SLX ... still falling

As many have surly fallowed the current struggles with the announcmant of the SLX policy change by LL, as described in previous blogposts, I decided to share some data on the subject I have collected over the last week. So far, there was a visible drop in listings, but how much it was, was mostly guess work and in many cases either blown bigger or minimized by those who have been on one of the sides of the pro and contra fight that is cluttering up the forums. There are some very valid points made like:

https://blogs.secondlife.com/thread/5585

That sums up the impact free items can have on profitable bisness. Also shown in later posts and answers the original author makes towards those, who attack his opinion. To be honest reading this blog .. just like I have read many others in the past weeks ... I have noticed, that while people are fully able to profit on a platform like SL, they are, in a large part, unable to see new opprtunities or to expand their activites bexond what they have done before. The only answer seem to be 'price control'! And this is something that any free market theoretist would scream about first. Calling people communist (in the negative sense of this word) and calling for price ocntrols in the same time doesn't add up at all. Someone wants a free market then they should deal with it and find ways to profit form it. The good thing is, that the SL free market isn't a mirror of the RL one since most of us have seen first hand what uncontrolled markets can do to the lives of millions of people around the globe. And I am not talking about the recent economic crisis. More about the last decades of mindless envoiramental abuse.

However, back to SLX and the data I have promised at the beginning of my post.

On the 21. November I have decided to write down the numbers of listings in three categories. It might have been a better idea to write them all down, but I have selected those three as they seem to be those with not only a big number of listings, but also those that would mirror the overall situation of SLX the best. Mostly, because those see the most general traffic of people not looking for specialised items. In other words, I wanted to see the mainstream market.

                                             21.11               26.11              04.12

Avatar Accessories      143726               140114            136154

Avatar Apperance          77331                 75308              72117

Apparel                         379637               366892            355912

So the Avi Accessories category lost 7572 items over those 8 days, what would mean 946 Items a day. In Avi apperance the decline was 5214 with a daily loss of around 652 items and Apparel lost 23725 with 2966 Items a day.

The daily loss in the categories has not been constant over this time and varried gratly form just 200 to over one thousand in a single day. The Apparel section however always had the biggest decline with a observed daily loss of 3000 listings. The number of avarge loss per day here seem to trully give the real daily decline.

SLX is still the number one compared with the other sites, but the loss in traffic on SLX is a gain in traffic there. And I still fail to see how less choice on a market and higher prices is a benefit to customers. Really ... LL needs some basic buisness lessons or has another agenda that differy form their announcmants. I guess that in this point of time there is nothing too low that people would not think LL being capable and willing to do.