Comments on: How Much Is Second Life Worth?

By: Virtual Paris 2007 » L’invasion des nouvelles plateformes sociales

Virtual Paris 2007 » L’invasion des nouvelles plateformes sociales — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 15:04:46 +0000

[...] que Facebook était valorisé à près de 15 milliards de $ ? Et saviez-vous que certain estime la valorisation de Second Life à près d’1 milliard de $ ? Oui bien sûr que vous le [...]

By: WindLight in Second Life & Habbo Furniture Stolen, What’s Next…? | Mark & Madeline

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 08:37:39 +0000

[...] and ensuring that it has at least two posts, how else can we do so but by turning our attention to TechCrunch and their recent article that questions the value of Second life, which is presently estimated to [...]

By: Ann Otoole

Ann Otoole — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 13:56:39 +0000

serious investors, including current shareholders, should pay attention to the secondlife blog (blog.secondlife.com) where the truth about the falsely elevated concurrency is coming out pretty strong in response to an incredibly bad job of an attempt to introduce improved search functionality in secondlife. we can now expect to see an explosion in registered accounts that never log on after the first time when the “inbound links” are set up on the bogus account to falsely inflate what Linden research calls “inbound links” and even more false concurrency via the use of “bots” to park zombies on parcels to increase traffic in an effort to falsely boost “traffic” (popularity). Tech savvy investors can see right through this veil. existing shareholders should move to put in place serious business leadership with real ethics and common sense and relegate the geeks to the back room to code where they belong.

By: Prokofy Neva

Prokofy Neva — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 04:11:54 +0000

Was it to IBM?

Also, Lindens have been visiting the Googleplex lately and Google has a last name in the People list now.

By: economic mip

economic mip — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 04:23:59 +0000

Heh well someone mentioned Zimbabwean dollars, my area of expertise. Also if you are offering A US buck for a mere 30,000 ZWD let me know, I can get you all you want (since the real exchange rate today is 1.3 million Zimbabwean dollars per US).

As for Second Life worth, I have no idea. It could be profitable, someday, maybe. The Havok 4 beta test seems to be going smoothly, but like voice it is anyone’s guess if that will work when released into the main world.

Second Life of course has many problems, (robotic players who make up 10% of online people, places with Jim Crow laws and racism such as Gossip Girls, too complicated interface, minimal tech support, absurdly high system requirements which are going up all the time, huge empty land masses, little moderation of activities).

By: greggman

greggman — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 01:23:15 +0000

SL seems like complete BS to me. I work in the video game industry. I know THOUSANDS of people that play games. Not ONE of them plays second life. In my entire experience in the video game industry I have never met anyone that plays second life.

I’m sure some SL player or SL rep will come here and tell me otherwise like how maybe SL doesn’ t attact video game players or whatever but I don’t buy it. It serious seems like a giant lie perpetrated by some amazing PR. Given the size of my contacts and there should be some overlap between people to play video games, people to play online video games and people who player SL. There is plenty of overlap between people that play offline video games and people that play online video games and so there should be some SL overlap as well and yet there is NONE, ZERO, NADA, ZILCH. That means something is seriously fishy

By: Moe Glitz

Moe Glitz — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 10:58:06 +0000

Why waste your First Life playing with your Second Life.

Anyway loved the comments about Web 10.0 & Web 20.0.
Jesus where did time fly. I will take any Web Number Point, just as long as it is not Web Google.0

By: The Grid Live

The Grid Live — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 07:37:20 +0000

Second Life News for November 6, 2007…

Rolling Restart - Tuesday, Nov. 6th Linden Labs will be upgrading the server systems making up Second Life on Tuesday, November 6th. This update has a number of bug fixes and some new functionality.
Changes:
llGiveMoney() will now be throttled to limit…

By: EmpireOfLight

EmpireOfLight — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 05:13:48 +0000

I wonder if NBC Office has pumped up 2nd life value

By: Blackball

Blackball — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 20:50:44 +0000

Second Life should be renamed “Still Live” - there’s nobody there but advertisers.

Second(ly), didn’t open chat forums die in web 0.8…?

By: chrisco

chrisco — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 15:57:44 +0000

I think SL will be the Friendster of virtual worlds… there first, helped create and educate the market, but then passed by. -chrisco

By: Dirk Singer

Dirk Singer — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 14:42:35 +0000

Matt: Yes, the 10.5 (not million figure is misleading as it masks people who registered but never took part, as well as people with a second avatar. But for the 1.5 million who came in over the past two months and the 600,000 regular users, it’s much more than a “drive by.”

In fact, Nielsen stats showed that SL has the highest levels of stickiness of any social networking site or app.

To me as a marketer, these are consumers who spend less time watching TV and I have to think of new ways of engaging them as a result.

I do agree that SL underperforms given the acres of free publicity it has received over the past year. Orientation is cumbersome and the system is not as scaleable or stable as it should be.

