2700 New Islands Since August on the Grid

Hahaha! Such biting sarchasm! Or maybe you're being serious?

Hamlet's article on rising peak concurrency is another useful data point (at http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2008/09/second-life-pea.html ).

By the way, your CAPTCHAs are really hard to read.

Melvin, 'MB'?

This is truly one of the stupides posts you've ever made, RightasRain. Wrong. People like buying their own land, because they like private property. They want to control their land and build on it. They want *freedom*.

They don't want to be railroaded into collectivized public experiences such as the Rezzable sims and forced to consume professional content. At least, they only want this for a fraction of the time they are logged in.
 

That you claim to understand the economy, and be in a business of sorts in SL and not grasp this basic fact of life in Second Life -- that people like land, they like private property, and they want privacy -- means you cannot expect success for ever. Where are people going to *go* with all that Black Swan lingerie you are hustling?!  Back to their nests, of course.

Many new islands are bought by people who are re-renting them out -- huge empires of openspace sims are being formed (they're in danger of collapsing as the market gluts).

Imagine, YOU, trying to hustle 3-D entertainment on your own content, disparaging people who want land by telling them "it isn't real". If it's not real, why should they bother to go to Rezzable then?!

Here you go again with your vicious hatred of "land barons," and wildly inaccurate statements about them. Do they really pose such a threat to you? Isn't there room for a variety of businesses on this grid?!

Your scarey stories of sims abandoned leaving people ripped off are not common in SL. They do occur, but many of the people logging in and continuing to come back are coming to rental homes -- follow the green dots, see where they are, and they are not ripped off, but served.

The rising concurrency is in fact bringing in new customers to rental businesses, as I have found myself. Maybe some are going off to edu sims, but a good chunk are just new socializers and casual visitors, not students.

Seriously, with your cynical attitude about land and people in SL, why do you bother?!

I think that these days you can split SL residents into 2 types:
One part wants to be creative in SL, and try find some space to unleash whatever they can think of on the grid, and sometimes sell that.
I'm very lucky to be in a private sandbox, but I'm sure some people can get tired of the public sandboxes, and rent or buy some land (or in some cases a sim).
The other part wants to find a small retreat where they hang out with some friends, (or loved ones) something they themself own and perhaps created, instead of the (too) public parks and other retreats. People like some level of privacy.
Of course, there are people who can combine both creativeness as personal space.

The big flow of new residents stopped, that's true, but there's a part of residents that has been in SL for a while now, and have developed certain skills, but never owned land because it was pricey, and perhaps now that it became "more inexpensive", some of those residents are more willing (or more confident) to slowly take their first steps into being a landowner.
I'm sure it'll also help that the € is not giving in too easily on the US $ (even though it did give in something it'll probably not easily reclaim), a good part of those new sims are for Europeans, you can bank on that.
Same goes for the Chinese, Japanese and Koreans residents. More and more of them find their way to SL, gain skills and some of them buy land to either sell or biuld a retreat.

The only downside that I see, are for some of the "older" sims. The ones nobody really visits anymore, or nobody feels like renting or buying land in. Mainland sims usually have this problem. The parcels are usually in a wierd shape, neighbouring parcels can be an eyesore, they can be expensive...
As a result it's normal to desire your own sim, or part of a sim, they are more personal, or offer more customization, and therefore more appealing.

Still, all that doesn't really take away the fact that too much is too much. There is a land bubble, one that is slowly becoming bigger and bigger and I fear the day it'll burst... but for now, I'm very happy with my patch of land where I can crash into a chair and have a cuddle with my lion, the patch of land where I can sell some of my stuff, and the patch of land where I can unleash my creativeness.
And FYI, I'm renting from one of my closest buddies, and the rent was made up very fair!

I'm from New York, too, and what I'm cynical about is people who are cynical, who bite the hand that feeds them so ostentatiously.

There is nothing wrong with the land metaphor. It's the Lindens' business model; it works to replicate it as residents' business model. It's how you manage a complex grid like this, making sub-managers.

People like to have real-life versimilitude; they don't want mere entertainment, they like control and even amateur creation at their own level. That's a powerful draw for them. A lot of people entertain themselves, without professionally-made sites like yours. That is the strength of SL.

I have no idea what the story is with Anshe Chung, but I'm not sure that she ever had the million dollars to start with. She might well have, though, because the land barons who ran the telehub malls made a killing. She used to sell mainland and telehub mall space before she got into islands.

I would guess Anshe Chung is facing these problems:

o too great determination to dominate market share, and bidding on every single auction for a long time, overbidding to keep valuation up to keep land sales up -- this became impossible to pursue

o staying on mainland land sales too long

o overexpanding on island sales and rentals because demand was hugely high -- but it dipped or even crashed later in 2007

o competition from other island renters who give over full estate management perms -- ACS doesn't do that even if you "buy" the whole sim.

o competition from openspace sims that many end users buy themselves, no longer needed to rent.

o problems in getting cash moved into China, which offset having cheaper staff in China

I read the numbers differently.

I have always thought that land prices in SL are inflated.  It has to be the most expensive web hosting in the world (if not then it's up there).  That said, people are buying more land because land prices have been falling due to the open land initiative that dropped the price on water sims.

In a bubble you normally see the price of a scarce commodity skyrocket as more and more people want it.  Look at the land bubble in the US a few years ago:  Land prices went through the roof until people could no longer afford it, at which point the market collapsed under it's own weight (I'm simplifying because the credit crisis played a role in it, but which one caused the other is a long debate for another thread).

In SL the prices went down first and consumers picked up the slack by buying more land.  It looks as healthy to me as more people buying Coca-Cola if the price of it went down.  It's a good economy.  I still agree with RightAsRain that land prices are outrageous, though.

I have heard from some larger business owners that they have been hurting lately, and I don't know if that is related to this or not.  Perhaps people are spending more disposable income on land rather than anatomical parts, clothing and slave collars?