "Don't Lie, M Linden" -- but let's be charitable as not even 90 days have passed, correct?

But sorry, I can't let this one go by. You've made a very misleading -- false, actually -- statement in your two months' blog, as follows:

"Finally, and this is the most interesting part of our model, the number of “profitable” inworld businesses continue to grow. By “profitable”, I mean that they had positive monthly Linden dollar flow primarily from their content creation activities in Second Life."

But...they don't continue to grow. Read your own statistics page. They tell a very worrisome story.

Estimated In World Business Owners
Unique Users with Positive Monthly Linden™ Dollar Flow (PMLF) 2
USD Equivalent PMLF January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008
< $10 USD 28,711 28,896 31,082 29,598 31,142 30,657
$10 to $50 USD 16,417 16,212 16,566 16,999 17,383 16,889
$50 to $100 USD 3,740 3,465 3,754 3,642 3,725 3,594
$100 to $200 USD 2,436 2,357 2,389 2,493 2,468 2,419
$200 to $500 USD 2,115 1,981 2,093 2,191 2,282 2,173
$500 to $1,000 USD 863 861 935 961 955 979
$1,000 to $2,000 USD 464 513 537 515 558 556
$2,000 to $5,000 USD 333 307 367 358 378 366
> $5,000 USD 156 155 165 173 189 188
Total Unique Users with PMLF 55,235 54,747 57,888 56,930 59,080 57,821

In fact, M Linden, the number FELL from 59,080 total in May, to 57,821 in June -- 1,259 businesses that formerly showed more Linden dollars coming in than went out -- at least before tier payments.

Every single category here shows a drop -- $50-$100 category suffered a lost of 131 businesses this last month, and the largest category, $10-50 had 485 businesses leave the category of at least having enough income to cover their tier. They could no longer break even. They had to use their own money. This is devastating for people, and they drop out then.

Who says that "most of" these people are content creators? Did you scientifically tag them? I'm not certain that's the case.

What are the sectors where those losses took place? Rental businesses are the obvious answer, due to the land glut. But smaller content creators, little stores here and there that had once done well have had to drop out too -- the cost of tier, advertising, competition, and lack of new sign-ups streaming in all take their toll. They don't have their land as an asset anymore, either, because

And these figures of yours of course deeply lie about the economy because for ideological reasons, you do not include in the "positive Linden flow" businesses any businesses that buy and sell land for a profit (that's simply communist thinking, and should cease).

Why would a land business that makes a profit somehow be "less of a business" than any other business. Making money is making money. The ideological spin and philosophical bias on view here is appalling, and is a legacy of Philip's hatred of arbitrage and the general Linden uneasiness and spiritual ambiguity with the model that makes them money: land sales.

Rentals businesses are included, however, under the theory that they "add value by creating content". Sigh.

Of course, it really would be more accurate to explain how much all these "positive Linden flow" *cough* businesses really make a profit *after tier* (accountants on the comments have often pointed out how misleading this is).

The only thing you've given us on this now is to say that HALF of all your fees for tier are paid for by the sale of Linden dollars on that account.

That's very interesting, and it shows a) how important the land business is to the economy b) how important the land business is to your profit-making capacity.

All those people selling dollars to make tier are getting them from the sale of content or from rentals or other services. They pay for their land by their inworld business -- half of your revenue is made up of people doing this. That means "end users" are not accounting for most of your income, and outworld businesses are not accounting for most of your income (they pay their tier from credit cards because they don't make Linden dollars in world) and education is not accounting for your income, as it doesn't run businesses inworld to make a profit.

That means you really, really, REALLY need to pay more attention to the category called "inworld business customers" and stop shafting them. Step one is telling the truth about their status, and not pretending they are "growing" when they are in face *declining* -- for the first time ever, and rather precipitously.

You say you have an innovative model unlike other social media, which is all about stone soup -- millions of people are asked to bring their turnips for free, which they grow at their own cost and the soup maker brings a pot and gets people to put all sorts of stuff in it and then sells ads against it, without cutting anybody in on the revenue.

Social media doesn't even work like the blogosphere, where corporate ads on your site pay YOU and not just THEM.

Second Life enables people to make a business on the platform and make a profit not from ad-sharing revenue but from regular selling of content and services, and then Linden piggybacks off that, taking a percentage of the currency transactions, and of course selling the land people need to display content and socialize.

