I don't know what's more painful.
Watching these terribly sanitized Linden reports shorn of important data that used to be transparent and are now dark, or watching the noble gyrations of people like Desmond.
The number of people who spent more than one dollar inworld used to be the only real number in SL. It still is the only real number (496,000 or 480,000), but it's called differently now and it's not clear the same thing is being counted. "Economic participation" could include alts to whom dollars are transferred rather than all accounts who spent out money.
This number steadily grew for years and years, no matter what. Then, all of a sudden in February of this year, with the secret 2.0 development and such and the mangling of search, it began to dip. It went back up again. Now it's declining.
Not good.
Basically, every land baron's story in SL is a microcosm for the problem of Linden Lab. Every land baron succeeds when there is growth, but as soon as there is a dip in occupancy and a slowdown in sign-ups, he suddenly faces fixed cost that eat away his gains and then begin to turn the upside down.
What I've always called "mainland mystery math" is when people think that they are doing something "good" by "ploughing the proceeds back into the business" when in fact expanding when there will not be continued growth means getting stuck with a whole bunch of unrented land.
Basically, this is what has happened to the Lindens, writ large.
They have no choice but to use the same methods that land barons have had to use to try to pull out of their death spiral:
o lower prices
o raise volume of sales
o offer more freebies and loss-leaders
o redesign and repurpose
o spend more on advertising
o tighten up customer care to retain customers
o diversify offerings for different tastes
o increasing content sales
o supplementing with consulting
o abandoning land
The Lindens have done all that. And -- I'm not sure it will work.
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