User:Meta Linden/Office Hours/2007 April 20

• Prokofy Neva: Jesse was only 17, I had no idea
• You: yes. I didn't know him well, but he was an amazing contributor. Such a shame.
• You: Khamon, welcome...
• Prokofy Neva: Meta, can you explain what the chart means that looks like premiums took a dive?
• Prokofy Neva: If you are starting already
• You: I can start...
• Prokofy Neva: it looks like a crash to half the value but maybe it's the art work is goofy
• You: let me see if I can pull Zee here
• Prokofy Neva: also what can you tell us about Supply Linden selling half the value in this month, is this due to casino cashouts? Will he be lowering his printing of Lindens now as a routine matter or what is the plan?
• You: :\ I don't see him yet... or on skype. Will keep an eye out.
• Prokofy Neva: ok well I just thought I'd put in those 2 questions
• You: alright, so about the Premium counts- in what I'm seeing, and I'm sure Zee will have something to say, this is less about the count than the %.
• Prokofy Neva: hmm could this platform get more purple? I guess it could, there's always "bright on texture" still
• You: okay, that's 3 questions, Prok. :P
• Spontaneous Radio: My questions are posted on the blog.
• Prokofy Neva: oops I used up one damn
• Prokofy Neva: well percent of what? you mean premiums against total sign-ups?
• Desdemona Enfield rather likes purple/violets.
• You: Yes, percentage of premium signups against total percentage of new residents.
• You: Let me take a stab at S.R.'s before your 2nd Prok?
• Prokofy Neva: ok
• Spontaneous Radio: January 2006 124K registered users 13K premium account that 10.8% / April 2006 198K registered users 16K premium account that 8.3% / July 2006 427K registered users 21K premium account that 5% / October 2006 1.2M registered users 32K premium account that 2.7% / * January 2007 3.1M registered users 57K premium account that 1.8% At this rate the percentage premiun account holder will be below 1% by July 07, if not already. How does this help SL as a whole
• You: Spontaneous, yes. So this is a factor of the patterns of growth of an open system
• You: if you watched how Flickr grew also
• You: as it gets public attention, the vast majority of new users at first become a swell of people trying it out
• You: also "consumers"- i.e. customers of SL businesses- are less likely to be premium users
• You: these people are your market.
• Spontaneous Radio: How can we get the state on NPIOF residents compared to verifeied resident
• Spontaneous Radio: the most users on the grid seem to be NPIOF
• You: Can I ask around the group- is this a common request? How many here would like to see that ratio? Payment info supplied versus not?
• Drewan Keats: I think it is useful
• Desdemona Enfield would.
• Tateru Nino: I'd be interested.
• Falk Bergman: ya
• Prokofy Neva: it's mildly useful
• Penelope Ghia: Yes it'd be useful
• You: and, just so I can fill out the JIRA correctly, how specifically would it be helpful?
• Desdemona Enfield: It is an antidote to people making up information.
• Prokofy Neva: it might be socially useful in ending the incitement of hatred against NPIOF
• Desdemona Enfield smiles
• You: yah a compatant to anectodal. Would you like to see this specifically about signups, active users, any other way? Geographically? By age of residency?
• Prokofy Neva: I have two polls going on public attitudes to NPIOF and both are overwhelming positive, saying that they are customers, and also creative, and should not be ended in SL
• Prokofy Neva: if you want to show who is using the resources, you need a colour-coded map that matches coloured dots to payment status and also positive-linden-flow status
• Tateru Nino: Agree. The social uses are probably the primary purpose, then as a possible useful metric to track against others.
• Penelope Ghia: Helps focus resources when dealing with many customers and many more griefers
• Desdemona Enfield: We can inger differentials from aggregate numbers by month.
• Desdemona Enfield: We can infer^
• Prokofy Neva: then you will see the major uses of all grid resources are club owners who hav epayment on file and the largest positive Linden flow accounts, and the problem isn't unverifieds
• You: I like it. Prok, can you define for me "positive-linden-flow-status"?
• Prokofy Neva: that's your term lol
• Prokofy Neva: It makes me personalyl think of Kotex ads TBH
• Prokofy Neva: I think whaty ou mean to say is
• You: I'd like to hear your interpretation of the metric
• Falk Bergman: Prokofy: maybe explain it for the rest of us then ;)
• Desdemona Enfield think it represent an increase in the number of LL employees.