It's a different model, and a good one, and one to grow, but if you are not going to tell the truth about what's happening to inworld business, how can you be trusted in this enterprise?

Perhaps you imagine this is a temporary aberration, that this is casinos or banks folding? No, we're past that. This is land businesses folding, and content businesses.

Perhaps you imagine that by glutting the land market with lower-cost land, you are encouraging new businesses to appear whose sheer masses will overcome these "temporary losses"?

I don't think that likely, nor do I recommend that as a policy, as it is cruel and stupid.

One commenter says very explicitly: look, come clean on what your attitude is to land prices and the land business inworld. If you want land merely to be dirt cheap and merely a platform on which content is displayed, privileging content, then say so.

Well, I think the Lindens *have* said so. For years. While I had hoped for something different from you, M Linden, I realize this California ideology dies hard.

And I think it's said very explicitly, here:

"Plus user-to-user transactions in Second Life grew 12% in Q2 and user hours grew by 6% (for definitions see earlier blog post). Land ownership is a critical component of the Second Life economy and the news is very good on this front. Second Life’s virtual world expanded by 45% in Q2. Resident-owned land now accounts for over 1.5 billion square meters of space in Second Life. Our growth in Q2 was due to a change in our land product and pricing strategy to make the purchase of land more accessible to first time buyers. The strategy worked."

User-to-user transactions will naturally increase during a land glut which is also a land panic. And here we see the concept: land *ownership is critical but not *the land business*. The outside economy of Linden Lab's bottom line benefit from this "change in our land product and pricing strategy" but inworld land business *suffered terribly, and the number of positive Linden flow businesses went down*.

Covering that fact up with increased user transactions or hours doesn't make it prettier. It's a bad sign.

This weekend, Ansheland is offering a drastic summer sale, with prices slashed as low as 50 percent. There's so much yellow on the Ansheland continent it's like Dutch elm disease. In fact on most continents. What is your plan, M, for the Day After you have driven these large land owners, the staple of Second Life for years, out of business? How are you and your staff going to take care of those customers? Not all of them can buy your humper bunkers. Will they drop out of SL? Buy their own cheap land and then bolt when they realize they can't get anybody to buy it, as the liquidators who always made that possible have been driven out of business, too?

Comments

[Terry Cox]

I think it's important, and will become increasingly so, to divide land issues in Second Life along the lines of land use.

It would be informantive to see how much of land use in-world is residential and how muich is for other uses, such as malls and public spaces.

My guess is that as OpenSim alternatives continue to expand, and as interop becomes real, the efrfect on residential land ownership in SL will be drastic.

However, a private sim is not an effective place to conduct business or hold events. I would suspect that Linden Labs will see much less erosion in this area, unless...

There's the risk that policies unfriendly to businesses (and non-profits, for that matter) might make it harder for these orgnaizations to survive. For a business, that anyting anything that makes it harder for the business to make a profit. Two obvious examples are anything that raises expenses (such as higher tier), the other is anything that lowers sales (like less traffic.)

The real world counterpart to this is of course urban blight.

[melponeme_k]

LL and their fans like to push builds to buildup hype about SL. Builds usually take up whole sims. Likewise those openspace islands are the equivalent of sims but cheaper and perhaps with limited use.

I don't think LL is all that interested in smaller land owners. Someone paying $5 dollars a month Tier is a nobody compared to someone paying $295 and up. Then again, I don't understand why LL is so uncaring about watching the big landowners die off. But then again when they do, LL is counting on all of us displaced estate refugees flocking to them for land.

However most will just give up or piggyback on their mainland friends.

I think LL must realize that they are in a unique position regarding VR. Commonsense would tell most people to follow the best of real world policies, such as zoning. But LL seems hellbent on creating some kind of utopia built on the latest theories. It isn't working.

[Ciaran Laval]

The land market will never go away, however it will change, the amount of unrented and unsold land is plain silly at the moment and Openspaces are in the boom period of a boom and bust cycle and the consequences aren't going to be pretty.

However this double speak of "We respect the land economy" followed by flooding it, really has to stop. They come in peace but shoot to kill.

[Robert Bloomfield/ Beyers Sellers]

You are making a big deal of the decline from May to June. One month is not much data, especially since the summer slump seems to be a natural explanation as first life gets more enticing and the pace of work slows down in both first and second life. June looks better than January, February, March, and April.

