Letter to Zee Linden.CFO Linden Labs (Secondlife.com)

I had a reply from Zee, it was evasive but seemed to honestly court interest> Sadly it was to join him in world to ask those questions, and i know form bitter experiance, such question and answer sessions degrade into meaning cross conversations with tens of avatars asking different questions at the same time. Typing seems so slow whern you need to fire off a quick question and a small typo can change the question to become meaningless. I knew I had no chance of asking real questions, so I created a note and dropped it onto Zee's Profile...


It reads...



Hi Zee. I know if you are in world the chances of having a realistic conversation with you is about as realistic as hoping a chocolate fireguard will survive the winter. In world too many people talking at the same time, conversations become incredibly disjointed and only fail spectacularly to create meaningful results for the many, unless you are seeking nodding approval from those that have no real concerns and fail to grasp the basic importance of having a CFO actually meet customers.


My concerns are many fold, and though it may seem like I am asking silly questions, its because a year ago I had 12 sims, two of which were open spaces. Over the following months, more and more open spaces came on stream until I started, like many others, to lose residents to cheap and freely available open space sims, and seemingly supported by the Linden Fabric that coalesces to create what we see as second life.



I sold some, had some switched off, nearly lost a seven sims to a thief (Atown Fall) and had it not been for Ethan and Spike Linden intervening to get my sims back to me, I would have lost them. Sadly, the residents had been scattered so I got seven sims back, and no residents to help me create tier. I don’t know if you can imagine what it feels like to go from 12 full thriving sims, to one sim and three open spaces, in less than a year? Through sheer bloody incompetence on behalf of Second Life trend management teams, a catastrophic migration of customers seemed to go un-noticed, yet, I and friends and colleagues were screaming out daily to you asking for help , support, information and most of all, the bloody nosed truth.


I feel if you had been due diligent, you would have compared two important numbers together, the same numbers every sim business owner ran every day, "How many residents do I have, and how much land do I have?"


For me, I had the alarming trend of fewer and fewer residents while my land holding stayed static until I realised my surplus was being eroded paying tier on empty regions. I reduced my holding again and again until I am where I am now, scared stiff I might not make tier next month unless something changes soon. For you and your colleagues, you should have seen a huge growth in land sales, yet not the same proportion of population growth. Had you, like many of us, looked at the map, you would have seen that about 1 user per sim on line at peak logins. That should have rung alarm bells while at the same time swelling your income with the “kerching” of land being created and sold. The numbers must have been there for you. I have gone, in less than a year, from giving you happily tier of $3,500 USD to a very desultory $300 USD.


I am a little angry and a lot sad, for we had settled on a stable and simple business model, and through no fault of our own, it was eroded and taken away from us, I am scared to think of how the big guys were affected, as we are small fry compared. Oh I am happy to deal with market forces and changing trends, happy to play with predictive spikes in sales, pre ordering, buying just in time, manipulating tiers to establish sound customer residences, adjusting covenants until we strike a balance that works, even having to deal with an unfairly allocated VAT. Instead of normally being inclusive, you for some reason that has never been explained, elected to add it to the sale price, thus out pricing Europeans from our American cousins by some 17.5%. When we are talking profit margins of 4, 5, and 9 percent, a 17.5% tax is enough to wipe out any hard earned income completely. That Zee, was squarely your doing as the CFO you cannot elude that responsibility.

So I am not happy, and when I ask to see figures that will confirm my collapsing business is not my fault, i earned a flippant remark from you, that Zee, annoyed me. I wish some days I had time to nip out at lunch and be with the kids. damn, you can switch off for an hour and chill while we are all bashing away on the boards because you forgot to say, 'be back in an hour'. I guess that is some measure of how much you respect some of us.

I want to see the truth, I do know that many of your daily logins are bots, many are alts, but Zee, how many are active customers, and how many of those are capable of buying land. Simple questions I feel. Unless we know how many real land buying residents are in game the rest of the numbers don’t add up. You can visit countless sims that are full of people and they are bots, camping, placed there to swell the numbers, to make those sims look busy, Its cheating and you know it is, yet you simply seem to add them to the figures and happily state that a million people logged in last month. A question I asked was how many of those million were actual accounts? You never say...


My questions you recall were:-

3) What are the current figures for:-

a) Number of avatars per region as I regularly see clutches of sims with not more than one or two avatars on?

b) Percentage of avatars who pay Tier to other players or Linden labs?

c) Number of daily logins divided between Premium members (able to hold land) and non premium members (capable of being a bot)


Another quick point, if you are still reading Zee. I see plots on the mainland where speculators are asking large sums of lindens for, hoping to make a good income no doubt. My question revolved around this. How much land was sold: how much land was reclaimed: how much land was up for sale


Yes I used those colons again as I know what a ratio is and I know too that the figures are not that simple to answer, but the proportional relationships should be leaping off the page at you in all honesty. They will support the fact that you have been creating land at an alarming rate, recovering land at an alarming rate and seeing land churned without being settled upon as the numbers of paying residents does not spread out over the amount of land you have made available.


Am I wrong? Show me I am wrong and I will write an article supporting you to offset the last couple articles I wrote sending messages of gloom and despondency. I would like to do that.

Second Life and their constantly changing politics.

I was building something in Second Life when the Concierge common chat group chimed with a new message”. Torrid offered a Full region (or Sim) for sale, Tier date 13th, unique swamp woodsy build that can stay. Please IM me
We asked for the price and he gave us the asking price.

I said “I realised something last night, we have all been hoodwinked by Linden labs into believing that we are buying islands, islands that don’t exist, other grids charge a 'set up' fee, and that makes sense, so an island that has been set up once, would only need transferring, so it should be pointless selling an island, because in reality, your only asking for the reimbursement of your set up fee, whole different ball game”

Chade agreed with “You are right River...though I was lucky”

I continued “What so annoys me on this realization, is for a while linden labs were charging us 1760 USD set up fee, and those of us who bought have nothing to sell but the current set up fee, crazy. I don’t think they actually thought about it to be honest, I think someone said wouldn't it be a good idea if... and the ass lickers chimed in with "yes indeed Mr Linden Sir".
Torrid added “Well for me this is a hobby and my sim is a role play sim. It is dealing with the constant complaints and whining that I am tired of dealing with or paying to entertain others”.

This prompted Chade, “I have argued with tenants for hours about it is better for them to rent from me than to buy...but I finally gave up....now I say if you want to pay me to take risk be my guest”.

Meanwhile, I was typing, “So maybe it is a result of many things, miss conceptions, poor thinking and the inability for Linden Labs to refute a misconception, instead they let it roll and roll and roll, and after five thousand sales, tell us the way they think it should be. I too tire now of constant wining, but now as I am more in OpenLifegrid then SecondLife , I don’t care, I rent my regions out for cost plus vat and if they stay they stay , if they leave, I sell or close the island. I have some good friends on my regions now, not just 'customers' so it is theirs as long as they stay.”

“I found giving them their own rights etc took a weight of work away from me”, I said and continued with “, best thing I did, they sort it out themselves instead of asking me all the time”.

Maybe the Lindens did get it wrong, but what seems to matter now, is they are getting too much too wrong and it is causing people to leave, and tired of their indecision and constant rule changes. The only constant seems to be the need for the Lindens to treat us like cash sources and find ways to soak us for more money. Changing their promises is a defacto standard in Second Life and more and more it becomes ‘caveat Emptor’