Every time I see that hokey new phrase "Solutions Provider," I ask myself: "Er, what was the problem again?" Reminds me of the quintessential Marxist superstructure in search of a base...
Glenn Linden has a post up about the SPs today, and nowhere does he give us the number he gave us, gosh, about 18 months ago now I think, that came out to US $7000 a year per SP, i.e. not a living wage. Even this high a number came out washing big projects like the first installment of what was ultimately the $10 million that CBS gave to the Sheep for a variety of projects against all projects, to make it average out better.
What he does give is the figure of "$70 million" for this "space" as the trendy term for this sector of the economy is denoted -- but we don't know what piece of that the Lindens own. Guesses out there?
Being an SP of course gives you special parking near the Lab...somewhere in the Metaverse lol. And you get to be in special closed-door meetings with the Lindens on sensitive topics like OpenSpaces, where you don't compete for airtime with uneducated nits and griefers, and where I suspect the ratio of sychophantic fanboy isn't as high, either. Pity we don't have that for inworld business, which pays more of the Lindens' bills.
Or...does it? We don't get that information, either. At one point -- again, ages ago -- Glenn told us what percentage of sims were owned by SPs and their clients: 15 percent. And now? In other words, if the Lindens make at least $108.5 million in tier from private islands and mainland a year (that's a rough calculation assuming uniformity of tiers), what percentage of that comes from RL business? Could someone go in the thread and please ask these pertinent questions? That number would let us know a) how successful this program is in replacing us, which is the goal and b) how much business really did leave SL, or did it in fact not leave as much as the MSM tells us. So try to get that number! I'm betting it is the same, or even growing a bit, because there are all kinds of non-English language firms putting up all sorts of stuff -- I think they have softer launches than they used to.
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