Tyche “Statto” Shepherd, who was recently interviewed by Hamlet Au over at New World Notes, has unveiled her latest work in the shape and form of her March Mainland Census, which you can read in full over at SLUniverse by clicking here.
The census tells us that mainland regions have stabilised since December and remain at 6,723, this is still a record figure but it’s the same figure from the December census. This figure excludes Linden owned regions such as help islands and Linden realms, which in themself amount to a figure of around 500.
The census reveals good and bad news, the good news is that ownership of parcels is up, by 0.2%, this means that more unique avatars own land than the previous census. The figures Tyche gives us reveal that this amounts to 68,485 unique owners, with individual parcel owners at 56,660, up 163 from December’s census, whereas 12,825 groups own land, down 14 since December.
However on the bad news side, abandoned land is now at record levels, of between 7.2 – 8.3% of mainland abandoned. Tyche informs us that this is an equivalent of 484 to 557 full regions, which is rather shocking when you think about it but I’m not sure what Linden Lab can do about that, moving people would cause chaos and mayhem and have people searching for their pitchforks left, right and centre! The increase in abandoned land since December is estimated by Tyche to be the equivalent of 27-30 regions.
The top three land owning accounts by area are all Linden accounts, with the mysterious Governor Linden owning 36.3% of mainland, a rise of 0.7% since December. The LDPW have also increased their holdings since December, up 1.3% to 5.6% and third is the Blake Sea Group.
Now before you recoil in horror at the amount of land Governor Linden owns, that’s not all abandoned land, there are plenty of oceans and areas owned by Governor Linden that people use, the LDPW of course own the roads, so it looks as if they’ve been busy since December with their work, these are positives.
The largest non-Linden land holding group owns 0.3% of mainland, which is still a whopping 1,299,936 Sqm!
Mainland for sale accounts for 6.0% of mainland, down 0.1% since December.
Linden Homes have not added anymore regions, there are still 1,158 regions, this is 17.2% of mainland, but they have attracted more unique customers, which is a good sign as it suggests that maybe there’s an increase in Premium Members. Linden Home parcels number 42,642, with 39,910 occupied, this is an increase of 1,081 occupied plots, up 2.8% since December and bringing the occupation percentage to 93.6%.
When it comes to Tier estimates, the figure is down slightly, with Tyche estimating that tier is a very impressive US$1,000,871 a month, however this is a drop of 0.7% on December, or US$7,125. However if we are seeing more Premium Members that would help to make that figure less of a concern, it’s not a massive concern anyway.
Overall the picture for Mainland does look quite stable, unlike Private Estates where the figures are worrying. This can suggest any number of things, perhaps the tier model on mainland is more appealing to customers, I’d certainly enjoy Mainland tier rates for my estate sims a lot more than I enjoy estate tier rates that’s for sure!
I really do recomment you go and read Tyche’s full census, there are graphs, more stats than you can shake a stick at, far more than I have time to include here anyway and it’s always good to follow Tyche, as I said at the start, you can read the full census by clicking here.
Gah
You beat me to it. May still blog on Mainland from a different perspective, however 🙂
All I will say that I have noticed a sudden and upward trend in Linden home occupation around me. When I obtained my home in … October? I was lucky to have one other resident ping-up on my region or the ones bordering it. Today, it’s very rare for me to drop in on the place and not find a dozen (often more) green dots on the map of those regions around me.
Given Rod Humble has intimated not only a further upswing in daily sign-up over the holiday period, he’s pointing to new users running at around 40% – so it could be many are opting for Premium from the outset…
Interesting times.
It’s a shame we don’t have stats on premium numbers anymore, it would be interesting to see if they are increasing.
You should definitely blog about it, possibly when the Grand Prix is on!
You can have up to 62% of mainland owned by the governer before it becomes less profitable than estate land ratio-wise.
http://catnapkitty.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/mainland-versus-estate-which-is-the-better-bang-for-your-buck-to-linden-lab/
So the boost to premiums and mainlanders is a very good thing for the health of SL communities – though its less of a good thing for access to more themed regions to explore.
Pretty surprising to me just how many linden home regions are out there. if its 17% of mainland, that means they’ve more or less added 1.5 full continents of sims full of these things.
The growth in mole land is curious. I wonder where they went from 1.3% to 5.6%? New roads and such and gains like that mean land taken out of other circulation, or land on brand new sims. Mainland hasn’t grown in number of sims in a long timer outside of linden homes. For the total number of mole builds to grow to 4-times what it was only a few months ago is a -MASSIVE- gain. More than could be explained by even all of the roads on the linden home sims.
– so what is this mole land?
The tier figure shows another reason why the shift to mainland is good for SL. 1 million a month. I make up about $100 of that – I’ve got way too much land. I’m so insignificant a flea on a dog’s back matters more.
– And that’s good for SL. The more it is about mainland, the less it is hostage to the whims of picky large-scale customers.
But it also means, the more it can become driven by policy and the whims of LL coders, and less about us…
Once we reach a point where none of us has any real influence in the lab policy, community could go very south if by that time they have not yet learned their lesson… We could go into a bubble of good times, suddenly burst by the lab going ‘whackadoodle’ at us.