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Dec 19, 2000, 6:24pm

How can a bot tell the difference between a unique citizenship and multiple accounts? How can it tell if a world is paid for?

[View Quote] > Thought this might interest some people... Originally posted at http://members.boardhost.com/Xavarella/msg/5283.html
>
> Posted by Syzygy on 12/18/2000, 4:55 pm
>
> Someone asked me about the "numbers" that AWcom did not want the investors to see ... this is part of a msg from 2000-11-17:
> -------------------------------
> Here is the output from the two new bots I have written. They count the number of paying citizens and worlds ...
> ***
> 11470 of 33329 users are paying for citizenships.
> 964 of 2313 worlds are paid for by users.
> ***
> Criteria:
> 1) Expire date is not "never"
> 2) Expire date is later than "now" (not expired yet)
> 3) Owner e-mail does not contain "activeworlds.com"
> 4) "trial" not found in Comments (worlds only)
> -------------------------------
> I don't know about "millions" of users, but as of a month ago there were only 11,000 active (paying) Citizens, and less than 1,000 worlds generating revenue.
> AWcom has a Serious Problem with retaining their customer base ... but each year there's a fresh crop of newbies to pony-up 20 bucks for something "kewl", so who cares if they renew after their first year? It's like that acne cream ... it doesn't work, it never has, but there's always a new generation to sucker with the promise of a cure. :-)
>
> What's Really Bogus in AW's case is that they leave all of the property built by Citizens who expired over two years ago (like "elvis") and retain their names so that people will *think* that there is a higher population density ... there are objects in AW that have been around since 1995 that still show the owner's name, even though they are Long Gone.
>
> The "Official" reason for keeping all these names and objects is, "Just in case they come back a year later, see their stuff is still there, and they can renew their citizenship with their old name and number." As if! :-)
>
> Let's see, 11,000 paid citizens time $20 equals $220,000 in annual income (assume that new citizens offset the ones who don't renew after their first year) ... how many salaries (and how much rent) can they pay with that? No, I don't think they'd want the public investors to see those numbers!
>
> "Dead men tell no tales." That is, like, so Old Paradigm ... you can no longer just cover up Bad News by getting rid of the person who found the skeleton in the closet. :-)
>
> -=DAH=-

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