Anna Gulaev

LL never buys Linden dollars; users do. So, once LL sells Linden dollars for real-world currency, they get to keep the money. It's profit, not just revenue.

Problem is, they can only do this while the money supply is growing. That's problem number one.

Problem number two is that if the money supply needs to contract, LL has no way to take money out of the economy except through raising Linden-denominated fees, or adding new fees. Residents "cashing out" don't remove Linden dollars from the system; those L$ go to another resident. Only LL could remove them buy buying them, but they don't do that. It'd cost real-world money to do so.

If the money supply can't shrink fast enough through fees (sinks), the Linden dollar will depreciate.

@Tateru "Actually increases in supply also come from stipends, but the cost of that is pretty close to the premium fees - enough to consider stipends to be largely negligible."

The same could be said of Supply Linden sales. The L$ sold to users on the exchange can be cashed out.

In fact, stipend works exactly the same as Supply Linden selling on the exchange. They collect hard currency (premium fees) and give Linden dollars. Think of it as a good exchange rate for oldbies and a crappy exchange rate for newbies, but as a source for the economy that nets LL hard currency in exchange for Linden dollars, Supply sales on the exchange and premium fees work pretty much the same.

I said a month ago that the loss of Supply Linden sales amounts to 40 real-world jobs:

www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/virtual-business/44762-conspiracynomics-fueling-dark-fires-speculation.html#post940168

www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/general-sl-discussion/45427-linden-lab-anticipates-staff-reductions-2.html#post950895

@Ann, they have to be bigger than 100 and plan to lay off 1/3.

@Opensource - Your English is just fine, and I agree with you. Someone who is actually social improves SL for everyone, whether they are a paying customer or not. Any metric for the health of SL needs to consider how desirable the platform is, and above all SL is a social space. Or it should be. There'd be little reason to spend money if there wasn't anything to do. LL can only go so far attracting people who chase the money-making myth. They need to attract people who can and will chat, even if they aren't paying customers.

It reminds the world that people can earn money sitting at their computer in their underwear. This is what powers SL. Convincing thousands of people that if they just try a little harder or spend a little more money they, too, can earn money sitting at their computer in their underwear.

Now it does have that boundary, or it's in the process of developing that boundary. The most "adult" stuff is supposed to move to a new continent and you have to age-verify to get there. LL has a history of not enforcing its own policies, though, so it's possible this will turn out like the gambling ban, which basically handed a monopoly to one game maker but didn't otherwise eliminate gambling.

I'm assuming though, that LL is serious about this new policy, because I'm assuming it's objections like yours that have woken LL to the fact that SL excludes a lot of potential customers.

But this boundary will be insufficient. Even if you are able to avoid being propositioned on arrival and are able to avoid the pornographers if you choose to do so, you will still be struck by just how much hucksterism there is in SL. This is Linden Lab's next problem to solve.

The inane chatter comes from bots, so those places are empty, too.

Search is very much not your friend. It's a useless pile of bot-infested, tacky, redundant, irrelevant crap.

You have to know there is something useful to be found before you are going to make a huge effort at searching. You imply that gamers are just lazy. I think you are too far removed from the newbie experience.

Do you think arriving at a welcome center with kids arguing and showing off makes potential residents want to stick around? Do you think searching for "club" and spending hours visiting the most bizarre, useless, tacky *empty* crap make people want to stick around?

Search rewards the hucksters. People will continue to dismiss SL with all the insults you mention until LL makes it easier...nay, until LL makes it *possible*...to find the good stuff before the empty, tacky porno casino flea market that is the bulk of SL, according to search.

Lively absolutely is a competitor. Some people use SL as a casual chat interface, or spend a lot of their time in SL doing that, and Lively may be a better choice for that.

When Walmart comes to town they don't kill off the fabric stores by selling everything they do. They kill them by selling the basics, siphoning off those customers. A fabric store that turns a slim profit becomes a money-losing enterprise. It doesn't matter that Walmart isn't a viable alternative for those products.

Lively will siphon off some of SL's customers. Probably not the biggest and most profitable customers, but they'll take enough to make two things happen. First, SL will have fewer sociable people and will be less interesting. Second, they'll give Google resources to keep improving Lively.

LL would have to be totally daft to not take this very seriously.