You say “And these figures of yours of course deeply lie about the economy because for ideological reasons, you do not include in the "positive Linden flow" businesses any businesses that buy and sell land for a profit (that's simply communist thinking, and should cease).” I have two questions. First, why do you say this is so? Is this from Meta Linden? Second, couldn’t this be a reasonable response to your concern that PMLF ignores tier costs? Those in the land business are the most affected by this accounting problem—their tier costs are enormous, and listing these folks as ‘profitable’ would be deeply misleading. So maybe they are excluded for that reason.

A final observation—falling land prices hurt landlords and speculators, but help everyone who simply uses land as a factor of production or a consumption good. You cry ‘communism,’ but look like you are engaging in crony capitalism, pressing the government (Linden Lab) to help out your industry at everyone else’s expense. I am not sure how the entire economy is better off if Linden sells land for more, rather than less.

[Prokofy Neva]

It's not just a decline from May to June -- look at the rest of the chart. And the decline is really significant, and dovetails perfectly with their decision to land glut. If they keep that up, they will see a continued decline.

Why do I say it is so? Because the Lindens post this on their website, duh:

"2 PMLF (Positive Monthly Linden Flow) looks at the flow of Linden™ dollars into a unique user's account BEFORE Linden Lab Charges are applied to the account. These numbers EXCLUDE payments or receipts related to the sale or acquisition of land (since theoretically these represent investments and not business receipts). All numbers are rolled-up among avatar "alts" to the Unique Customer Level. Businesses that are operate Linden dollar exchanges are excluded. Note that some businesses accept payment outside the Linden Economy (e.g. via CC & Paypal) and those numbers are not included in these reports."

So two very legitimate businesses that in the real world would never, ever be scorned and barred from being called "business" -- land and currency exchanges -- are kept out of this total so that the Lindens can artificially promote content creation and discourage anyone from doing the very business THEY DO THEMSELVES, about which they are competitive, and also ambiguous and uncomfortable, ideologically.

And no, it's not any sort of reasonable response. Land business is business and must be included. And people combine various things in one business, so to exclude a part of their revenue may turn them from positive to negative and underreport business.

The Lindens should come clean about how much the 'positive' people also cover their tier and have something left over after that tier payment.

It isn't misleading whatsoever. Their tier costs are obviously covered or they wouldn't be in the land business. This is the worst kind of socialist manipulation of business figures, and trying to justify it makes YOU suspect as an account, Robert, stop it. You'd never do that in real life, don't do it here.

No, I don't call for crony capitalism whatsoever. I don't ask the "government" to intervene and to do anything to "prop up" the land market.

However, there are some things they can do themselves *not to be destructive* of the land market which is *different*.

1. Stage pricing increases and decreases over more than 30 days -- currently they have raised them with only a week's notice or dumped them without only a month's notice. In an annualized budget, there is no reason for them not to stage these changes over 60 days or more, even, so that they are more reliable as business partners, not making sudden, devastating changes.

2. When they themselvse aren't even selling their land such as to justify their land glutting, and auctions don't even get any bids, then that has to tell them something: don't undervalue your own product.

3. Stop putting out and developing sims with content like Bay City. That is unfair competition and a non-market "crony communist" state capitalist style action if ever there was one. Where's your fine antenae for THAT, Robert, so attuned are you to crony capitalism and oligarchy? Why no criticism of "the government" putting together a work crew of under-market wages ($10/hour US for builders), and building content and selling it for obscenely high prices, in artificially-pumped up competition to the open market?! Where's the indignation about THAT, Mr. Free Market?

4. No, the entire economy isn't better off. Look at it. It destroys businesses, and not only land but content businesses, when the Lindens interfere too much and glut too much. And unlike you with your fake socialist justice concerns, the Lindens get this better: they turned off the land spigot and it still remains off, even after their original deadline. They understand the important of BALANCE in this synthetic economy, even if you don't.

The idea that economy and civil society is "helped" by land being made dirt cheap a) doesn't reflect its real value and leads to disvaluing it b) creates no diversity of the economy and enables only high-end content makers to rule the economy -- is that your plan, Robert? c) doesn't help people in fact get into and out of the economy freely and easily because there isn't valuation of land to *sell it back* to the economy, and no liquidation market.

You're just not getting it, and your constant insolent interventions like this illustrate that you are not a free-market economist, but I guess yet another college crypto-Marxist. I thought we were outgrowing that sillyness.

