Hamlet gets special communique from Linden Lab bunker posted at Gigacom: In a statement provided by his publicist, Kingdon told me, “We understand that this price adjustment will affect businesses and other projects of some our Second Life Residents,” and emphasized the cost increases were only directed at select landowners, who have until January 2009 to adjust themselves to the new rates. “To be clear,” Kingdon continued, “this price adjustment affects only a portion of land in Second Life; it does not apply to private islands or regular mainland property. We made this change to ensure an optimal Second Life experience for all Residents.”
So looks like Linden Lab is dug in on the "jack-it-up" pricing plan. And who said SL is out of the gambling business. Kingdon is now gambling that a few vocal, emotional residents and "select" landowners will either shut-up and eat the increase or their leaving SL won't dent the grid's growth. Given that SL only has 500,000 active users and the SL brand is already damaged...this is a bet with a lot of downside and no upside.
Anyone wanna guess what "portion" of the 31,000 regions in SL are void sims right now?
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Comments
I must admit I was not aware
Fri, 10/31/2008 - 03:30 — Anonymous (not verified)I must admit I was not aware of the level of passion SL denizens have for their virtual world. This revolt is fascinating as a study of social dynamics. I must say that I'm going to have to join SL and see what all this fuss is about.
Oct 30 16:50:23 <Carjay>
Fri, 10/31/2008 - 03:40 — Gigs Taggart (not verified)Oct 30 16:50:23 <Carjay> according to Jack there are 32000 regions
Oct 30 16:50:31 <Carjay> and 5000 mainland
Oct 30 16:50:37 <Carjay> 13000 OS sims
There's your numbers, according to Carjay.
32,000 sounds about right
Fri, 10/31/2008 - 12:20 — RightAsRain Rimbaud32,000 sounds about right according to their website 26,665 at end of Sept + 1,171 added so far this month (is 30% down from Sept level btw) = 27,836 "owned islands" and then if you toss in 5,000 for mainland you get to the 32,000 roughly. Funny how they pull out mainland from the owned land on their website but include it in their datasets. Anyway, so then...13,000 if that is right, is about 1/2 of the "owned islands" which is what I have been saying all along is that there is no growth on the grid...merely conversions of full to voids.
So what is the pay-off that Linden is looking for as a result of all of this "immersive workspace" guided strategy? Considering they are "saying" they will charge everyone (I would like to see the invoice to ACS actually) including academic users who already have sweet-deals and old-time sim owners who basically pay $25/month for a void, it looks their opportunity top end is 13,000 x 50 = $USD650,000 maybe $USD700,000 per month. But that really won't possibly happen as people either 1) abandon their sim 2) consolidate 4 voids back into 1 full at $295/month = no uplift for LL. So maybe there is $200,000 monthly on the table for them--plus whatever new voids are sold (but what landowner is gonna suck up the new terms--and pls if you are pls call me first as I can make a great deal on the London Bridge for you--we here in London and I know people who know people).
So all of this mess to gain $USD 2.4 million in 2009? What is all the global bad PR gonna costs? But what all the people that are going to dump their full sims as a result of this? We will drop sims (not all of them as we still want to maintain our brands and connection with the SL community). We will drop sims not directly as a result of this "jack-it-up" crisis, but because this point in time is were we have finally lost faith that Linden Lab will ever be a professional organization. Meet the new boss...same as the old boss.
RaR!! WE..in the U.S. own the
Sat, 11/01/2008 - 03:24 — Gary Kohime (not verified)RaR!! WE..in the U.S. own the London Bridge now..you can have it back.. if you want to pay the price? that is if you want it still? ROFLMAO. I’m exiting stage right...from SL..at least that’s my plan at this point..my acct is currently pending cancellation. I have a hard enough time trying to keep my budget stable in RL. I don’t need the ambiguity of SL to compound the problem. Its too bad..but looks like OpenSim is where I'll end up. Lots of positive changes coming by end of year. The bottom line on this isn’t bait and switch. Its THEY messed up on a marketing plan..and didn’t consult with operations before they rolled it out. Pretty typical of a lot of companies. To blame there customers is a huge customer service mistake. Especially since they increased the prims on OS's and allowed them to be located anywhere.. oh my.. I want one so I can have a body or water out in the middle of no where..oh look..its sooo pretty, it even looks better than SL water. LOL
Hey Bettina!! I'm coming too :)
SL Herald sees that Openspace
Sun, 11/02/2008 - 01:30 — RightAsRain RimbaudSL Herald sees that Openspace pricing manuveur was a ploy to drive people back to Linden Lab's sinking Mainland offerings:
"As anyone knows, for two similar products, increasing the value of one product will devalue the other. This is precisely what has happened to mainland, what LL has aknowledged in the past has happened, and now, by proxy of application of simple economics- LL has shown is a reason for this price change.
Linden Lab needs to stop lying and distorting about the true intent about this new policy."
Well, clearly no coincidence that Jack Linden runs both of these offerings and has a conflict of interest. What still bugs me is that private island owners are cross-subsidizing the Linden Lab land rental market and this has distracted Second Life from making better progress with its platform and confused its objectives. They should really break it out from the platform and let it sink or swim with the competition. We don't play in the land game directly at all, but are very impacted by it as it drives most of the SL economy (which according to LL is 67% up--ya).
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