Coverage of news, issues and events occurring in virtual worlds or those who create those worlds
Second Life metrics to the end of December are now available and from an Australian perspective there’s been a significant drop in active users – 10,644 is the number cited, down from 11,982 in November and a long way under the fifteen thousand of mid-2007.
Australia maintains its position as 11th in terms of worldwide active users. Given there’s record concurrency (number of users online at the one time), why the sustained drop off in numbers?
Popularity: 2% [?]
Linden Lab has a long standing mantra of being as transparent as possible although over the past year this has been tested in the customer service area, with a number of changes undertaken with little consultation or notice. A small step back in the other direction has occurred with the announcement that customer service metrics will be released each month.
The metrics themselves are rudimentary but at least provide some ideas on service trends. It’d be nice to see statistics around abandon rates (how many people gave up waiting in queue on the phone) and number of support tickets were resolved rather than number of tickets submitted.
Credit for another step in transparency but it’s far from full transparency at this stage.
Popularity: 2% [?]
The November economic statistics are available and it shows an active Australian Second Life population of 11,982, a whole seven more the September figure of 11,975 (Linden Lab didn’t release anything for October until the update today).
Once again Australia remains in 11th place world-wide, which is 2.21% of the overall vatar count. Given that this time last year the population explosion was well under way, it’s fair to say that things are stagnating a little from the Australian perspective. The Xmas / New Year break may lead to some more sign-ups or we may end up with more of the same. Have we reached saturation point in Australia? I wouldn’t have thought so but the argument that it’s seasonal is getting tenuous given the period of time it’s been going on.
Update: New World Notes has an interesting discussion on the plateau phase Second Life has reached.
Popularity: 10% [?]
Linden Lab have released their service metrics for November. There’s been some improvement but overall performance remains a mixed bag.
Although there’s been an improvement over recent months, you can still expect a viewer crash one in five times – hardly a stable platform but at least one on the improve.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Whilst trawling around Linden Lab land metrics, it occurred to me that it’d be interesting to work out how much of Australia Second Life would take up.
As of the end of September 2007, the Second Life grid equated to 871.32 square kilometres of land. Australia is 7 682 300 square km, so all of Second Life makes up just over 0.001 precent of Australia. Tasmania is 68300 square kilometres so even though Second Life seems vast, we’re more a small city (roughly two Wagga Waggas) than a world in geographic terms. Funnily enough, Wagga has a population of nearly sixty thousand people – not much more than the number of people using Second Life in peak hours.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Linden Lab have released the metrics for September 2007 and there’s been a further significant decline in the number of Australians actively using Second Life.
The active Australian population is now cited as 11,975, down from the 13,567 reported last month and the 14.832 the month before that. Australia has stayed in 11th place overall for countries using Second Life.
That’s a really significant drop in Australians using SL actively. We seem to be heading back to below ten thousand if the trend continues.
Popularity: 6% [?]
Linden Lab have released the metrics for August 2007 and for the first time since we started monitoring Australians in Second Life, there’s been a decline.
The active Australian population is cited as 13,567, down from the 14,832 reported last month. Australia has stayed in 11th place overall for countries using Second Life. According to New World Notes, Australia comes in fourth as far as active residents in proportion to country population.
Has SL reached its saturation point in SL? I’d think not, although until there’s a new reason for Australians to hear about SL such as a new corporate presence or other major event, I can’t see any great increase in numbers occurring.
Popularity: 5% [?]
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