[Prokofy Neva]

It's especially evil of the Lindens to remove land business from their report on business, call purchases "investments," as "theoretical" and then devalue those "investments" and the very concept of "investment in land" by glutting.

[Prokofy Neva]

Go to the Lindens' statistics page and see how the decline isn't in just one month -- the first row shows a decline in March first, then a rise, then a decline again, for example.

[Rebecca Proudhon]

besides the obvious damage to the residents who are in the "Unreal Estate," business, the land glut has deepened the appearance of SL looking like a empty wasteland to new residents. Sim after sim with interesting or great builds are empty or nearly. New people coming into SL remark about this all the time. The grid has this "all dressed up no place to go feeling."

When I started in SL, it seemed people were climbing all over each other, it felt crowded, which all though laggy, gave SL a felling of bustling excitment. At one tiome I had rented stores in at least 10 of the most popular malls and I saw them all go under one after another over a 6-8 month period of time.

I agree it is unfair and just plain to dumb to inconsiderately spring these changes on people, but I also believe that all of it will change drastically anyway--in ways which will change the whole face of it and LL and land owner/investors will be left holding the bag.

IMO it is inevitable that some outfits wil be offering free Sims with Advertsing motives, just as web space is given free and eventually plugged in sims will be on the local machines.

I don't see this as something that can be debated, I see it as an inevitability.

Major Sim content creators offering exceptional sims to live on, will prefer not paying tier anyway, even though they will take a big hit on their previous investments with LL.

Terabytes sized drives are now cheap and that is where the land business will go.

[Maggie Darwin]

"Content is priviliged over land"?

Good content requires skill and effort to produce. Virtual land is now a commodity good with a highly elastic supply.

I don't see how anybody can make money running a land business in the current situation. You can't possibly do the value-add of building a genuine community over the kind of volume necessary for a reasonable profit given what margins are possible for land rentals.

Marketeers have been abusing the word "investment" for many years, especially in the software business. Something does not become "an investment" simply by being expensive, or engendering a technical dependency. You don't have "an investment" in Microsoft Word simply because all your documents are in Word format.

Content isn't "privileged" over land just because it's scarcer and more valuable...unless you feel an entitlement to make money being a land broker. Which sure sounds like "privilege" to me.

[Prokofy Neva]

Maggie, like other tekkies and lefties, you simply have a very deep, deep prejudice and hatred of land -- it's always a mystery to me, what fuels the wellspring of this hatred.

Perhaps it will help if you think of land as a service. Land will always be a service. There will always be people who won't pay even the low cost of $1 per meter, and will rent instead, just to give themselves flexibility or because someone does it all for them -- puts out a house, a tree, etc. So, there it is, a service that requires payment.

Yet land is something more than that in SL because of the factors that I constantly mention, but which always seem to be brushed away by you and others with your viewpoint on this:

o liquidity -- buying in the middle of the night when you want to cash out, and as land is NOT merely $1/m people DO want to cash out at $4 or $3 or $5 -- and land barons provide that service

o subdividing parcels bought wholesale, and holding them as people wish to add to their holdings to add prims

o maintaining communities -- despite hardships occuring in the land market now, people are still doing this job in SL, and it's a good thing, because it's a job that people can learn at an entry level and achieve mastery of in a few months if they are not tekkies.

o creating stability on sims, developing and "holding the view" to last

Oh, we all get it, and have gotten it the first million times you folks with this mindset harangued us with this finger-wagging lecture: just because land costs something, doesn't mean land is an investment. Uh, well, in fact, despite all the ups and downs of Second Life, I've always found that it's more often the case that if you are willing to wait, and develop relationships with neighbours, you can sell your land for what you paid, or even more.

This stubborn and even nasty persistence in trying to turn everything about the *socialware* of Second Life into *software* analogies -- "You don't have an investment in Microsoft Word because all your documents are in Word" -- just completely misses the point.

People create value. Amazingly, despite all the hectoring tekkies and leftist nihilists, they walk around and they create value, they call this stuff "land," and they buy and sell it for sometimes phenomenal prices *and you cannot stop them*. You'd like to, to damp down every bit of independent free enterprise and valuation that people muster in a harsh setting like this and constantly privilege content and programming. But you can't. People simply won't let you.

