Eye on the Blog: Group Limit Extended to Sixty for Premium Accounts

Late last week on May 28, Linden Lab announced they were expanding the number of groups for premium accounts. The new limit for these has gone from 42, which remains the limit for normal accounts, to sixty.

Today we’re thrilled to be rolling out another perk for Premium members: now you can be a member of 60 groups! Groups have been a consistently popular feature among the Residents of Second Life. It may not be obvious, but group membership can have an impact on the performance of a number of systems. That's why in Second Life's early days, Residents could only join a maximum of 10 groups. Over the years, we've made improvements that enabled us to raise the group limit to a maximum of 42, but we know that for some power users, even that isn't quite enough, and today we're happy to raise the bar for Premium subscribers.

The Lab stated while they would like to raise the limit further, "We must make sure that the recent gains in group performance are not jeopardized." The group limit raise took place immediately. The Lab went on to say "Downgrading from Premium membership will not remove you from any of your groups, but it will mean that you cannot join any new groups until you remove yourself from enough groups to get below the Basic account limit, which remains at 42."

Daniel Voyager wrote on his blog that over the years, the group limit has gone up over time from Second Life's beginnings. When the Grid officially opened, residents were limited to just ten groups. Compared to today, some of today's residents would consider this a ridiculously small number as there's all kinds of groups, for music and dance clubs, combat roleplay squads and platoons, estate community announcements, breedable pet fans, political discussion clubs, stores, even for Second Life families and circles of friends. Jo Yardley commented in the official blog that she thought "I think we have almost 20 just for our sim alone."

But over time, the limit would go up. In 2004, it was raised to 15. In 2006, it was raised to 25. In 2011, it was raised to the limit it was for all accounts until recently, 42.

Linden Lab has tried a number of ways over the years to encourage residents with basic free accounts, which were introduced in 2006. This has included offering them free gifts, sims only residents with premium accounts could access, discounts for the first month when signing up, and more. Some residents have commented these perks have seemed a bit small. But for some whose group limit keeps maxing out, raising it to 60 may be a very welcome convenience they're willing to pay more for.

For the comments in the Linden forums, Click Here.

FJ Linden Departs Linden Lab

Last week, New World Notes reported that Frank Ambrose, known as FJ Linden inworld, Linden Lab's Senior VP of Global Technology, had left Linden Lab. He was in charge of Grid stability and user support. His technical updates were praised by some, Blogger Inara Pey calling him an "Unsung hero" of Second Life.

Daniel Voyager brought up his First Quarter update, noting the praise it got from residents, notably about the group limit raised from 25 to 42. Hamlet Au noted FJ's departure comes just after Kim Salzer's leaving the Lab. He thought of two reasons this might not be a coindidence. One was the possibility of a continuing trend of moving away from the Lab's early idealism. The second scenerio was the two getting the hint the New CEO Mark Humble prefered to deal with people appointed under his watch. Either way, it means two major figures have left in two months.

Sources: New World Notes, Daniel Voyager's Blog, Inara Pey,

Bixyl Shuftan

SL Groups Raised to 42, But Your Viewer May Not Show It

A bit more than a week ago, FJ Linden announced in the official blog that the group limit of 25 per account, long the source of complaints by residents, was finally raised to 42. There’s just one slight hitch ...

Linden Labs says you need to be using Viewer 2 to join more groups.


To add groups beyond the previous limit of 25, you must be using Viewer 2.4 (or a more recent version). And if you’re still using Viewer 1.23, or a third-party viewer based on Viewer 1.23 code, then you can add more groups in Viewer 2.4 and they will still be accessible when you switch back to Viewer 1.23.


Viewer 2 has always gotten mixed reviews from Second Life residents. With improvements, some people adopted it. But even after a year, the majority of residents still use other viewers most of the time. This includes yours truly whom relies on Snowglobe. The last few times I tried Viewer 2.0, the result was a cloud instead of an avatar, and finally the latest version would not work at all on my computer. And from what I’ve been hearing, some people trying to use it crash frequently.

So does this mean we have to use a buggy viewer to join more groups?

Not necessarily.

When I stumbled across a “click to join group” poster recently, I decided to give it a try, and went ahead and clicked to add myself. And it worked! So apparently, other viewers also get the new group limit, even though they still say you have a maximum of 25 groups.

Hamlet Au also did an article on the subject, and his readers commented on various viewers. It seems Viewer 1.23 and all third-party viewers based on it can also be used to join more groups. It’s just when *starting* a new group that you’ll need Viewer 2.

In the official blog, there were numerous replies of thanks for the group limit raised. There were some who did bring up the issue of Viewer 2.

On another note, the blog post mentioned improvements for teleporting and sim crossings, saying on average they’ve dropped 40%. Yours truly hasn’t noticed much of a difference.

For the Linden Blog post and comments, Click Here.

Bixyl Shuftan