3pointD.com

According to a recent post on the official blog of Linden Lab, makers of the virtual world of Second Life, the company is again reducing the weekly stipend that premium users receive just for having an account. (The reduction only applies to accounts created after November 1; current premium accounts are unaffected.) The reduction is an attempt to control the growing money supply in Second Life, which seems to lead not so much to inflation but rather to constant downward pressure on the L$-US$ exchange rate. Resident reaction has been mixed, but stipend adjustments are one of LL’s only tools for managing the economy. As the number of registered users continues to grow, rapidly approaching a million, the company is more or less forced to continue to add new land (i.e., new servers) to the grid, or risk a situation in which the platform cannot support all of its users. But gauging the state of the SL economy remains difficult. While LL has taken to releasing more economic data in recent months, much of its figures are still vague as to methodology, and several important metrics continue to go missing.