Managing land takes skill and knowledge too. Those who combine tekkie skills with good real estate sense do the best with this. But what's great about the land market is that it supplies JOBS AND INCOMES outside the tekkie sphere and design sphere and that is absolutely golden for this synthetic economy that has so much trouble creating economic opportunity for those beyond the 2 percent content creation sliver.

Content making is constantly feted and cossetted. But more should be done to *stop the destruction of* the land market because it is a whole independent sector of the economy with less friction and difficulty to enter it.

Basically, the hatred of land is the hatred of an economy -- period. And then what that winds up being is something that is really a repulsive sort of privileged content-making class that rules the roost and basically chases everybody off. It's one of the reasons why SL remains small. The Lindens and their pets simply couldn't dispel this arrogance and hatred of the other classes sufficiently to create a welcoming enough world.

The Lindens are the original "entitlement-happy" when it comes to their to making money being land brokers. Curious that you have no criticism of them, but only scorn of evil inworld land barons. That's always the case.

[rightasrain]

Profitable--also does not include expenses in the SL definition. So expenses like SL land costs, bandwidth, computer, software like PS (ooo is pricey stuff). Nor is there anything about the effective rate per hour for making content as a creator.

LL should break out the land rental/sales related $1.5mm day number if they want to be more transparent about the SL economy. But really, either way the numbers are headed down. Only issue is how fast and what is LL going to do to try to change the momentum?

[Maggie Darwin]

Prok, you're doomed to a Second Life of anger if you see everything though a lens of "hating those damned tekkies". It distorts your thinking as much as the left wing's mouth-foaming hatred of Bush.

Maybe that's why you're so "mystified".

Just because I have tech skills doesn't mean I "hate land". I'm *way* far away from being a collectivist. Land is good. I own land. But I do not expect it to appreciate in value long term, and neither should you...despite what your "long-term experience" has taught you.

Real world land is backed by the aphorism "Real estate is a sound investment; they're not making any more of it". With virtual land, it's way too easy to make more. LL has recently demonstrated contempt for its existing customers when it talks out of one side of it's mouth about "respecting your investment" and turns around and devalues it by 40%. It's *stupid* and *rude* to abuse your customers like that.

But I don't worship land. Raw primmage and server space is a commodity. It *is* a service; that's why we call them "servers". But the value-add of building communities and providing administrative customer service are *not* commodities, And it is specifically for that reason that they do not scale to the point of significant profitability in real-world terms. Both community building and customer service consume real-world time, which has to be compensated at real-world rates.

Look, you don't have to be a geek (or not be a geek) to understand (and/or do the math) that will tell you that when you do enough "community building" to make a significant return, you're kidding yourself when you call it "community building". Remember "Dunbar's Number", came up at one of your get-togethers at Sutherland Dam? It puts a limit on what can be genuinely called a community.

Beyond that size, you're no longer "building a community". You're branding the customer service for taking raw server space/time and creating the liquidity you refer to. There's nothing wrong with branding--good customer service deserves a brand. Brands are the nouns when a marketplace is viewed as a conversation.

I agree that having too much land for the population living on it is *bad* for the social dynamic. But lobbying for an artificial scarcity in land to keep your personal business viable while bemoaning that content creators are "privileged" does not make you look good.

I argee that Bay City is crap, by the way. That's not hatred of land, that's just contempt for the implicit "public works" collectivism and dreary, mundane, un-creative content there that collectivism usually inspires.

[Prokofy Neva]

Maggie, the funny thing is, *you* and your like-minded tekkies are the ones with anger and hatred. You hate anything outside your power domain -- that's the only way I can understand it.

Nothing in real life is certain; all flesh is grass. Yet people sign 20-year mortgages. They pay them off, despite everything you read in the papers about defaults.

In the same way, if, after five years, you can conclude that you can generally resell land for more than you paid, that is something. It's a value. Doing so requires some skill watching the market, seeing what kind of land people will buy, keeping areas nice, and most of all, finding agreements with neighbours. On most of the sims where I am located, I have neighbours from whom either I will buy their land, or they will buy mine. And that takes time to build up, and that is the sort of "social capital" in SL that is more available and extensive than in real life, and is manifested in non-technical, non-inventoriable *land* value. That's hard to take -- you'd like to reduce EVERYTHING to technical or inventoriable content. But social capital is capital too, and in our case, it's one of the things that manifests in land.