• Prokofy Neva: those avatars who have more Lindens coming in than going out
• Prokofy Neva: it's on the econ statistics page
• Prokofy Neva: there are tables of those characters who have Lidnens coming in at the level of $1000 US etc
• Desdemona Enfield: (joking)
• Prokofy Neva: of course, they don't show what goes OUT in terms of tier and that's why it's a bit useless
• Prokofy Neva: you're the ones that came up with this however and it's also fascinating thaty ou were able to aggregate all the alts and render one number for all accounts from that individual
• Prokofy Neva: and that number doubled in the highest category in the last month
• You: we're able to do that to a certain extent
• Desdemona Enfield: Yes, ty on alt aggregation. that eliminates the 3 alts to one account rumor.
• Khamon Fate likes the idea of colour coded dots
• You: obviously there are some technical limitations, but we have a bunch of ways to aggregate accounts that appear to be alts
• Prokofy Neva: well that would be awful Khamon, think of the banning
• Khamon Fate: Bans can be based on payment status now.
• Prokofy Neva: well how many of these positive linden flow types actually have positive US dollar flow out of SL ?
• Prokofy Neva: Not that I'm advocating capital flight : )
• You: Well obviously we could only report flow out through the Lindex
• Khamon Fate: Me, but very little. My income is pretty good; calc my tier into it and there's very little left.
• You: but we also support that business owners should be able to cash in their profits- many are trying to make a living here
• Prokofy Neva: Do you anticipate retiring the Lindex as being redundant and problematic at some point?
• Prokofy Neva: If most customers are RL businesses paying their employees outside of SL and making contracts outside of SL.
• Khamon Fate: Good heavens, are people honestly basing their living on inworld businesses that rely on the grid being useable?
• Prokofy Neva: Yes Khamon there's like at least 259 or something
• Prokofy Neva: I mean, assuming that they clear about two grand to live on a month
• Spontaneous Radio: yes
• You: I'd expect not... we're constantly working to improve the challenges with the Lindex, and just as you note, we- meaning LL *and* the residents- want to be able to measure both the inflow and outflow of $ to L
• Khamon Fate: We should educate them better.
• Spontaneous Radio: this is my full time job.
• You: I personally know 9 individuals making a fulltime living on SL businesses.
• Spontaneous Radio: but how does NPIOF help the economy if they can not buy or sell linden dollars. Is this true.
• You: S.R. you make 10
• Prokofy Neva: SL is my low-paid sweat equity part-time job
• Tao Takashi: good evening
• Falk Bergman has trouble getting outside companys to pay him in L$
• You: actually S.R. I have 3 friends who are NPIOF who make linden $ on businesses here to use to spend into the market
• Falk Bergman: something about problems with the accounting dep.....
• Khamon Fate: I'm impressed Spontaneous. How long do you expect to draw real life income from inworld sources?
• You: they do not buy L$ on teh exchange but earn them inworld and then spend them on rental property, clothing, anims, etc.
• Penelope Ghia: I'm 11
• Tateru Nino: I know NPIOF people who have gathered enough money to start and operate a business with modest turnover, generating shopping money, keeping curency in motion.
• Tao Takashi: that's what I sort of did here and there
• Spontaneous Radio: at the rate the grid is. Im not sure any more.
• Tao Takashi: actually I never used the exchange ;-)
• Prokofy Neva: I have tenants who are NPIOF who are mainly Europeans who make good money here but then they have the challenge of how to repatriate their wealth.
• You: yes there definitely is the challenge- which we're working on- of accepting payments in other countries
• Spontaneous Radio: Well I have residents also that are NPIOF and they pay in paypal
• Prokofy Neva: A huge number of people try to live by their earned means in SL, I find that constantly here.
• You: that too. payments come in from the outside.
• Falk Bergman: Prokofy: its no challenge
• Falk Bergman: pay out to paypal and send to my german bank account
• Spontaneous Radio: But the large number of NPIOF "griefers" give a bad name to the NPIOF's that contribute to the community
• Desdemona Enfield: Yes, living-in-the-system is a point of honor for many of them.
• Falk Bergman: it just takes AGES
• You: yes well- as a simowner myself?
• You: I personally also deal with plenty of "payment info supplied" griefers
• You: this is anectodal, but true.
• Spontaneous Radio: My next question where is Zee
• Prokofy Neva: Most griefers on my police blotter are PIU
• You: yeah I'm still trying to get him, apologies folks.
• Falk Bergman: I also recently saw some goo spreading Botaccounts in action
• Spontaneous Radio: yea cause they get catch, the NPIOFs just delete the account or creat a new one
• Prokofy Neva: yes I think Linden Lab needs to license and mark bots, full stop.
