Tycharrific – Page 2 – Ciaran Laval

December 2, 2013

Private Estate Losses Are Slowing Down

The good news is that net private estate losses in Second Life are showing a quite significant slow down. The bad news is that the losses are still too high, as is the damn tier.

As it’s Monday and I’m lazy we’ll go back in time to December 9th 2012. Insert funny whirly time travel music now. On December 9th 2012 Tyche “Statto” Shepherd reported:

“A net loss of 33 regions this week with Private Estates down by 29 and Linden Owned by 4

Total number of Main Grid regions is now 28254 ( 21168 private estates & 7086 Linden owned)
29 new regions were added and 15 returned to the grid, with 78 regions removed (11 were renamed and 2 came and went since last report)

There were no significant Estate changes detected in what was a very quite week. The total net loss in private estates since January 1st this year is now 2689 , a decline of 11.3%”

Now fast forward to December 1st 2013 when Tyche reports:

“A net drop of 16 regions this week with Private estates down by 17 and Linden Owned up by 1

Total number of Main Grid regions is now 26403 ( 19424 private estates & 6979 Linden owned)
32 new regions were added and 8 returned to the grid, with 55 regions removed (14 were renamed and 1 came and went since last report)

Little changes in yet another quiet week , YTD private estate losses now 1568 (7.5%).”

The point Tyche makes about another quiet week is interesting because recent net losses for private estates have been 17, 8, 13 and 30 whereas around this time last year those losses were 56, 25, 56 and 23.

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August 5, 2013

Tyche Shepherd’s Private Estate Survey For July

Tyche Shepherd’s private estate survey for July brings home the decline in private regions due to two landmark figures being met. Private regions slipped below the 20,000 mark during July and estimated private region tier fell below the the USD$4,000,000 per month mark. Although it should be noted that Tyche’s estimates are +/- USD$50,000, so tier may be treading water above the USD$4,000,000 mark. However another point to note is that Tyche’s estimates do not include educational discounts, so it’s likely that tier has slipped below the USD$4,000,000 barrier.

Tyche estimates that tier from private regions now stands at USD$3,975,000 +/- USD$50,000, which is estimated to be down USD$53,000 on June. Again, please note the margins of error for these figures.

Having said that, this is still a healthy income stream, we’re far from having to man the lifeboats but as I have repeatedly said, Linden Lab need to get their thinking caps on, tier is still too much of a central plank of their income stream and the tier is too damn high.

The Top 10 Estates by number of regions held are:

RGF Estates Inc 5.1%
Azure Islands 3.4%
Zoha Islands 3.2%
Dreamseeker Estates 2.9%
Victoria Chung 2.7%
Weezles Real Estate (WRE) 2.4%
Miriam Chung 2.3%
Jessica Chung 2.3%
Fruit Islands Estate 1.7%
Lala Rentals 1.7%

There were no significant changes in the way the land lies for the large estate owners this month, all variations were within the margin of error. The top nine estates occupy the same nine positions they did last month, Lala Rentals has swapped places with Bell Estates, which drops to eleventh place on the list, but at 1.7% and 1.6% respectively, they could easily flip flop again, they are running pretty much neck and neck. A list of the top 20 estates is available on Tyche’s SLU post.

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July 21, 2013

Private Sims Drop Below 20,000 Mark

Whereas at one point in time, private regions dipping below the 20,000 mark looked inevitable, when it actually came to private regions dipping below the 20,000 mark, boy did they make a fight of it.

Last week’s loss of 20 private regions left them teetering on the brink at 20,006, but signs of a fight were on the cards then and this week, they fought like mad, by Thursday they had increased by 2, standing at 20,008, a day later on Friday another 5 had been added and private regions stood at 20,013. They had a bit of a swagger about them at this stage and were ready to collect on bets made that they would sink below thr 20k mark this week.

However they were dealt a body blow yesterday when they dropped to 20K, they were against the ropes, wobbling around the ring, the referee took a good long hard look to ensure they weren’t taking too much damage and then, today, they were hit with an uppercut as the scores on the doors from Tyche Shepherd revealed a weekly net loss of 9 private regions, meaning they now stand at 19,997.

This means they stand at their lowest level since June 28th 2008. However are there any positives from this, well there might be.

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July 6, 2013

Tyche Shepherd’s Awesome Mainland Census June 2013

All graphs/charts in the blog post are reproduced with the kind permission of Tyche Shepherd, they remain the copyright of Tyche Shepherd and should not be reproduced without Tyche’s permission.

Tyche “Statto” Shepherd’s mainland census for June 2013 is out, it can be read here at SLUniverse. This does not make pretty reading unfortunately and whereas it’s far from fatal, it does appear that mainland is wounded, far more than I realised. Some key points to take in when compared to the March 2013 Census:

Overall number of parcels down 2.2%.
Total number of Owners down 2.8%.
Individual Owners down 3.0%.
Total number of land holding groups down 1.6%.
Abandoned land up from 11.7% to 12.6% to a new record high of 13.4% to 14.2%.
Governor Linden owned land up 1.6%.
All Linden land holdings up 1.5% to 49%.
Land for sale down 35.8%.

The extremely worrying figures relate to the increased Linden Lab holdings, which at 49% amont to nearly half of all mainland, the increase in abandonded land and the significant drop in land for sale. Tyche reports that land is being abandoned faster than it is being sold and the fact that land prices are basically rock bottom explains why people would rather abandon that wait to sell, but even then, land at rock bottom prices simply isn’t moving.

An Image Should Be Here — Abandoned Land

Now if you squint and look at the above graph from a funny angle, you’ll be able to see how it represents an ongoing increase of abandoned land. Alternatively you can go to the SLUniverse link and look at the graph properly, all graphs will follow this pattern because I can’t squeeze them in nicely, but trust me, this bar chart shows an increase in abandoned land and it’s quite staggering. The increase of abandoned land over the last quarter is the the equivalent of 108 to 115 full regions.

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May 7, 2013

Tyche Shepherd’s Private Estate Survey For April 2013

Tyche “Statto” Shepherd has some really interesting reports going around right now and I think I’m going to have to poke her about using some of them, but the results of her private estate survey for April are in. As usual I won’t report all the findings, you can find them in the link. There isn’t anything eye catching in terms of changes in land holdings this month, the grid has shrunk and at a faster rate than in March but one interesting point to note is the change in class of Servers, there has been a leap, a rather significant one, in class 8 hardware.

Now remember this is a survey, not a census, so there are margins of error.

The key points I will highlight for this survey are:

Private Regions down 158 regions (0.8% since last month)
Total private regions now stand at 20,324
Estimated monthly tier income – US$4,091,000 +/- US$51,000 (Down around $45,000 or 1.1% on last month).
Top 20 landowners own 38.3% of private regions (Up 0.8% on last month).
Top 20 landowners pay 30.7% of private region tier (Up 0.4% on last month).

Nothing earth shattering in these figures, although the decline in private regions was higher during April at 0.8%, when compare to March where it was 0.3%.

Whereas the top 20 landowners holdings are up slightly, the Top 10 are down slightly, very slightly at 0.1%.

Continue reading “Tyche Shepherd’s Private Estate Survey For April 2013”