JAGI, call it what it is...

May I add to...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bumble Parx First, please refer to us as customers, not residents, when discussing the parts of SL that we pay for. Maybe it's just me, but I find the tone of the announcements directed at 'residents' as quite patronising. ...

Another JAGI from River Ely:

This might sound odd, but please change the wording of "Selling Land". You do NOT sell land, selling implies the buyer has something they can take away and or something they own, We don’t 'own' anything in second life, things don't actually exist. Refer to a new island cost as a "Set up fee" for that is what it is. When a land owner sells land onto the next owner (or more often on mainland, speculator), they are transferring the 'setup cost' plus a profit margin of their own.

When an island owner rents space to a user and charges them a tier, they are actually sharing a proportion of the expected tier, to Linden Labs, plus a profit margin. But they don’t actually sell land, they share the cost of server time rental, nothing more, nothing less. How about Linden Labs calling it what it is, instead of fancy real world names that imply something that doesn’t actually happen.

Example

Say I 'buy' a region of mainland, then I should have the option of having that region lodged on my home computer system or another place I choose.

Say I buy a collection of primitives, (math coordinates with image textures stretched between nurbs), and I should be able to store that collection of information on my own system, so that I become responsible for its retention and or subsequent loss.

If I am not buying, as you suggest, but renting or gaining the freedom to use, then state that.

The concept of buying things is well understood in society, so is double talk, smoke and mirrors and clever people cheating less clever people to make a profit is something most of us do not like.
Change the wording Linden Labs, You don’t sell land, or islands, you charge a set up fee and you charge an ongoing maintenance fee (tier), My JAGI, call things what they are, not a fancy name that alludes to something completely different.

[url]http://rivers-rock.blogspot.com/2008/11/just-another-good-idea-jagi.html[/url]

Just Another Good Idea (JAGI)

Hi [Enter name of new hire], Welcome to Linden Labs.

I recycled the above, I used it for a whole bunch of other people who have come to the forum and said “I am new but we are going to change things for the better, we need to listen to you, give us your ideas”. And we do, we give you all ideas, concepts, suggestions. Some good, some awful and some not worth printing, and every now and them, we come up with a terrific idea and somehow, after all is said and done, it turns into just that, “Just Another Good Idea” (JAGI).

Your product has a lot of rough edges, is sloppy in some parts and is broken in others, the JIRA tells you that but I understand it will cost money and brains to fix a lot of the issues and that could detract from immediate income generation.

So a new JAGI needs to not detract from Income Generation while at the same time, fixing something that is broken.

Your ideas over the past two years have been perplexing, Windlight, Voice, Banning Gambling rather that create local servers, updates needing a whole package to be re-downloaded instead of a module for that package (huh!) so a new JAGI would have to have a value and a point and that could be implemented with minimum disruption.

You product has a huge addicted user base. No matter how much you mess up (and admit for once that mistakes in judgement are too frequent), we are still here. If you ever had a company that needed customer generated feedback, it is this one, but it seems no one at Linden Labs listens to their customers here. So a new JAGI needs to come from listening to us, your user base. (We are for the most part friendly, but remember, we outnumber you a million to one).


To round up, a JAGI needs to continue to generate income and hopefully improve it.

A JAGI needs have value that does not require disruption or a change in infrastructure.

A JAGI needs to be easy to implement, (Those are the best kind, low outlay, huge return)

And a JAGI has to be borne from your customers.


Here is my JAGI

Premium Accounts

The value of the premium account is miss understood when compared with Non Premium account holders. I would change little for the premium account holders. I would make a change to non premium account holders to widen the gap between account holders and non account holders.

1) I suggest that non premium account holders, Alts, Bots, Campers, Greifers etcetera are rewarded with in inventory scrub every 24 hours. ( yes, remove all created and or purchased content). Reason: if the account is to be used to sample SL then it is no loss, allow the character to be persistent but with an inventory cleaned out after 24 hours.

2) Allow non premium account holders to forcibly expire after thirty days. With the name being locked for 30 days more against re-use. How many times do you need to log in and explore before deciding you want to retain inventory and a name?

3) Remove the option to hold funds from non account holders. That way they can’t be ‘gifted’ funds from other avatar accounts and buy weapons or other things that can be used to reduce the quality of game play for those of us who invest into Second Life.

4) If the account is an ALT account, and the account is riding on the strength of a premium account, then for account purposes, it should be part of that account and counted as the main avatar. So if there are 40,000 logged in and 10,000 are ALTS camping or taking up numbers, the true account of logged in accounts should be 30,000.

Or

4a) If an premium account is logged in, and an alternative account for that holder tries to log in, the premium account avi should be bumped off. Restricting one avi to one user. If the second account is a premium account, then allow the second avatar to add to the total number of avatars on line without bumping off the first or primary avatar.