• You: I sincerely hope he didn't go to the voice beta grid x.x
• Falk Bergman: of course they were PIU
• Spontaneous Radio: 300 on a ban list is a little low for 5 million residents
• Tao Takashi: it should be 5 million :)
• Falk Bergman: yes I personally think its amazing how well SL works
• Prokofy Neva: Well Meta I have a question that really is the mystery of SL
• Prokofy Neva: here we have 250,000 odd people who spent more than one Linden dollar last month
• Desdemona Enfield: Agreed, Falk.
• Prokofy Neva: yet the figures show $2 million US *per day* being spent
• Prokofy Neva: so.....
• Prokofy Neva: do the math there
• You: I hear the concerns about bots consuming resources, I do- it's just, with the open source client, that's going to get harder and harder. I'm open to suggestions on how we can do a robots.txt and a form of voluntary reporting of bot identity
• Prokofy Neva: tell me how 200,000 people spend $2 mllion a day????
• Falk Bergman: I think the hard to learn interface keeps away the easily bored - its like a filter
• Prokofy Neva: Meta, you don't close the barn door after the big data scrape, you license bots
• Prokofy Neva: it's not just that they consume resources, though that's at issue
• Prokofy Neva: it's that they consume my commercial information without my consent for free
• Prokofy Neva: so they need to pay for that privilege
• Falk Bergman: Prokofy: Bots consume almost no resources
• Falk Bergman: I ran some benchmarks
• Prokofy Neva: Falk, once you have a dozen Grid Shepherds scouring the grid, it will benoticeable
• Prokofy Neva: but I just said, that's not the issue
• You: I believe you're referring to the Sheep's search engine... and Christian is working on ensuring that it stays within the TOS.
• Prokofy Neva: the issue is their scraping of my parcel data for their commercial interests
• Spontaneous Radio: which bots are we talking about Cpoy bot land bot or rate bots
• You: search bots.
• Prokofy Neva: um right
• Falk Bergman: yes It would be ok if bots say had light blue speech bubbles
• Spontaneous Radio: ok
• Falk Bergman: Prokofy: thoseare special bots bot != bot
• Prokofy Neva: Residents who use bots to scrape the entire grid should pay more for that privilege
• Tao Takashi: so just ban the bot?
• Prokofy Neva: and everyone should have opt-in as default
• Khamon Fate: Prokofy, If I hand an alt 1000L back and forth a hundred times a day we've "spent" 100,000L in the system.
• Falk Bergman: and even those are pretty low resource using
• Prokofy Neva: banning does little Good Tao, don't be silly
• Prokofy Neva: they can scan on a 96 m2 radius and do
• Prokofy Neva: go look int he search der
• Desdemona Enfield: Well, how do you know an object passing thru is a bot?
• Khamon Fate: That number is totally meaningless.
• You: there was a great podcast about opt-in for search bots last week, an interview with the Sheep on the topic
• Prokofy Neva: yes Khamon I realize that but I'd like to hear the Official Linden Answer (TM)
• Tao Takashi: it's not an object, it's an avatar with a name you can ban
• Falk Bergman: Prokofy: Ican give you a specs - tey can a 256 meter radius
• Prokofy Neva: Meta, that's optOUT they are talking about
• Prokofy Neva: they did not GO with opt-in
• Falk Bergman: they are not LSL based
• Prokofy Neva: that's the problem
• You: an attempt at opt-in was made, a while back- like all web search engines, opt-in will never scale and never succeed.
• Falk Bergman: all processing is off world
• Falk Bergman: I agree with that
• Tao Takashi: well, of course the bot is just a hack anyway, better would be a API from LInden Lab to get such data more easily
• Prokofy Neva: well that's your own opinon Meta
• Desdemona Enfield: A robot avatar?
• Prokofy Neva: you shouldn't foist that on the entire community
• Tao Takashi: opted-in data of course
• Prokofy Neva: the community that pays 80 percent of your bottom line
• Falk Bergman: opt-in is for a distributed system like this just not vivable
• Khamon Fate: It's as good an excuse as any Prok.
• Prokofy Neva: No one tried
• Prokofy Neva: and guess what?
• Prokofy Neva: you HAVE a populated search
• Prokofy Neva: it's called THE SEARCH PLACES
• You: Sheep did.