Can this break down? Of course it can, when the Lindens especially woefully neglect to implement their own anti-ad farms policy, and when they serve themselves first. Ad farming absolutely kills communities.

I personally never scaled my "rentals empire" to the point so many do to earn a RL living (that point is usually reached, with a modest income of $2000 without any benefits and ebfore taxes, at at least 30 sims). I have had a bit more than half that precisely because I couldn't see the point in scrambling constantly, paying staff and having to expose myself through constant growth -- which now isn't justified due to the lack of new sign-ups.

But I don't believe that those who DID chose growth are somehow devalued. In RL, a suburban contractor who lays out a suburbia with a commons, some land marks, a mall, whatever is a "community builder" whether he meets the 10,000 people in the development or not. I fail to see why someone handling 10,000 people he never sees and makes them a home is somehow a "hostage to Dunbar". Your problem is that you don't value community builders *of this mass type*. You scorn it, because you think "community" is only tiny close-knit groups working on open-source software or playing in a sandbox or attending an Extropian lecture or whatever your epitome of "community" is. It's coloured by class and ideology. Community is a larger concept, however, and thank God for it.

I don't lobby for an artificial scarcity. That isn't something you'd ever have to worry would ever happen in Second Life because the Lindens are never going to tighten their own belts or sacrifice in order for me to have a "personal business". That is ludicruous. They've never done that. Whenever our Lindens have practiced self-sacrifice, it has come in the form of paying for CONTENT and encouraging CONTENT -- and numbers, like free accounts.

But I do think I can surely rally against *artificial glutting*, the opposite of "artificial scarcity". That's what we've had in the last year -- ridiculous overfullfilling of the need, not at all tied to demand, with enormous amounts of unsold land chasing too few buyers, with auctions even got getting bid on. Even with a slash of land prices, a *fall* in premium numbers, which means that slash on the auction opening price to $750 isn't making people buy *mainland* (ad farms is one reason). A slowing in island additions because even with the slashes, there aren't the buyers. Only the $250 humper bunkers showing growth -- and that's empty calories for this land market.

I simply fail to see why in the name of the Lindens rapid profiteering this minute, they should glut endlessly. And frankly, they THEMSELVES see the logic of this for the simple reason that with their glutting, they aren't even doing THAT. They are NOT selling their glutted land! And that alone makes them STOP which they've done, if you've noticed, for over a month now, extending the original deadline of July 11.

See the Lindens, in fact, are more prudent and tolerant of the land dealing class than you are, with your scheming to destroy them! They understand that if they kill too many land dealers, they merely force out of business people who were willing to pay tier month after month AND take care of thousands of customers so that they don't have to -- AND give them something to do.

I don't care about looking good. But you can at least get the facts right here. I am not lobbying for artificial scarcity -- and that would be absurd, the Lindens aren't going to hold back servers and let land go to $20/meter -- that they did that a few times in their history was probably just poor purchase order management of new servers or something, or actual real-life scarcity of bulk orders of servers.

No, they can manage the land spigot better, and they seem to grasp that now. The auction for full sims is essentially closed. And they need to look at better numbers than they are looking at and keep it closed for some time more, because they have too much of a back log of *abandoned land* which is what happens in your marvelous ideological land where land isn't valued.

Everyone scratches their heads about their figures for average land prices, because it seems they must count in extortionist ad farms or something, it doesn't track with what large land dealers with scripted tracking of prices constantly are finding.

I think the Lindens saw their sign-ups falling off, saw the land prices not really falling greatly because land barons were upholding them by continuing to buy and hold in order to keep their other purchases still unsold at the same value (and that was working to some extent) so they decided once again, as they have a half dozen times I've been here, to break the back of the land baron cartel on the auctions and glut them, forcing them to either buy and hold more than they could pay, so they'd have to start selling for less, or forcing them to abandon market share by not buying.

They achieved their goal, as one big buyer -- Anshe Chung -- was essentially forced out of regular mainland buying and forced to concentrate on islands.

The problem with Bay City is that it contains that irony and sarcasm that Barnes and co. always inject, as they are always doing a kind of spoof of suburbia or urbia, not an innocent celebration of suburbia or urbia, so the builds are ironic, artistic, and they forget people have to live and work in them and look at them all day.

[Maggie Darwin]

If the best you can do is flame at me and my "like-minded tekkies", you're never going to listen to me close enough to hear how far I am from your rabid stereotype, and you need look no further than the blind anger you're projecting on me for the source of your "failure to understand".