But the potential is absolutely huge. Just to give one example, the corporate market is largely untapped. Cisco and IBM use it partially as a replacement for the video conference and there’s a lot more scope in that direction. Recruiters are also starting to host job fairs on SL - a lot cheaper than setting up in an exhibition hall and potentially a better way to sift out candidates at first stage.

So SL is ripe for purchase. The $5 billion valuation takes into account that if a major internet or media giant were to take over and to iron out some of the problems that exist, this thing could really take off and meet some of the expectations that have been raised around it.

By: Dirk Singer

Dirk Singer — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 14:33:37 +0000

Matt: Yes, the 10.5 (not million figure is misleading as it masks people who registered but never took part, and people with dual avatars. But for the 1.5 million who came in over the past two months and the 600,000 odd who come in pretty much every day, it’s much more than a “drive by.”

In fact, the daily users spend around 90 minutes a day there and Nielsen stats here in the UK showed that SL has the highest levels of stickiness of any social networking site or app.

To me as a marketer, that’s time spent away from the TV and I have to engage these consumers in their medium (sadly, a lot of brands still see SL as free advertising and get it catastrophically wrong).

I agree that SL underperforms given the acres of free publicity its received over the past year. Orientation is cumbersome and the system is not as scaleable or stable as it should be.

But the potential is absolutely huge. Someone here asked why Google doesn’t buy them and integrate the system with the Google maps techology. Once a major internet or media corp buys them up

By: Steve Ballmer

Steve Ballmer — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 02:20:13 +0000

These people should get A LIFE not this crap!

http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 00:54:08 +0000

Second Life certainly does not have 6 million users as one commenter said above. They have a few hundred thousand active users. Someone who downloaded the client once and never came back (the vast majority of that touted ‘8 million residents’) is no different from someone who used a website once and never returned. That’s not a user. That’s a drive-by.

SL’s business model is almost entirely around land rentals which makes it, as someone else noted, fundamentally an ISP since land rentals explicitly = CPU power.

–matt

By: Bobby

Bobby — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 00:47:35 +0000

Wonder what that 10% represents:

1) 10% of their Catamount’s holdings (i.e. if they own 2m shares that is 200k shares which could be 2% of the company)

2) 10% of the Company (i.e. if they own 2M shares which is represented in 20% of the company and now have sold 10% of the company equals 1M shares sold for a 10% stake which really is 50% sales of their holdings)

–assuming there is 10M fully diluted shares for easy math—-

Also, ah, I believe that Catamount closed a new round earlier this year. So, it may makes sense why they sold…. boost the IRR (internal rate of return) to show the limited partners…..could it be that they are very sly?

btw - quite surprised that TechCrunch has not picked up on the story about LightSpeed Ventures and their limited partners regarding the distribution of Riverbed stock. Quite fascinating!!!!!

By: bob le bobo

bob le bobo — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 00:42:04 +0000

Lets be honest, second life is a huge fraud and a huge scam. The only people that go there are 99.99% Furries, hipsters and journalists and 0.00000001 % who try to do something with this shitty buggy app.
Its funny how only journalists say SL is great, and when i tried it or all the people i know who tried it left after 10 minutes.

Money and manpower would be better on other projects…

By: Don

Don — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 23:27:24 +0000

SL can sell for something simply because there’s so many “idiots” out there. Using the quotes for idiots because if they manage to see value in it and since their opinion also counts, give a point or two to them for that, so, not exactly idiots.

By: Joel Greenberg

Joel Greenberg — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 23:11:20 +0000

Linden Lab really does not make money on advertising. If you think they do, then I can see why you’re struggling to understand their business model. LL’s main revenue source is virtual real estate. It’s a very simple model to understand. If you’re a techie, then they’re an ISP. If you’re not, then they’re a real estate company with one unique attribute: they create the land they sell.

So, the issue isn’t whether or no they have a viable business model; it’s whether or not you think the price has some realistic link to their value.

By: mikvahtalk

mikvahtalk — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 22:37:29 +0000

To me SL is the most overrated website around. I’m not saying it doesn’t have any value, for the 20,000 or so people that actually use the service, but the value is very small.

What I think SL should do is create some kind of Virtual reality device that meshes with their system.

Until that time it is just a lame video game.

By: lawrence

lawrence — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 22:18:10 +0000

just like they say in wallstreet…valuation is objective, and a whole lot subjective

By: rick

rick — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 22:05:32 +0000

20 bucks, tops

By: Charlie

Charlie — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 21:54:23 +0000

It’ll be worth nothing when Google launches OpenVirtual.

By: ArminasX

ArminasX — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 21:53:57 +0000

Hey No Surprise - maybe Linden Lab has trouble with their business model, but from within Second Life my virtual business is doing just fine. Linden will do fine as long as the in-world businesses thrive - and that requires imagination and persistence on the part of the virtual business owners, just like any real-world business. Second Life’s valuation should be based on the “Gross Virtual Product” and not on advertising, which simply does not work in Second Life.

By: Ed

Ed — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 21:53:25 +0000

I prefer getting me a real woman (and some real action) for much less than any of that.