• Prokofy Neva: Lindens don't need bots
• Prokofy Neva: they ARE the bot
• Tao Takashi: but I want to search objects actually
• Tao Takashi: I want to search for a cool outfit..
• Tao Takashi: or whatever
• Khamon Fate: Does anybody use the Sheep search? I haven't found it useful for anything.
• Prokofy Neva: Meta, they did not make opt-in, they made opt out AFTER the took everyone's data without public notice
• Prokofy Neva: please
• Tao Takashi: I don't want to teleport everywhere and check these places out
• You: and our own search... it's got its' own scaling challenges, though you're right, the system is working
• Tateru Nino peeks at it. Didn't find it useful.
• Desdemona Enfield: That's an AI problem, Tao, not trivial.
• Tateru Nino: *peeked
• Falk Bergman: Prokofy: those bots won't stay with usforever - A direct interface to the LL asset server will be much esasier to handle
• Prokofy Neva: you are entitled to your POV on this but stop presenting it as "fact" as there are distinctly two schools of thought on this
• Tao Takashi: of course the sheep engine also does not really help to that regard
• Prokofy Neva: well I would rather the Lindens made that interface
• Khamon Fate claps for Falk's comment
• Khamon Fate: When that happens.
• Prokofy Neva: they could be more or less trusted not to be representing only one commercial interest
• Prokofy Neva: they already have an opt-in system
• Prokofy Neva: right on the avatar and on the land now is a check off box "publish to web"
• Falk Bergman: because the asset server handles "searches" all the time anyway
• Prokofy Neva: perfect opt-in, easy to populate
• You: agreed. What I state is my own, professional opinion. I also have been wrong in the past.
• Spontaneous Radio: Very diappointed that it is 10:31am and there is no sign of Zee Linden.
• You: occasionally.
• You: :D
• Khamon Fate: The Lindens don't have to build the interface if they'll simply provide us with an API to the database.
• Falk Bergman: the bots are really just a stopgap measure
• Prokofy Neva: the bots ensure that those who can make a killing can make it before regulation sets in, that's all
• Falk Bergman: Khama: there has to be some gatekeeping
• Tao Takashi: that's what I said, they are more likely a workaround right now
• Falk Bergman: plus some security features
• You: would everyone be okay if I took 2 mins to run to zee's desk and see if I can get him?
• Tao Takashi: sure, do that :)
• You: brb
• Desdemona Enfield: sure
• Prokofy Neva: well, fly, maybe
• Falk Bergman: ya drag him in here
• Khamon Fate: Zee is a busy person that deals with population statistics ala Hari Seldon. Our individual opinions mean squat to him.
• Tao Takashi: do Lindens don't have telephones? ;-)
• Desdemona Enfield: Freeze him at his desk until he logs in, smiles.
• Khamon Fate: Lindens yell across the room.
• Desdemona Enfield: They use telepathy
• Falk Bergman: they still aren't voice enabled at LL
• Prokofy Neva: well I have a business proposition from the daughter of a former African leader who needs me to receive a large transfer of funds, you'll excuse me...
• Khamon Fate: ha ha ha
• Desdemona Enfield: hehe p.n.
• Tao Takashi: I handled that already, Prok
• Khamon Fate: This platform says TAO
• Khamon Fate: and looks like an auction lot on the map
• Desdemona Enfield was amazed recently to learn that she had an uncle who was a mining engineer in Africa.
• Prokofy Neva: We should warn Meta never to take any helicopter flights over the Sea of Omidyar.
• You: Apologies, folks, he got pulled into another meeting. I will be sharing with him a full transcription of this, and I will chain him down here next week.
• Prokofy Neva: actually, scratch that, this is a Mr. Brian Smith on the line, he says I've won a lottery in the UK.
• Spontaneous Radio: That bull
• Khamon Fate: At least it doesn't drag our frame rates screaming into the ground like a typical Linden build.
• You: and maybe as penance get him to respond to blog comments too...
• Desdemona Enfield: Wow, congrats, PN
• Spontaneous Radio: HEs never in game
• Tao Takashi: I actually have a statistics question, like what the number of active residents is acually. Did I miss this in the file? I just see the portions of active residents by land and the complete numbers
• Khamon Fate: Gosh do you have to go to UK to pick it up?
• Khamon Fate: Can I go with you?
• Spontaneous Radio: he has no clue what s going on in here
• Spontaneous Radio: its all about the numbers
• Desdemona Enfield: Tao has a real question, smiles
• You: number of active residents by.... what divisions of land, Tao?
• Spontaneous Radio: not the residents for him
• Khamon Fate: What's a question?