I'm not angry. I'm bloody annoyed at what I agree is a land glut; it's stupid. To me it doesn't look like the work of one of your anarcho-socialist codemogering boogeymen but more like the actions of a recently-minted MBAs substituting a spreadsheet for conscious thought.

That's probably where those delusional stats published by LL are coming from too. Look, even though LL is still a small company by most standards, it's not by any means too small to have a managerial class setting business policy positioned above the "tekkies" you so much love to rail against. At 200 employees, LL is already too much a "hostage to Dunbar" to merit the monolithic view you take of them.

I suppose you're welcome to believe that a developer with 10,000 customers is "building a community" if it makes you feel better. But at that scale I see it as branding a consumer product, despite your explicit ad-hominem that I can't possibly know what a "real community" is just because I've spent the last four decades building software--most of it bespoke, and *not* open-source.

I know a granfalloon when I see it. "Community" is as corrupted a coinage at the hands of marketeers as "investment".

It's interesting to me, though, that you say Bay City is *consciously* ironic...when I was there briefly (as long as I could stand it) it seemed to be a fairly deadpan delivery; neither a lifted eyebrow nor a tongue in cheek, beyond the obligatory "prim inspection plant" (reminiscent of that "grief tank" in Cecropia endlessly pumping florescent green slime out to ANWR to be made into .5m plywood cubes).

In fact, it looked like the grim historical post-paving photos you see of typical company towns--which, when you think about it, it is. Way too flat to be anything like San Francisco, no matter how many trolley cars and water taxis you put in.

But it sounds like you have history with the builders. Perhaps we can agree that the perpetrators of Bay City are not in fact "building a community"?

[Prokofy Neva]

Maggie, only the most blunt and brutal retort to you will cut through your blindness -- and apparently not even. YOU are the one with a problem with perceiving server space as land, not most of the people who quite happily buy it and value it in SL, even in the worst of times. YOU are the one with a heavy ideological blinders on this question, not me, I merely look at it pragmatically.

You seem to fail to grasp the realities here. I'm someone educated in the humanities, in languages and area studies, and medieval philosophy and that sort of thing, a writer and translator, and have absolutely no stake in being some sort of "tycoon" or "land baron" or have any particular love of real estate or selling things. Yet in SL, I chose to make a small business becuase it's *interesting* and *monetarizes my time online*.

So I report what I observe: people value land. Land valuation seems truly, as in RL, to be the basis of a civil society.

Somehow, that grates against something very basic in you and other tekkies, and I am always interested to quest and find out why that's the case. I've come to see that it's about a believe that valuation can only be in knowledge and content and design, the power base of tekkies, and not in anything else. Of course, in RL, they are forced to concede that their expensive Silicon Valley real estate is valuable.

Yes, I don't only "believe" that people with 10,000 customers have a community: I see it. It's what makes SL tic. Anshe Chung is a master at this. It grates, all that mass culture, I know, you hate it, but it works for most people.

Oh, the entire thing is tongue in cheek because I know the people and that's what they've been doing, ever since Barnes made his first PREFABULOUS homes in a consciously spoofy and sometimes even deliberately fugly style. How about the bowling alley called HOT BALLS? One of Barnes various inside gay jokes. What about the fake "ruins" in a place that has no history? What about the builds themselves, which are a sort of ironic statement, like "Let's make 1930s Chicago, a bit larger than life."

I think that in fact Jack Linden and these Moles imagine they are "building a community". But...they don't have any relationship to the people there, because there's an inherent disconnect, with LL competing against its own customers. There's a whole different feeling to it. When people like Anshe or Desmond make continents, they don't just sell them and leave, they stick around and manage them as rentals and have various events and such. I don't get what the Lindens are doing with this really, except selling stuff. But in their own way, they have "built a community" and while it's tacky, overpriced, and disconnected, it's at the low end of the spectrum. Eventually, it may acquire a life of its own, as the Shermerville sim and Boardman did for a time -- though it didn't last.

I don't worry about community being corrupted by marketing because I don't have the allergy to marketing that you do. If somebody wants to make a tacky suburban development and name all the streets after their ex girlfriends (true story) and cut down a lot of the trees and put out fake lawns, well, I'm not going to "hate" it because some people will enjoy living there and their lives will be real. I don't have that aversion to mass class and taste.

