In an effort to upgrade the system that processes account credits, LL quietly announces that checks have been put on hold until next week.

How many of you will be adversely affected by this sudden announcement? Was there anything wrong with the old system that required this upgrade? Who would you like to see hung in effigy?

For those of you living under a rock as far as Second Life news is concerned, there's a new media firestorm about Second Life: Resident numbers. The smoking gun starts a grass fire as journalists scramble to acquire credibility by jumping onto the bandwagon of questioning numbers. Everyone loves a good scandal.

This begs the real question, though. The media circus is obfuscating a more important issue with the numbers.

Well, we're going to have our two millionth signup very soon. Either shortly before midnight SLT tonight (Wednesday) or in the early hours of Thursday. That's a million signups in ... what? 57 days? Sure, 90% of those people disappear before they've gotten through their first 90 days, but I've met (and still meet) some of the most amazing people.

Everywhere I go, I meet creative, talented, thoughtful, witty, kind or just plain interesting people. People I'd never have had the chance to meet otherwise. People I'd have been too scared to meet otherwise. Sure, these days there's just too many of you for me to ever catch up with, but at least I have the chance.

Sure, resources are stretched, everything's tumultuous, and we've got no idea where we're going...but would you rather be anywhere else? Obviously not - because you're still here.

[UPDATE]
The Guardian seems to have picked this one up. I'm not sure they realize that I'm responsible for both the predictions of which they speak.

As research had indicated that people were wary of signing over their credit card number in order to gain a free basic account, Linden Lab has made changes to the registration procedure in order to allow people to sign up for a basic account without anything other than an assertion of their age.

Experience has shown that people were far more likely to come in world and set up a new account if they weren't asked for financial information.

There has been a big increase in registrations, plus the usual philosophizing on the SL forums that the end of the world is nigh. Two big related questions which are avidly discussed, are the much higher chances that there will be underage players on the main grid, rather than on the teen grid, which is separate; and the likelihood that - as Surreal Farber postulated - we are going to be ass-deep in alts.

Alt characters are alternative avatars which someone already established in SL uses for a variety of reasons.  Some people have a professional avatar who builds, scripts, or holds events, and a private avatar who is for fun.  Some do it the other way around, and are well-known in their main avatar, and have a secret scripting avatar who is deliberately a Nobby No-mates in order for them to be able to script away in peace.

Once upon a time, when accounts were tied to credit cards, each credit card was limited to five, latterly three, accounts. Now that financial information has been separated, that limit has gone. It will be interesting to see how this affects the number of accounts which have been active in the previous 60 days, which is one of the new statistics provided on the website.