• Desdemona Enfield: What?
• Tao Takashi: there is a land of population by land
• Tao Takashi: and there are precent amounts of how many active residents per land there are
• Falk Bergman: number of residents vs. number of land owners?
• Falk Bergman: population density
• Tao Takashi: and there is the definition of an active resident but I didn't see the number
• You: percentage of active residents by geographic country you mean.
• Tao Takashi: yes
• You: you're asking about the physical count instead of the percentage?
• Tao Takashi: yes :-)
• Tao Takashi: maybe I overread it, not sure
• You: got it. I can add that to the list of enhancement requests. Would that be useful for others also? and... my product mgmt hat on- why?
• Tao Takashi: for marketing it would be interesting
• Desdemona Enfield: OMG, the m-f ratio is 2:1.... I thought it was the reverse.
• Patchouli Woollahra: There ain't no women in Second Life! - Frogg Marlowe
• You: welcome Patch.
• Tao Takashi: of course national marketers might also be interested in more break down statistics on the country
• Patchouli Woollahra: hey hey, don't mind me.
• You: what else should we report by country?
• Tateru Nino: Possible opportunity for community to focus on national cultures that aren't meshing and try to figure out what the common factor is.
• You: I've been curious about that myself, especially with the growth of int'l residents. Gender ratios? Financial figures?
• Tao Takashi: like age bands, gender etc.
• Tao Takashi: basically what is there broke down by country
• Tao Takashi: many communities seem to stay local because of language
• Owen Oyen: how about . . . above some minimum L threshold of perhaps 25L, a report of avg and standard deviation of L's present in each account?
• Prokofy Neva: Meta do you have an explanation for why island sales are down, or does that have to wait for Zee as well?
• Desdemona Enfield: By country, perhaps cash flow in and out for residents of those countries. Essentially foreign exchange info
• Patchouli Woollahra: Are we talking about a fall that has only happened this month?
• Tao Takashi: so interesting would be age band, gender and hours spent to me
• Patchouli Woollahra: or a fall that keeps happening for more than a quarter?
• Falk Bergman: oki sorry need to go
• Prokofy Neva: Do you plan on changing the TOS at all to reflect that customers coming on now can expect all their inworld activity to be actively scraped by commercial entities? That's NOT implied in the TOS wording about "use of your content" and is in fact contra=indicated by language about "expectation of a reasonable level of privacy" elsewhere in the TOS
• Owen Oyen: /^* in each = per
• Tao Takashi: maybe also financial stuff but right now I think most corporate projects in here do not be about earning money
• Prokofy Neva: Patchouli it has overall increased but it seems to be a fall this month yes
• You: okay, let's see if I can get these, one at a time...
• Patchouli Woollahra: let's keep looking, shall we?
• Patchouli Woollahra: One drop does not an ocean make - I'm interested to see if the April and May 07 figures will continue this fall...

Patchouli Woollahra: Hey there, Benjamin Linden.

• Spontaneous Radio: Prokofy can you tell me where i can find more info on the search bot
• Lewis Nerd: hello everyone... did i miss anything exciting?
• You: owen: the avg and std dev of l's present in an account, that would be average, by country? by age? obviously that would need to be a closing balance, say, monthly? how should we bucket those averages?
• Patchouli Woollahra has resigned herself to losing any expectation of privacy in SL in a long time ago since someone taught her how to use the camera to go through walls and stuff :(
• Prokofy Neva: http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2007/04/the_greed_sheph.html Spontaneous there's one article
• Spontaneous Radio: thanks
• Prokofy Neva: http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2007/04/search_works_th.html
• Prokofy Neva: another
• Owen Oyen: /bucket as you choose, but avg L per acct info would be useful, the true customer base might be only a few accts, or many, there

 is no visibility into this, as to further delineation, be creative :)

• Spontaneous Radio: thanks
• You: prok: Island land, how do you say it shrinks? "land size" tab on our metrics
• Desdemona Enfield: Island Info: is month to date.
• You: jan grew 51k
• You: feb grew 37k
• You: but mar grew 76k
• You: our greatest to date
• Prokofy Neva: Patchouli, it's one thing to "resign yourself to a loss of privacy" it's another to be scraped *in the commercial interests of third-parties who benefit from it against your interests* try to see the difference.