[Agnetha Vuckovic]

Well....the entire land price fiasco is a farce from which I have lived and learned.

Along with my SL partner, we bought 12,288sq meters back in November last year.....purchase price 135,000 Lindens. It came with a 'guarantee ' in the covenant that the land could always be resold to the owner for at least 75% of that price. ( I sometimes think everything in SL should be followed by 'LOL !' )

Now 135,000 Lindens....that's about £135 each for partner and myself. Not exactly spare change ! It was pretty much the going rate at the time. And...of course...one expected to at least get something back on that, when selling. ( Oh dear..time for that 'LOL !' again )

Well......8 months later ( the sim owner very nicely decided to sell without telling us.....there goes the 75% 'guarantee' ) and there are people hopelessly trying to sell similar sized plots for 40,000. Indeed...I cant even sell it for 30,000. I doubt we will get anything at all. £135 down the drain.

And the reason ? Well...why pay even 30,000 to buy 1/5 of a sim...when you can ( as we have now done ) pay 1 linden to buy an entire open space sim ?? 3750 prims....a bit laggy...but its adequate.

I will never 'buy' property on SL again. It's a mug's game...a huge imaginary bubble...and a rip-off. Especially when a sim owner can 'sell' something that you thought you already owned....and a 'Covenant' on SL is not worth the pixelated loo paper it's written on ( Time for another 'LOL !' )

Oh....and can one of your blog posters here please please post on the scam of so many adverts describing open space sims as 'full sim'.....when they are nothing of the sort. I bought open space knowing what I was buying.....but I think a great many people don't have a clue.

[Agnetha Vuckovic]

"It's especially evil of the Lindens to remove land business from their report on business, call purchases "investments," as "theoretical" and then devalue those "investments" and the very concept of "investment in land" by glutting." - Prokofy

I agree. But to look at it more deeply, the whole notion of 'buying' land on SL is a nonsense anyway. This is especially true if you purchase less than an entire sim....and your 'purchase' is laughably still owned by someone else ! If someone else can sell whay you 'own'....in what conceivable sense do you own it ??

Of course, with experience ( and hindsight ) on SL...one comes to realize that 'buying' is just another form of renting....with a nominal 'purchase' price that bears no relation to...well....anything.

It sort of reminds me of the true story of a gentleman in America who waited till totality in a solar eclipse....and then opened lots of cans...closed them before the sun re-appeared, and then sold them as 'Canned Dark From The Eclipse'. What an entrepreneur ! Would thrive on SL !

How much is 'Canned Dark' worth ? I am quite sure a market could be made for it on SL.....and endless hordes of clueless mugs would buy it. The analogy with 'purchasing' imaginary land.....is certainly not lost on me.

[Prokofy Neva]

Ownership is relative but so what? The metaphor works. It holds. Constantly announcing that it's an imperfect metaphor doesn't bother people in the slightest, they keep buying.

Did you realize that if you don't pay your real estate taxes to the local community where you live on your real life land, that eventually, a tax lien is put on your land, and the local government can eventually seize that land and sell it for tax payments? And what do you think all these house foreclosures everywhere are about? You own, but if you pay off a loan, you don't really own.

[Agnetha Vuckovic]

Prokofy :-

No..that is not true. In RL, someone else cannot sell what I already own ( and in RL I own my property outright ). Even the government has to introduce a 'compulsory purchase order ' and buy my property if they want to build a 16 lane motorway through it.

Only in SL does the bizarre concept exist of 'buying' something....in this case land....that someone else still 'owns'.

Consider this :- the sim owner of my former 1/5 of a sim sold the entire sim to a new owner. Now....before I clued up on this....I thought, well...let's sell the parcel to the new owner. But hold on....the new owner already effectively owns it !

No amount of semantics can get round such a crazy situation, that something I have 'bought' can be sold by someone else...to someone else....without any involvement of me whatever. Clearly...unless one owns an entire sim...the concept of ownership of land is utterly meaningless. And I suspect that with the fall in land prices, the number of mugs like myself discovering this is one reason for it falling further. Once one grasps this fact.....one is reluctant to ever again 'buy' anything less than a full sim.

And with open space sims going for 1 Linden,.....my prediction is that 'land purchase' on SL will go the way of the scam that it is and land barons will head off to sell ice cubes to eskimos or something.