Remove negativity

I am not suggesting Camping Avi’s should be banned, but if you want to set a dozen or forty avatars to camp to swell the numbers for your sim, then pay premium for each one, then we will see how ineffective campers are and Linden Labs will make a tidy sum in the process.

I am not suggesting that people create alts for negative reasons, or for attacking those who have displeased their owners, but if you had to pay premium for your avi in order to attack the other player, then losing your accounts upon detection would be a far more costly process.


Resolve

Simple changes, they have defined values, they increase the revenue for Linden Labs and go some way to creating more visible numbers with more accuracy. It means little or no change for the vast majority of users who already contribute heavily to the success of Linden labs, and the removal of some free accounts ability to grief, camp or clutter, would be an impact appreciated by every premium member that ever existed.

Please vote for my JAGI.

http://forums.secondlife.com reply# 374

Message to Second Life Users: Zee Linden was there and listening.

After so many heated words from so many perspectives, Zee Linden invited anyone who cared to, to join him in Second Life for one on one conversation. We were given a chance for us all to talk to the CFO in world and place our questions openly and in context. Sadly no one turned up.

We get so drawn into the forums when a Linden is present.

I was unable to attend the in-world meeting as I have to be at work tomorrow and its gone midnight here in the UK already. However, Zee contacted me in Immediate Message Mode as I had written my questions out on a note card and allowed Zee to respond. I never thought for one moment that Zee would respond as I held the view that the CFO would either give me answers he thinks I want to hear, or he would give me answers he believes are correct, even though we have reason to doubt the legitimacy of his replies.

I have promised Zee that I will create a fair and balanced reply to the article in my blog, complaining about skewed metric, complaining about Bots camping and inflating the figure, about land dumping and churning. I am not perfect and never find the time to comb the myriads of stats released by SL, I, like many, become confident in the knowledge I have and hold onto that, and when it is not in a good light, I too can become tightly focused. Another reason not to expect Zee linden to reply, after all, he is on a losing streak as far as the facts I hold are concerned.

This of course is unfair.

I have had a good dialogue with Zee tonight, simple straightforward honest facts have been shared, not all glowing and rosy as earlier suggested by the tide of the news feed, but some facts have been presented in a more meaningful presentation to me, enough to get me thinking and enough for me to do three things.

1) I am withdrawing the barb from my tone, Zee has shown he is not only willing to communicate effectively but is also willing to share exacting and precise information. Though we may have to learn the best way of asking those questions as the dialogue and circumstance of Zee’s financial world is critically different in so many ways to our day to day work in Second Life.

2) I am acknowledging Zee has made every effort to reach out and discuss the trends and the events that are affecting residents. He has been attracting comment on the Forum here for the best part of three or four hours, and for a CFO that is indeed valuable time. Further, Zee has been in-world publically available to listen to our concerns in order to gain insight from our experiences. Again, consider the absence of other senior staff and then admit for Zee to spend valuable time face to face with us is a welcome change. None of us are happy at the seemingly madcap way the Linden managers are translating solutions currently, so Zee’s appearance on the forum and in world is got to be seen as a welcome opportunity.

3) I will publish a balanced article on my blog to follow up and counter balance the existing negative publications. I will review what I have learned from Zee tonight and will make that result available in RL along-side and balancing my other comments. I am going to be away for a few days and will not catch up until Monday, but catch up I will.

I have to ask a couple more questions of Zee before I can ( looking at my notes) fully respond, but I am confident that even though Linden Labs have cocked things up a bit, there is opportunity for some of surviving this and hopefully , going forward with realistic expectations and exploring real opportunities in the coming months.

Sadly, the world is suffering a slowdown in growth and this may exacerbate the decline in the short term for many companies, not just Linden Labs, but I feel a lot more confident now knowing Zee is reachable and is willing to listen to constructive argument. Hopefully we can work together if we can all agree to talk the same language, listen to each other, and pose sensible and correct solution opportunities.

Another island gets switched off. Thanks Linden Labs for trashing dreams and stealing rainbows.

Tonight , the renter on River Mouth 4 vacated the property. I raised another ticket to have it switched off and in the nick of time, a buyer surfaced and is willing to take the island. After the deduction of 100 USD and the tier, I make, 25 usd, thats 12 GBP or after tax about 7GBP, enough for two pints of cheap beer. What a crying shame.

The island was a home for some, it was a playground for others, and it has been a thriving and affordable business for a lady driven to do charitable things.

The island is going to become part of a full sim again and hopefully carry on delivering hundreds of sim time hours for residents to shape, use and enjoy into the future.

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.

Rivers Rock: Alarm bells at Linden Labs could they Herald the death of Second Life?

Rivers Rock: Alarm bells at Linden Labs could they Herald the death of Second Life?

Alarm bells at Linden Labs could they Herald the death of Second Life?