• Tao Takashi: Spontaneous: here is another: http://www.3pointd.com/20070409/sheep-spidering-sl-grid-for-new-search-service/ and here: http://taotakashi.wordpress.com/2007/04/09/a-new-search-engine-is-out/
• Prokofy Neva: Meta, the number of island orders is down for this month
• Spontaneous Radio: Does The Lab would include private sims in there stats for land sale, since most private sim owners take other forms of payment beside L$ for land sales?
• You: you have a metric for that Prok? I may not be looking the same place you are?
• Patchouli Woollahra: I've tried, but frankly? I gave up around the time when I started getting ads ad nauseum in my mailbox to increase the size of my pens.
• Patchouli Woollahra: 15 of them. for some reason.
• Patchouli Woollahra: Pen 15.
• You: we can only track stats for land sales that happen through the "land sale" mechanism we provide.
• Lewis Nerd: its ok patchouli, this is a Mature region :)
• You: if someone chooses to barter outside of the L$ system, say, accept paypal and then gift the land, or pay rent through paypal, we cannot measure it
• Spontaneous Radio: so if say a large private sim own sell land and take paypal.com and set the land for 0L$ this brings the average price down?
• Prokofy Neva: Sinceriously Linden Lab, once I find the Sheep are aggregating my parcel data, tracking my rental cube transactions, harvesting all my sales data, and selling it to their clients, hey, I'm done, I don't need to run a business under those conditions, and I think you need to seriously think about that, because that's what will happen next.
• Patchouli Woollahra: Prokofy, the grid search engine is specifically wired with a few optout options.
• You: that is true. likewise, if someone were to legitimately choose to sell their land for $10L, that would also bring the price down. thus is the risk of the open system. We *could* go through an categorize the "sold for $0" outliers? would that help?
• Patchouli Woollahra: Now I'm not really a fan of Electric Sheep in general, but I have the impression that between the optout at Electric Sheep HQ and the banning of Grid Shephard, you're pretty much covered.
• Lewis Nerd: the sheepbot must add unwanted lag to the grid ... isnt that considered "harrassment" and "disturbing the peace" on huge scale, under the CS?
• Patchouli Woollahra: that would help.
• Spontaneous Radio: Kinda like the land bots for last month?
• Prokofy Neva: Meta re: islands: in March, 1154 islands were added, those are the new orders for March, in April TD, it is only 522, that suggests to me a drop in island sales unless I'm missing something?
• Patchouli Woollahra: and Lewis... I was present on my region when Grid Shephard flew past into my living room.
• Patchouli Woollahra: he doesn't do much in the few minutes he's scanning each region.
• Patchouli Woollahra: Poseballs are a bigger risk.
• Prokofy Neva: Lewis look out, Falk Bergman will tell you he's tested it all , they don't lag, so shut up, see, that reasoning will not convince them, they don't care if it lags anyway
• Khamon Fate: Meta, you'll need to include 1L sales as well. Or you can mark sales to specific avs as nonpublic sales. That might help too.
• You: yes Prok, what you're missing is our pattern of delivery of islands.
• Desdemona Enfield: Yes, assumig the TD is for April 20th
• Khamon Fate: April is only 1/2 over
• You: They get completed racks at a time. we do not report them until completely delivered. we have a cycle across the month.
• Lewis Nerd: well he might but i do... and if it affects my land unwantedly for one moment, then its a problem
• Prokofy Neva: well no, it has 10 days left
• Tateru Nino: Is the current topic the ESC search engine or the rate of island orders?
• Khamon Fate: okay 2/3 over
• Patchouli Woollahra: Frankly, Tat? I gave up.
• Patchouli Woollahra: almost.
• Khamon Fate: What's peak estate ordering time of the month?
• Prokofy Neva: Meta, you have to look at results, not sales that didn't result in deliveries yet, that are in the queue
• Desdemona Enfield: The April TD may be based on an earlier date.
• Patchouli Woollahra: Growing up in Luskwood gets you innured to some crazy discussions.
• Spontaneous Radio: even if it was only 522 for half the month that would be 1044 thats less then March
• Prokofy Neva: islands added means islands added, so there are less, unless you say that entire field has no meaning because delivery is so haphhazard and unpredictable
• You: yeah I don't have anything really to say, stats/metrics wise about external search engines, I'm afraid, but at least I can talk about island sales. :)
• Lewis Nerd: until island prices come down to a sensible level, most users can only dream of owning land ... and LL's refusal to sell "low prim sims" individually is missing a huge gap in the market
• Desdemona Enfield: Meta all all econ stats up to date on Apr 19?
