Private Region Numbers Grows For Second Week In A Row

It's been about two weeks since Linden Lab put into effect their reduction in what they charge for land tiers (for non-grandfathered sims), while raising the fee to buy Linden dollars. While the Lab gave no clear reason for their move beyond "to keep Second Life a vibrant world," it's strongly believed the reason for this move was to stop the overall long slow decline in the number of sims. A recent report by Tyche Shepard, who keeps track of new sims and sim numbers in Second Life showed something promising. Total numbers of private estates show growth for two weeks in a row, 35 the past week and 34 the one before for a total growth of 69 sims.


We are now two weeks into the new pricing regime for Private Estates and this is now the 2nd week of positive growth of the grid
Net Growth stands at 35 regions this week (last week was 34) All this week's net growth was among private Estates .
Overall , taking into account last weeks closure of the 24 Temporary SL15B regions , Net Change in Private Estates since the new prices stands at 94 New or Returned Regions

I've no record of Region type at the moment, and therefore no estimate of overall change in revenue for the Lab, but the initial change in demand doesn't seem enough to increase overall revenue at this stage.

Two weeks is obviously too short a time to declare the slump over, but it does raise hopes that the long slow decline, from over 25,000 in June 2010 to just over 16,000 now, might, just might, be over. We'll need at least another two weeks or so before we can say so.

Source: SL Universe 

Hat Tip: Daniel Voyager.

Bixyl Shuftan

Recent Inworldz Statistics Released, Total Users Nearing 100,000

Last week, some statistics about the Inworldz grid were released. Jim Tarber posted graphs in the InWorldz forum showing the growth of the virtual world. They show a slightly different rate of growth than what was suggested earlier as a result of Linden Lab's Terms of Service fallout, though still impressive.

Over time, the number of users in Jim's statistics show steady growth from July 2010 in which the Grid's total number of users was less than ten thousand to today with the total just shy of 90,000 and expected to reach 100,000 "before Easter 2014." There has been no great jump in registered users in the past couple months, though.

Where there *has* been a big jump recently is InWorldz's user concurrency. Numbers have overall made a slow climb in the past few years. But over the past few months, the number of residents in the Grid at any one time has gone from less than 300 to over 400. A rise of more than a third.

What this suggests is that while there are some people visiting InWorldz for the first time, since the ToS mess began, more people whom had already been to this Grid are returning.

It's also notable that in the past, land sales have gone through "summer peaks" where they rise, and "autumn lulls" in which they drop. This time the "lull" barely registered in the statistics, and sales climbed again, "that could be a sign of a large rise in the new year."

While InWorldz numbers remain small compared to Second Life, these statistics suggest it's been gowning while the larger Grid was just treading water. And after the ToS mess began, it's been much more active with more virtual land being bought than before.

*Addition* This month, Hypergrid Business listed InWorldz as having an active user population of over 8200.

Sources: Daniel Voyager, InWorldz blog 

Bixyl Shuftan

Growth in Private Estates, But Total Sim Numbers Still Dropping

Daniel Voyager had a couple things to say about recent statistical data of Second Life. For a change, there was a little good news as far as trends in sim numbers was concerned. Tyche Shepard's data on new private estates saw a small increase, the first one recorded on the Grid in forty weeks. Unfortunetly, the declining numbers of mainland sims made up for this, "Since the start of 2013, the net number of private regions lost  now stands at 510 (2.4% in 13 weeks).

While the growth in private sims is good news, it's unsure wether or not this trend will continue. Daniel Voyager commented, "… it needs changes from Linden Lab to start the recovery again."

For Daniel Voyager's article, Click Here.