Linden Lab decommissions over 23,000 islands in 24 hours [updated]

In a thousand years, New Age kooks will talk about a lost continent of technological wonders and magic called "Jacklantis" which sunk beneath the waves.

I'm wondering if anyone knows how many sims/islands LL has overall? I have 'heard' its about 33K. If this number is accurate, then they've turned off 2/3rds of the grid?

Tateru, are you daft? There are about 36,000 simulators in SL. They didn't suddenly decommission *23,000*. Did you make a typo? Did they just make a mistake in how their numbers are reflected?

Yeah the stats are borked, "islands owned" is zeroed out on the LL stats page.

Either:

1) this is not true, and some kindof stats or other mistake. So not so interesting.

2) it's a massive drop in island subscriptions due to openspace/void/homestead pricing increases. So will cause lots of hand wringing and doom fear.

3) Lindens just happened to have 24k of islands lying around that they hadn't got around to decommissioning. In which case... wait what?!

I think any of those three is about as likely as the others :P

as of right now there are a total of 27,864 total simulators, of those approximately 4500 are mainland, I don't track openspace vs full estates. So these numbers represent "Unique Regions on the grid" There was a high of approximately 33,270 a month or so ago. 27,864 is actually an increase from 2 weeks ago when there were 26,534 total simulators.

So since the openspace announcement there was a steady decline from 33K down to 26K or a loss of approximately 7K regions however total regions are currently back on the rise.

I'm curious to see what is actually going on here. Linden Lab does have a history of performing this kind of "maintenance" when they think no one is looking (which makes business sense). The same used to happen with the late Friday afternoon press release. Philadelphia sports teams are notorious for doing the same exact thing. I'm looking forward to the update on what is actually happening - no doubt, land mass will be retracting, the question is, how significantly?

Regards,

-Flip

Come on Tateru, this just isn't feasible. Now where the real story may well be, is if we now see a drastically different number of island growth than we saw prior to this borked number.

Well, after looking at LL's own stats, the numbers they're reporting do seem to jibe: http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php

The page in question does seem to state that they lost 24562 simulators, however, that figure is exactly the number of simulators owned at the end of November, and the month-to-date figure for December is zero, which makes me think that the number of simulators added or lost is calculated simply by subtracting the last month from the previous month... which leads to unhelpful results until the stats actually update. If I'm guessing right, then LL probably should consider changing the note about the simulators added being "month to date" if the figures aren't some flavor of "live". Footnote 3 (in fine print) makes me think that they're aware of this issue and have encountered it before. Rather than putting fine print in telling us not to believe what we read, they should really consider simply not publishing figures until they're accurate -- perception is all too often mistaken for reality.

I've corrected this. The number looked all-too plausible at 5am.

Definitely should have waited until the next feed update.

A Subject Worthy Of Further Discussion

Based on the original story, I was prepared to publicly post the following comments. Although the dire picture painted from the original information (statistics) has been shown to be inaccurate; I believe the reactions the story provoked in we who read it, as well as the underlying issues are worthy of continued discussion.

My Comments On The Original Story (Edited):

The purging of low-prim (Void) Sims was a necessary step to balance the cost to resource usage (overhead) equation that was out of control. It is unfortunate that the whole process evolved the way it did and was handled in the way it was.

The value of any Software As A Service (SAAS) offering, such as Second Life, is difficult to establish. Especially when you have built it with a social and economic infrastructure that promotes the "free" (non-commercial) exchange of value.

Ultimately, the best hope for SL, or any economy is a robust yet open (information) capital system that puts an emphasis on social and economic progress that is economically profitable for all concerned (win/win). Perhaps the best thing that could happen to SL would be for it to become a publicly traded or private corporation, where the citizens were also shareholders.

As long as you have a minority making decisions, based primarily on their own interests and the "Special Interests" of a select group of people, who are "privileged insiders," you will continue to see a dysfunctional "World" economy.

"If Linden's goal is to create a setting for a stable, growing economy that will provide the most satisfaction to the most residents, it must avoid the pitfalls of interventionism that plague real-world economies." (1)

It is clear that for Second Life to continue to grow and prosper, the leadership of Linden Labs must do a better job of communicating the true state of the Second Life economy and engage its citizens in proactive discussion on how to strengthen both the social and economic value proposition for all of its citizens and stakeholders. I hope the original article and the comments it has generated, prove to be a catalyst for that effort.

-----------------------------

I will close this with a quote by my father, one of the wisest and funniest men I have ever known; who taught me "A war of words is never won with faulty ammunition."

"People use statistics like drunks use lamp posts, for support rather than illumination."

(1) The Coming Second Life Business Cycle
Daily Article by Matthew Beller | Posted on 8/2/2007 12:00:00 AM

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Any way you slice it, I can't wait until the end of month numbers.. IMHO SL jumped the shark about 6 months to a year ago. This is just another signpost on the way down.

Now what I'd love to get my hands on is the statistical results of that poll they sent me about premium account usage. (They sent it to current premium subscribers and former premium subscribers.)

Rofls, I'd assumed this was sort of a joke posting, and you'd noticed that the "Total Islands Owned" number was zero, thus neatly accounting for the largish negative delta, but you were just playing it straight for the smile value... :)

ouch!

hm, can't you put that strike-out effect on the title of the post or somthing?

anyway, thanx for risking embarrassing yourself to get us fresh news *offers a hug smiling*

The figure seems to be nearer to 2000 islands lost in December: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zonja/3161289874/

That would make 15% landmass lost in two months, if my numbers are correct.