• Desdemona Enfield: are all^
• Khamon Fate: Is it haphazard? Does former data demonstrate notable fluctuations month to month?
• Patchouli Woollahra: Prok, I would rather wait till the April and May 07 stats be delivered before saying 'we have a definite drop'.
• Lewis Nerd: i've never understood why you have to pay to get an island, and pay monthly for its use ... surely it should be one or the other
• Tateru Nino: Isn't it the end of the budgetary period for many US Corporates? April 30 being the last day of the annual budget which was frittered away over christmas on golf umbrellas with brand logos?
• You: Prok: what I'm saying is that you can't look at the total monthly figure until the month is over.
• Patchouli Woollahra: oh. that.
• Prokofy Neva: What's to give up on Patchouli, you can't multi task and entertain 2 questions at a time?
• Prokofy Neva: um ok Meta, I'll try to contain myself then!
• Khamon Fate: that open source?
• Patchouli Woollahra: I can multitask surprisingly well xD.
• Khamon Fate: oh no that that
• Prokofy Neva: so.....could you then provide a memory to these pages?
• You: Tateru: actually that's a good question. I'm not sure what our fiscal year is? haven't worked with the financial team enough. I *assumed* it was calendar year, but could be wrong. I will look into that.
• Desdemona Enfield is ambidexterous.
• Spontaneous Radio: I walked out of the room for 5 minutes when i found out Zee didnt care about us enuff to show up and i can keep up wiht the convo
• Patchouli Woollahra is fishing, fileding 4 IMs and tending to scratch wounds on a friend's face.
• Tateru Nino: Fiscal years for US corporates vary a lot.
• Tateru Nino: Many concide with tax time.
• Prokofy Neva: ok let's try this another way
• Tateru Nino: *coincide
• Prokofy Neva: 2007 March 39,660,848 2007 April - MTD 14,619,648
• Prokofy Neva: auction sales are down too
• Patchouli Woollahra: They look bad - but you should see the leaks the other guy sprung today xD
• Prokofy Neva: so to what do you attribute this slump?
• Prokofy Neva: is this the Passover/Easter holidays and spring break?
• Patchouli Woollahra: We've had a series of interesting crashes of the grid in some aspects over the past month.
• Desdemona Enfield: It is difficult to interpret statistics.
• Patchouli Woollahra: the lack of reliability in SL currently doesn't do much to inspire a booming economy at times.
• You: Good question, Prok. I would expect to see that more level. I honestly don't know.
• You: I will raise that through Zee.
• Lewis Nerd: 15% packet loss here at the moment
• Patchouli Woollahra: Desdemona has a point there: you can make statistics play fetch.
• Prokofy Neva: Look, Meta, surely you can see the forest for the trees here: Supply Linden is printing and selling HALF of what he did last month; premium accounts slumped; island sales are down; auctions are down MTD, even allowing for some speed-up at the end of the month -- there is an econmic slump
• You: sim stats for this sim show no server-side packet loss, Lewis... must be your connection?
• Spontaneous Radio: The reason the prices are dropping is that the Lab is placing about 4+ Sims of main land online a day. Its called supply and demand. January and Febuary not many new main land sims. Low supply, high price. March a new continent with about 250 new main land sims in about a mouth. High supply lower cost. It took the Lab about 1 year to build the South Continent. It has taken the less then a month to make the new East Continent that so far is about 1/4 in size compared to the South Continent.

Desdemona Enfield: Even in RL, it is very difficult to know what changes in aggregate numbers mean.

• Prokofy Neva: now is this due to Lindens' actions about ageplay and casinos which were making up a good chunk of the economy?
• Patchouli Woollahra: Supply Linden is selling L$ only to stabilise the money supply, Prokofy.
• Lewis Nerd: maybe cos i'm in the UK... until you open a UK data centre its going to be bad
• Patchouli Woollahra: If there is no reason to take action, he won't print L$ or take them back.
• Prokofy Neva: Spontaneous, say what you will, but don'[t use terms like "supply and demand" for the land auction, it runs on another basis called "we will break the land barons' backs by glutting when prices get too high and force them to buy more to keep market share"
• Patchouli Woollahra: That's what he's nominally for in the LideX.
• Prokofy Neva: Um Patchouli, "only to stabilize" means erm keeping it artificially low, and it's a huge hit to LL when he can print and sell only half as much
• You: well I cannot comment on the overall effect of clamping down on certain types of businesses... Khamon, can you comment on the effect to your business?
