The Second Life Census

The only point of weakness is online users at any given time

This is a classic example of QUALITY of users - versus QUANTITY of users

this concept appeals to a very limited by very intelligent few

People without Excel can find it available on Google Spreadsheets at http://spreadsheets.google.com.....&gid=1

I just get so damn bored walking around second life. That needs to change.

I explored the second life world for a week to try and understand the hype. If Linden make money from this then I can only applaud their ingenuity. It is appears to be like a glorified chat room, that offers nothing of any substance. Maybe the opportunity to interact in a fantasy world has enough appeal for some to pay out their dollars and euros. To me it seems like money for nothing.

i can’t really comment on this - ’cause i don’t use SL

but from my understanding about this virtual ‘real’ world, although it’s growing in numbers - those numbers are just from the existing computer gaming demographic - not from mainstream america

the only reason it’s getting some tech news coverage is because real companies are posting their logos on this virtual world for the gamers’ to see - and that spin of buying/selling virtual goods with real cash - but again, this is from the video game demographic - not mainstream america

i’m not that impressed

from a marketing perspective i place zero value/appeal on the SL demographic - could be useful stats for the samaritans, dating agencies or rehab clinics, however.

We’ve been researching Second Life and other virtual worlds for a year or so now, it is good that the stats have been released as there is a lot of uncertainty about SL’s real position.

The key as you say is that number of online users at any time, as visitors by and large pay no money - and that has not grown nearly as sharply as the headline numbers.

Our own research points to SL probably being too complex for the mainstream, but virtual worlds overall having a very positive growth potential - so we predict that less complex virtual worlds will probably be where the mass market is.

We’ve blogged a bit on our work, the thread is over here

@ Michael and Alan

I think being bored has to do with the whole concept being too open for the majority of users. But it must be possible to get a good mix of complex and straightforward. What would like to see first to accomplish that?

The information I am curious about is not included in the spreadsheet directly. They define an active ‘resident’ as an avatar that was logged in for more than one hour in the previous month. There is a page in the spreadsheet with geographic distribution following that definition, but the absolute figures for this definition are not disclosed.

what i dont understand is why second life has more press than world of warcraft. there are more social happenning in wow, more commercial opportunities, etc.

Yeah, I tried it out and it was pretty boring. I certainly wouldn’t pay for anything outside of my first life.

As an active SL participant, I still don’t get the virtual sex part. I can only imagine what one is doing in RL.

I like to gamble, check out the classes and discussions. But it can be boring,
WOW is sooo much better.

I agree with Heri, what’s the big deal?

Beyond SL being a good concept, it’s slow/jerky, terrible low resolution graphics and the user experience with all of that lag is terrible. World Of Warcraft (although a different beast) as a virtual world gives people a chance to see what can really happen when you build a compelling experience..

I joined myself sometime ago, logged in, walked around for 15 minutes or so, deleted my account…. I remember having better graphics on my Commodore 64. Nothing more than a chat client with a graphical interface, and a poorly executed one at that.

For the companies that have opened up virtual locations on SL that think that this is slick marketing…. lame, totally lame and you should fire your entire marketing department..

Go ahead and try SL for yourself — You’ll be shaking your head too..

“this concept appeals to a very limited by very intelligent few”

… or conversely perhaps it appeals to a very limited number of people who are so incredibly socially inept, that they’re forced to live a “life” online.

It’s a possibility you know.

I worry that as a society we are becoming increasingly disconnected from face to face conversations and interactions.

Technology is a great thing but there needs to be a balance.

I suspect many people are just like me. Their computers are too sh*tty to poke around SL. Tell me that doesn’t hurt their numbers. Gradually, as folks upgrade their systems, more and more people will at least be able to play in SL if they so desire.

this huge mound of skepticism expressed in these comments from the geek set is surely bullish for this sl. perhaps u codgers just dont get it…

Have you see First Life?

http://www.getafirstlife.com/

(Not my site, just think it is really funny)

2 millions second life users … does it means 2 millions people not satisfied with their first life ?

@12 Lucy — wow is better, but you can’t really call it a ’second life’ — its a game, a mmorpg, and as a previous wow player I can say its more of an addiction — an unhealthy one at that. But damn it was it fun.

And wow > second life in terms of revenue, 6+million subscribers x $15 USD per month is much greater than $670,000 USD per month. Its a testament to just how good Blizzard is by creating virtual ’second lives’ through their games. From Starcraft, especially Diablo II, and now WoW…

If you’ve ever played those games, you’ll see that absurd trend, and just how much bank Vivendi makes.

Second Life has a lot of promise, but either the scripting is too hard, or people aren’t making use of it.

So far we’ve seen a lot of designed products (leading to stores, showrooms, and so on). But aside from Slingo, there’s not much in the way of games and interactive activities.

You can dance (pick an option from a menu), watch a movie (sit passively), and chat. Where are the adventure games? The role-playing?

The platform’s there. I think SL has to hire some developers to actually make neat scripted content to showcase what it can do.

@Josh,

My computer isn’t shitty, and SL still performs less than acceptably, at least compared to a random smattering of other online and 3d-heavy programs.

I did some analysis on the spreadsheet (simple stuff) and it sorta shows that my predictions for 2007 where SL population will reach 7 million is very realizeable.

