Gigs Shrugged

This isn’t just a panic.  The market has fundamentally shifted and there isn’t sufficient buying pressure to sustain the amount of L$ that are being printed through stipends and etc.

This was bound to happen at some point because no network can grow forever.   Not quite a ponzi, but ponzi-like in the sense that Linden Lab’s actions required constant growth that never leveled off or dropped.

So anyway things should continue to bounce around.   The only thing keeping a lid on the L$ at all is because people have ingrained ideas about the worth of the L$, which leads speculators to lay down big bets when the L$ bounces up.  If it weren’t for people willing to pick up “cheap” L$ at 300, we’d have much more of a breakout.

This psychological inertia won’t last forever.  There’s only a few possible outcomes I see:

• Linden Lab takes action to revalue the L$
  • Accepting tier in L$… comes straight off the bottom line, the owners and VC will not like this one.
  • Cutting stipends retroactively.   If they just cut stipends while retaining premium membership the way it is users will be upset.  So if they go this way, they’ll have to do something drastic: get rid of premium entirely, for every account regardless of age.  They’d have to make this effective on the renewal date so this measure would take about a month to really start having an effect.
• Linden Lab does nothing.  Demand for L$ may increase, but it’s June, so that’s kind of doubtful with people doing things outside.

There should be some solid foundation this weekend as demand picks up again.  Around the beginning of July, things might get nasty.  I predict fireworks around July 4th.

Since the Seventh Sun is discontinued currently, and I am not sure of the future hosting situation there, I am reproducing this article for historical interest here.

Gigs’ Corner: SL Grid 08

by Gigs Taggart, Correspondent

This month begins a new regular feature of The Seventh Sun by contributing correspondent, Gigs Taggart. Gigs is a software engineer who is working with Zero Linden and others on the next generation architecture for the Second Life (SL) grid. This month’s topic is the development of an open grid, what Linden Lab refers to as “SL Grid 08.”

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What are “PG” Regions, groups, events, and classifieds?

There are some landowners and Residents who desire a Second Life experience distinct from the activity that occurs in Mature and Adult Regions.  Region owners who wish to host this sort of Second Life experience should designate their Regions as PG.  A Region may be designated PG so long as it does not advertise or make available any content that is suggestive of any (even mildly) sexual or violent themes, or references to social drug or alcohol usage.

For instance, institutions such as universities, conference organizers, and real world businesses whose users may not wish to view or interact closely with the broader Second Life experience may designate their Regions as PG to achieve this added level of protection and segregation.

Since Linden Lab will probably deny this policy ever existed in a couple months after they silently change it, I’m posting it here.

I’m off to have a beer now.  Oops, I guess that means this blog post is no longer PG.

The passage below is reminder of how far Linden Lab has gone from their original dream of being “bigger than the web”.  Self-limiting decisions such as this “adult ghetto”, banning people for “unacceptable fantasies”, and in general, moving further and further from the concept of a common carrier, and turning into something more and more like AOL in 1995…  a sandboxed playground for kids and people who can’t figure out how to use anything better.

Linden Lab wrote, in December 2006:

We could never write a set of rules that would work for all people all the time, nor could we enforce them across a population that is growing so rapidly. Instead, we believe that the best way to foster communication and expression is to put power into the hands of the people by giving you better tools for local control. And that’s what we’ve been doing for several months now. [...]
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