Is Linden Lab making a Bad Situation Worse?

The Sergal Lounge & Underground Club: traffic numbers have dropped 30-40%

You know, friends will tell you that I am basically a sunny and bright sort of person. I’m all for good news, and I like to promote good news on the Prim Perfect blog.  So it is with some frustration that I need to draw your attention to yet another Jira describing a problem on Second Life.  And yet again, although it has been up for several days and generated a good number of votes and watchers (remember watching is the most important thing – I explain why here), there has been no response from Linden Lab.

Essentially, what has happened is that traffic figures have suddenly dropped, for no apparent reason and with no explanation from Linden Lab.

Traffic figures may not mean much to ordinary Second Life residents, but they are very important to merchants and estate owners.  When merchants are looking to rent land for their stores, they look (or should be looking) very carefully at the traffic figures that appear on the About Land tab.  After all, no-one wants to rent land in a place which gets very few visitors.  You’ll be looking for land in a high traffic area.  And so if traffic numbers suddenly dip from what you have been seeing, then you’ll not want to put your store there.

Sweethearts Jazz Club: It's crowded even at 7am, but "official" traffic numbers have dropped by over 50%

Obviously, this does tie in with the problem I looked at in my post on Is the Marketplace killing the Mall? In that post, I was looking particularly at malls associated with role playing areas, and seeing a sharp decline (which also seems to be taking some roleplaying sims out of commission altogether.

However, Prokovy Neva pointed out (in comments to his post Why SLM in the Client May Not Harm Inworld Stores) that I had overlooked one type of mall – the ones that you’ll find around any large club – such as Phat Cats.  These will often sell clothes, skins, hair, AOs … the sort of things you need to look good in a club.  And Prok said that these didn’t seem to be taking much of a hit at all, unlike the roleplaying malls.  I suggested a reason for that:

I was thinking about why they might be in a stronger position, and I think it’s to do with attention spans. It’s great to go to a concert and listen to the music, but often you’ll want to do something more than sit (or dance) and listen. So you’ll start camming around and finding the stores. You’re much less likely to do that while roleplaying. Even if the market is on your level (rather than on a skyplatform where you enter, as many are) taking your attention from what’s going on to cam into stores might be seen as rude and, in some games, might be fatal!

So, even with the problems of the marketplace taking trade away from malls, the club and music venue owners were still doing all right.  But now they’ve been hit – by the sudden drop in traffic numbers or – more likely – by the change in the way traffic is calculated.  Because the club owners aren’t seeing any change in numbers present.  If they run independent, back-up counters on their sims, they are still seeing the same footfall and figures suggest that the same number of people are coming into Second Life.  It’s all there in the comments on the Jira.

Let’s be absolutely clear on this: the club and parcel owners are NOT seeing any change in visitor patterns. What they ARE seeing is a drop in the reported traffic figures from the Lab.

Hotlanta Blues Club! Traffic numbers are "at around 16% of normal traffic in Places search"

Setting traffic figures is one of the Dark Arts of Marketing – and the key word there is “Arts”.  It is not a science.  The way traffic is calculated is not a fixed thing – it can change over time.  The club owners and landowners know this.  Say Linden Lab put out a notice saying, “Hey, guys, we’ve decided to change the way we calculate traffic.  This might mean you see a dip in numbers – but don’t worry; it’s going to affect everyone the same, so everyone will need to adjust.”  Well, there would certainly be some screaming at the pain, but people would understand and, over time, make the necessary adjustments.

What makes this a problem is that – once again – there is no advance warning or alternatively, no Linden Lab employee jumping on to the Jira to say, “Whoops – this was a mistake; hold on and we’ll get it fixed asap” as happened when there was an error which meant that the meaningless display names were recorded in transaction history rather than the fixed user names (which suddenly meant that all merchant records became largely useless). That was a mistake, and it was quickly fixed – although perhaps one could make recommendations that key changes in code are not installed at the end of the working day so that the rest of the world takes a hit before the West Coast awakes to be greeted by the howls of pain that have followed the timezones.

The very fact that there has been no Linden Lab employee responding on the Jira does suggest that the change is a deliberate one.  But then, why no advance warning?  Did they not see the impact this would have?  Or that, without any notification, there would be confusion and (perhaps unnecessary) financial disruption?

Big Daddy's 80s Club: traffic reported markedly lower after the change

People can adjust business plans; they can come up with new business models.  But when they operate in a condition of institutional uncertainty, the economy stagnates.  And when that happens, we all lose – as we’re seeing in the real world.

How can Linden Lab address this?

I would like to think that they have some knowledge of their world, and so can perceive where the bumps in the road are.  Failing that, I’d hope they would have go-to people, some rational, level headed people who are committed to the world, maybe not in terms of huge financial outlay, but in terms of sustained study of the world.  Of course, there aren’t going to be any truly objective people; everyone will have their own slant that will give an element of subjectivity.  But people who are fully engaged with living or working in the environment will certainly have a perspective on what is likely to have an impact on the grid; what needs to be announced in advance, and what can be added without prior notice.

Does this happen? Maybe it does.  But from the fuzzy end of the lollipop, it doesn’t feel like it’s happening that much.  And certainly not in regard to the really important economic changes that are happening.

The Jira, as I’ve said before, is the main form of official communication the residents have open with the Lab (apart from Rod-bothering on Twitter, which should NOT be the way to get things done).  So let’s hope we get a response soon.