I am for some reason alarmed by the latest entry here, in particular one element that alarms me is the following excerpt.

Originally Posted by Katt Linden
Linden Lab is pleased to announce results for the 3rd quarter of 2008.
Over 357 auctions have closed in the new Nautilus region where property is selling at L$60 per meter or 12x the average cost of mainland property, indicating that some users have a high demand for a more structured experience.
-- Zee Linden

The reason I am alarmed is that it tells me that whom ever produced this report is not in touch with the reality of the way Second Life is running. I get the feeling it has been written by some one who has no active working interest in Second Life and from some one who rarely gets to interact with real people on the grid. Zee may have posted the report and I know that Zee has a reasonable working knowledge of second life.

The sales above, we are told is where land in Nautilus Region is changing hands at a whopping 60L$ per square meter, and the inference is that tenants really want to live there so they are snapping the land up at really high prices. That from what I have seen is wrong. I have seen land barons buying the land at auction and then selling the plots with crazy prices of upto 120,000 L$ per plot. These are not residents moving in, but players trying to sell land at grossly inflated prices. (I am not calling them realtors as realtors that I have met are not as misguided).

These figures we are led to beleive are from a quarter when the Lindens announced a hold on new sims as there was a decrease in the demand for sims. So what is happening? I do not want to write something negative here as I know posts get pulled pretty quick these days if the Lindens disagree with the content. (Thus skewing opinion and creating an untrue bias in perception)

My questions are:
1) What percentage of land sold on Nautilus, has been resold or is up for sale? If residents were buying it to move in and stay, I would expect a low figure. If it being bought and sold, churned, I would expect a high figure.

2) What percentage of land has been reclaimed by Gov Linden in the same 1/4? How are land returns matching up to the new land being introduced, In other words, how much land made available is new, and how much has been owned before.

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)

The reason I ask these figures is that I get the distinct impression from your figures that the hundreds of bots we see are actually contributing to the land purchasing, user to user transactions and active daily registrations. Nothing could be further from the truth as at least one sim near my own has upwards of 40 users at a atime on it and they are all camping, many are still ruths. They are bots, not active players, and your figures dont seem to differentiate between them and regular users. That means your figures are being presented wrong, and that Zee, to be perfectly honest worried the heck out of me. If you are prepared as a Company to present figures that are not being shown correctly, what else is being hidden?

warmest but worried regards:

River Ely



I then made a second post to Zee Linden of Linden Labs:


quote

Originally Posted by Zee Linden
I'm not sure if I completely understand your question - but we were selling about 20 to 30 open spaces per day before that time. Is that your question?

I think the user was asking for a graph showing Openspaces sales over a daily basis. The graph would show an incremental increase culminating in thousands of Openspaces.


This would no doubt be an embarresment to you as it would clearly demionstrate that something was wrong way before you as a Company elected to suddenly change the prices by 66%. Zee, can we have that graph the user asked for so that we can see the numbers of sims being sold over the 1/4 concerned. I appreatiate your candour but 20 - 30 per day doesnt stack up...


See if you sold 20 a day over 90 days you would have 2240 openspace sims, if you sold 30 a day over 90 days, you would have 2700 open space sims, I got the impression from Mark Lindens figures that we were talking 5 thousand openspace sims, thats more like 60 - 65 sims per day for 90 days.
best idea is to just show the information Zee then we can see for ourselves that Linden Labs are not adjusting the figures to make best sense.

I feel confident you will agree with me Zee

-.~.- -.~.- -.~.- -.~.- -.~.- -.~.- -.~.- -.~.- -.~.- -.~.- -.~.- -.~.-


Zee responded with a throw away line, not what I expect from a CEO:
he said... Yes, we sold many many more than 20 to 30 per day when they were first introduced.

Thats it, in response to my simple questions above?

it prompted me to chance my arm and make a statement.
Zee, you dissapoint me, I asked, over two posts, some very simple, adroit, honest questions. I invited you to not give a throw-away comment about the open space sales, but to deliver real figures.

I tried to do it in a way that could be understood by all players with an interest, as well as some one with ten years internet experiance and a CFO to boot. If you do not have those figures, then admit it.

If you do have them ( and I hope to heck that if you are a professional CFO that you would have them plus a raft of other figures) then show them.

The questions are realy quite simple.

Treating us as idiots with yet another throw away line (above) really does not do any favours for you, it demonstrates that you really might not care as much as you want us to beleive.

Zee, please stop hiding behind quips, and deliver the numbers and the stats we asked for.

Put up, or, admit you cannot.

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

comment

It seems to me that Zee Linden, CFO of Linden Labs, may not have the business acumen he claims to have, or is dancing around the points of concern in the hopes that no one actually works out that Linden Labs is in deep water and starting to flounder. I for one am extremely cautious of investing in Linden Labs if the CFO cannot tell the simple truth when so asked by one of their investors.