• Spontaneous Radio: Which mean Linden labs pads there pockets
• Prokofy Neva: my God, he sold $1 million *US* -- that's a big source of revenue to LL! He then sold $880,000 the next month! I mean, please, this isn't the stability fund, this is revenue
• Patchouli Woollahra: any economy will require money sinks.
• Spontaneous Radio: cause if these land baron fall there, Linden reclaims and resell for 100% profit
• Lewis Nerd: patchouli, what do you think inventory loss is for? its a money sink!
• Prokofy Neva: um, not on this scale with this artificial glutting lol
• Patchouli Woollahra: Lewis... that's a different thing.
• Patchouli Woollahra spends her entire L$400/week stipends on uploads.
• Patchouli Woollahra: Well... that and rolling poor Moonshine Herbst for L$1000 a week on average from his parlor @ Portage.
• Patchouli Woollahra: it's technically a sink when I pay for uploads, pay for classifieds, or Places listings.
• Prokofy Neva: yeah what a lag that thing is in Portage, chasing away my tenants there
• Desdemona Enfield: Personally, I want to see LL be very profitable. It ensures my future here.
• You: ladies & gentlemen, I have another meeting I have to run to now. I really have enjoyed this, and will *DEFINITELY* have zee here next week. My sincere apologies that he couldn't make it this time.
• You: any quick last questions?
• Spontaneous Radio: lol
• Spontaneous Radio: surprise surprise
• Patchouli Woollahra: Seriously, this drop in the L$ movements may not necessarily be a bad thing.
• Lewis Nerd: will you ever release low prim islands individually?
• Tao Takashi: Thanks for hosting this, Meta :)
• Prokofy Neva: rolls eyes
• Desdemona Enfield: ty, Meta.
• Patchouli Woollahra: Casinos are a big source of micropayment back and forth.
• Drewan Keats: Thanks, Meta.
• Prokofy Neva: ok everybody State Department noon presser in one hour! I know we'll get more about what's really happening in Iraq now!
• Patchouli Woollahra: Camping chairs in such places don't help.
• You: Lewis: that's a great enhancement request, do you have a price point you *would* consider for it?
• Prokofy Neva: $80 is what Anshe gets
• Prokofy Neva: so put it at $74
• Lewis Nerd: well one quarter of the price of a full sim, since that's how they're sold, at most :)
• Spontaneous Radio: Linden care more about a company like nike or rerbok that pay for one sim and doesnt contribute to the community as a hold then us ho paid lots more tier and do lots more for the community
• Lewis Nerd: its been asked before and ignored several times :) i keep trying in the hope that one day :)
• Spontaneous Radio: Why
• Prokofy Neva: Spontaneous that is the mystery of SL
• Desdemona Enfield: Well, it is a business S.R.
• Prokofy Neva: and the answer is:
• Patchouli Woollahra: There we go again, where does that come from?
• Prokofy Neva: Nike and Sony have billions of customers they will eventually bring here and serve
• Spontaneous Radio: cause they can reach more people, and that mean high false number
• Prokofy Neva: and you and I have like 1,257 customers lol
• Prokofy Neva: so do the math
• Patchouli Woollahra: What is 'False'?
• Spontaneous Radio: but makes it look like SL is the great thing since Prim hair
• Patchouli Woollahra: You know what? It just might be.
• Spontaneous Radio: There sims are empty
• Spontaneous Radio: check the traffic
• Patchouli Woollahra: I won't disagree with you on that though!
• Prokofy Neva: empty today Spontaneous
• Prokofy Neva: but look ahead
• Desdemona Enfield: hehe, imo, I think the big corporate 'presence' thing is a bit of a fad
• Prokofy Neva: they will figure out to do what you do
• Tao Takashi: there are many empty sims, not only corporate ones
• Prokofy Neva: they will have free housing, entertainment, even camp chairs, sex, casinos, whatever
• Spontaneous Radio: thats fine prokofy
• Prokofy Neva: and they will have the deep pockets and staff to take care of people
• Desdemona Enfield: IBM does sex?
• You: great convos folks... see you all soon. Thanks!
• Prokofy Neva: and they'll buy islands by the gross and put staff on it paid in micropayments and run them
• Lewis Nerd: maybe empty sims because there's too many people out to make money, or cover costs ebcause land is so expensive - and can't provide fun things to do
• Desdemona Enfield: bye Meta
• Spontaneous Radio: but i bet that if the ceo ofNike called he would be able to talk to Zee
• Tao Takashi: take care, Meta :)
• Spontaneous Radio: but we cant