However, Microsoft is probably a likely candidate to acquire SL, as would be Amazon. The reason I think of either of those two companies is that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Microsoft CTO Ray Ozzie are already investors in Linden Labs

Someone (can’t remember who: do you?) said recently on their blog that a missing aspect in all this morbid fascination with raw numbers is some kind of analysis of the social element, ie, who are the people who make up the raw numbers. A kind of demographic interpretation that I think would add immense value to the overall discussion about Second Life.

Good point re outages. Maybe like the economic stats, it’s getting more attention so more commentary. I’m a newcomer to SL compared to you (joined at the beginning of 2006) but I’ve been using SL almost daily for the past four months or so (and staying longer on each visit).

It’s a lot to do with perception where you can’t log in and see posts appearing with others reporting the same issue. Time zone differences contribute, too, so you end up with an overall picture that the grid is offline for longer than it actually is. To be fair to Linden Lab, I find that their communication via their blog to be pretty good on what’s happening.

It’s important to cut through the hype about the numbers (the independent analysts inworld have been estimating only 100,000 to 200,000 ‘real people really logging in for last 30 days’ for awhile because of the churn, where only 10 percent of the new people return within 30 days. Still, it doesn’t matter, because the growth rates are phenomenal, and because of the steep learning curve and the graphics card and DSL line needed, not everybody can turn on the account and keep it working, they come back later.

You need to be accurate about the “outages” issue, too. Second Life has never been down for a full 24 hours in the two years I’ve been using it nearly daily. When it has outages, they have teams, including people on their international team always on a different time zone, who get right at the problem and they usually get it back up within a four-hour time-frame from my experience. Their regularly scheduled patch is usually under 3 hours once a week. So these aren’t “two days of outages” but more properly “two outages of two hours over two days” or something.

Good questions, Mike. Reality: if the grid’s down and logins are disallowed, that affects everyone, individuals and companies alike. Little you can do about it. The SL terms of use are pretty clear about service availability.

Wholly agree with your view re pressure on stability. I can see that as being one of the elements in anyone’s speculation on whether Linden Lab is an acquisition target. If they continue with outages and an acquirer could “guarantee” better uptime, I would say that would add to the perceived value of SL.

How do SL outages like the recent two-day affair affect organizations like crayon, for example, or other businesses (like Dell) for that matter? I know that businesses don’t have a right, per se, do Second Life access, but if companies are going to put more and more resources into virtual-world presences, these virtual worlds are going to feel more and more pressure to be stable.

Mike

One question I have about this recent money research done by Tristan Louis: how is the money supply determinied? Is it a finite amount (backed by something like a federal reserve)? Meaning, when you gamble on a slot machine or sit on a chair getting handouts for time spent, is that money created out of thin air, or from the pockets of the creator of that object?