I go on Second Life from time to time. Through my observations, the only appeal I have seen of it is through user created content in-world.

The other half is a glorified sex chatroom, similar to how Yahoo Chat is. The sex industry is rampant there. So there are many alts running around, seeking cybersex from eachother. How money plays here is through escort services, and user created content that adds towards the sexual experience there. And the creators i gather make some decent money through that in Real Life. If they don’t, then i don’t know why they even bother.

Other than that, that’s all Second Life is. It’s not this Hippy Utopia that Linden Labs makes it out to be.

There’s an interesting artistic side of it that I can appreciate through. Some of the content i find is rather creative.

Mike — u mentioned you get “so damn bored walking around” SL. You also mentioned that the numbers of inworld SLers is remaining constant - that’s because of client/server issues — there are severe limits on the numbers of people that can be in one place at any given time.

There is light at the end of this tunnel - Yoick is working hard on releasing a 3D persistent world platform later this year in which you can have as many of your own worlds as you want with any terrain you want, you can drag and drop any items into your world and share it with others, you can invite a few friends over to watch and chat about a movie or you can hold a virtual concert with many thousands of folk visiting. You’ll never get bored or feel isolated

How do we do this — over three years of smarts in peer to peer and building gaming engines applied into a social media context. Free to use, with premium subs - users get to acquire, make and sell content - think of Skype meets Second Life meets MySpace/Cyworld.

More later…

As Randal mentioned, the number of users in-world at any given time is low not because of lack of interested users.. it’s because above about 30K the servers start to fail, and they start having what they call “database load” issues. As he also suggested, there are limits on the amount of people that can be in one area at a time (about 40), and when it is full like that it is ridiculously slow. You can’t walk around without bumping into people/overshooting, items take forever to download, and just adjusting your camera can send SL, and your computer, into a tailspin.
I think before they do anything else they need to worry about this… I guess the issue is that going from a little over 100K users to 3.1 million in a couple months is ridiculous growth, and any company could potentially buckle under the pressure.
That said, there are no real competitors at this point, so they have a huge advantage. If they can do this right, they can be the standard in ‘virtual worlds’ for a long time… however, if they continue not fixing things that are essential to growth and user satisfaction, someone could swoop in and take over. I know many ‘residents’ who would be more than happy for an alternative to SL…myself included.

Interesting statistics. I wonder whether Second Life will be the next boom or bust?

it has hit where the humans are to be.Having a second life is an incredible idea.It gives eveyr human to be what he wants to be.

@ David Mackey: Even i am waiting for it.People get bored of the same thing and its need to freshen up by changing the strategy.

@Randal: The will be an incredible idea of connecting them together.This will not only give a change but also new race of users popping in to create a different enviromnet

We should adopt a considerably more skeptical attitude about Second Life…

Mike, I think you’re mistaken about the number of islands in SL: not 258 islands, but 258.08 square kilometers of islands, or 3938 islands. (Each island is a square 256m on a side, or 0.065536 square km.)

While Second Life is growing, it does not really represent commercial marketing opportunities inside of the world, unless you consider the opportunity to make a press release an acceptable return on investment.

For instance, take the in-world concerts that have taken place in Second Life, such as Suzanne Vega’s. No more than about fifty people can attend one simultaneously, because neither SL’s server nor its client technology can handle it. Just how valuable is it to have 50 people at your concert?

Go look at the corporate installations in Second Life. They’re empty. Toyota, Wells Fargo, etc, get almost zero value aside from a press release for their investment. The only people profiting are Second Life and the hanger-on content creation companies like Electric Sheep and Millions of Us.

And yes, Second Life has released a lot of stats. They’ve very carefully avoided releasing “total active users” as defined by a reasonable metric (non-duplicative accounts that have logged in within the past 2 weeks AND have accumulated more than 3 hours of total in-world time). They avoid releasing this stat, presumably, because it’s not nearly as impressive as trumpeting “3 million registered users,” meaningless though that stat is.

The low (by comparison with claimed) true interest in Second Life can be easily assessed by looking at their simultaneous user count. By comparison, World of Warcraft and Runescape both have a magnitude higher simultaneous user counts for good reasons: They both have far, far, far more real users.
–matt

We have put up a review and comparison of statistics between SecondLife and other online game communities a few weeks ago.

It is at :
http://www.duvet-dayz.com/archives/2006/12/29/251/

and shows that compared to other SecondLife is very small…

Fully agreed if they don’t get the concurrent user numbers up the hype will collapse sooner or later.

[disclaimer - bad english follows]

I think that an half of the people pushing here negative comments didn’t give SL enough attention - I mean that according to what they are saying I think they didn’t stay enough time in-world, or didn’t search enough.
For sure, this could be due to two understandable causes: lacking of time, and poor working of the Search feature of the SL system. Most “Popular Places” (sort of “Top SL sites”, showing up in the Search feature) are really boring, or worst.

Note also that the more people are in the same SL zone, the slower that zone becomes.

About WoW and similars, assuming that SL is competing with them is missing the point. I’m not saying here that it’s better, but SL is not a game - or, if you prefer, SL doesn’t share the same target than Wow and similars.

Oh, last but not least, you really do not need to pay anything to give a full try to Second Life (with a free account you can’t own land, but you can easily earn enough virtual currency to rent a small land for some time).