What subscriber numbers should Linden Labs be publishing?
This week fellow VTOR author Weirdharold posted an insightful piece about the uproar over the validity of Linden Labs reporting resident numbers. Check the comments section for writer Clay Shirky clarifying the three questions he’s most concerned about.
Just curious what numbers do you think Linden Labs should report?
I would like to see them report paid subscribers and paid tier level breakdowns. If they already do report these numbers somewhere, please provide a link to that information in the comments below. I’m sure it would be of interest to many people questioning the value of the total number of registered residents.
The paying subscribers are the numbers that actually relate to the bottom line. The number of alt avatar accounts impact the service for the rest of the people who are paying. If somebody has four avatars with $72/annual accounts that’s fine with me to count as four. I have two paid accounts so I’d count as two. If somebody else has one paid account and five free alt accounts, that should be counted as one.
It would also be interesting to see the number of people with more than one sim (I bet that percentage is well under 1% of all paid subscribers), one sim, and each tier level below one sim. As I noted recently, I went from $25/month tier down to the $8/month tier.
Linden Labs is already reporting the economic data, so why not share the member data? Competitive reasons, maybe? They would silence many of the number critics and appease the bean counters by sharing the numbers. I suspect they won’t however, because the paid subscriber numbers are not nearly as attractive as the total residents number which is pictured in this post. 2.3 million sounds much better than something in the high five digit, low six digit range.
It was only recently that SL hit the 20,000 concurrent online residents mark, notes Pathfinder Linden (emphasis mine):
Growth is often a double-edged sword. It is something to celebrate as any world grows and builds communities, allowing more people connect with each other and share hopes and dreams. But growth also poses challenges on how a community can scale, both in the technical and sociological aspects, and often involves some growing pains. I’m sorry for the current database issue, and please know we are working on it.
The fact that SL is having scaling problems when a mere 1% of the total residents is logged in concurrently should be eye-opening to everybody. What happens when 10% are logged in concurrently? Do we have the grid crashed for days, weeks? An apology is nice but doesn’t help business owners who lose revenue because the service is down.
What subscriber numbers do think should be reported?
January 5th, 2007 • 
TD Goodliffe • 
comment | January 5, 2007 at 16:49 | individual comment-link
Let me start this by saying that my account is still a free account and I consider myself an active member and contributor to Secondlife. True enough I am not allowed to own land that is held by Secondlife, but I have had a business and have accumulated in excess of 20,000 lindens in my acct. which goes up and down as I donate to worthy causes and live musicians etc. To house my business I have to rent land which I can get more and at a lower price than if I bought land from LL. I do miss out on the stipinds, so I have considered getting the yearly acct. but about the time I was going to they lowered them.
I am frequently in Secondlife and I buy a lot of products in Secondlife and I feel I am as much a “user” as any Paid member. With some of the customer service changes I have been reading and writing about I think maybe it will finally become time to pay for an account, but at the present time my feelings would be hurt not being counted. It isnot my fault that LL has never given enough incentive for me to pay for an account.
comment | January 5, 2007 at 19:08 | individual comment-link
Why report paid, current subscribers? (they do have this information public, though)
No one else reports those numbers.
Is it fair to compare 7 million beta-and-box-and-free vs 100,000 people paying for a plot?
comment | January 5, 2007 at 20:13 | individual comment-link
Where is that information available, Crissa? Link?
comment | January 5, 2007 at 22:40 | individual comment-link
TD, in the article I just posted “CNN reporter David Kirkpatrick furnishes Clay Shirky Second Life Numbers” there are links to that information http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy-graphs.php and even more Linden information at http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php I never knew it was there either… and Thank David Kirkpatrick for that information.
comment | January 5, 2007 at 23:40 | individual comment-link
I saw that, nice piece mon. Thanks for the links. Check out the quote from the Linden blog:
“The orange graph shows that the number of Premium Residents has grown from 5,000 at the start of 2005 to over 36,000 at the end of November 2006″
That’s how many are buying land via tier and is a long, long way from 2.3 million residents, isn’t it?
comment | January 7, 2007 at 18:07 | individual comment-link
Why are everyone so quick to ignore then “free accounts”? You think my free account is FREE? I buy L$ by the bucketful – and I rent a parcel of land from Anshe Chung for US$56 a month. I’m not exactly sure how many dollars that go straight to LL’s coffers, but it’s a hell of a lot more than a measly “paying” customer with first land and a weekly L$-allowance. I’m guessing I’m handing LL about US$40 a month – just via other people and businesses.
There’s only one reason to get a premium account: You want to buy land directly from LL, most likely entire sims. This is for land lords, not your average user. The sims are full of people on “free” accounts that pay a very great deal of money for their land. You should absolutely count free accounts!
AD
comment | January 7, 2007 at 20:03 | individual comment-link
Ariya – I’m not sure where you are getting “everybody” and this statement is wrong:
No, actually there is more than one reason. I bought two premium accounts because they pay for themselves as yearly accounts (with the grandfathered weekly stipend of L$500), not because I didn’t want to rent land from somebody else or to somebody else. I own land because it is equity and I can turn and sell it again, not because I want to move out and rent it to somebody else for a profit. In fact when I tiered down from $25/month to $8/month recently I sold the land beneath market value. You could have bought this land. It was available to anybody.
Land owners, especially sim owners tend to have more tools available them too, which makes owning your own sim even more desirable.
I am curious what the sense is in renting land from Anshe Chung or anybody else when you can buy it for yourself unless you want to rent land in a sim owned by her? Harold rents land and I think he rented land from Anshe at one time too. I have nothing against Anshe Chung (so please don’t make this about her) or any other land owner who makes money renting land to others, I just prefer to own rather than rent, both in the virtual world and real world, and I own much less than a total sim. You’re now paying more than twice what I paid for land almost every month in 2006
I recognize that “free accounts” can and do participate to the economic situation of the virtual world. They are represented in the economic stats Harold linked to above and absolutely do matter. I was looking at this more from the stats that Linden Lab provides to media and what subscriber numbers should they be actively providing the media. It definitely helps Linden Lab to hide behind some foggy total resident number, versus providing the number of people who actually are paying them something, anything.
Frankly, I don’t understand a willingness to pay $50/month for land but not have a premium account which can be had for $72 per year? Why not? You don’t want a weekly stipend? Don’t want to give Linden Lab any credit card information? Why not?
That’s not criticism toward you, AD, nor do I work for or have friends at Linden Lab, it simply curiosity on my part. Please explain when you get a second what the renter’s perspective is in a virtual world?
Maybe that would make a good post, Harold, explaining why you chose to rent instead of buy when all that equity — the placement — would belong to the landowner, not you. I remember a post from somebody in the past about this (maybe you?) Maybe I should just use the search.
pingback | January 13, 2007 at 08:58 | individual pingback-link
[...] While heavily debated and scrutinized, Second Life still managed impressive number growth in 2006, but let’s not forget the MMORPG they have their sights on: World of Warcraft, or to be acryonmic, simply WoW. And wow for WoW is right, they grew to over 8 million subscribers in a little over two years (original launch date: November 2004). See the breakdown from the official Blizzard press release: World of Warcraft has also achieved new regional subscriber milestones, with more than 2 million players in North America, more than 1.5 million players in Europe, and more than 3.5 million players in China. [...]