Second Life's Monthy Active Users Up From 600,000 to 620,000

 

In a recent article in New World Notes, Hamlet AU reported that Brad Oberwager, the head of Linden Lab, stated that the number of monthly active users had gone up from about 600,000 in October to 620,000. 

 

In an October interview Oberwager admitted that Second Life's monthly active users had dropped to 500,000 in 2024. 

 

Oberwager would go on to say they planned on doing things that would encourage more people to use the virtual world more often, such as hiring a Vice President of Engineering. 

 

Source: New World Notes

 

Bixyl Shuftan 

 

News and Commentary: Linden Lab CEO States Second Life Userbase Now 900,000

It's been generally agreed that since the start of the Coronavirus crisis, the number of people using Second Life has been growing due to people staying at home and looking for things to do online. In early April, Brett Linden stated the number of new users was up 60%. But Linden Lab didn't say anything about it's monthly userbase, until recently. In an interview in Vice Magazine, CEO Ebbe Altberg stated Second Life was used by 900,000 people every month.

“The Second Life community, which now has about 900,000 active users monthly, hosts hundreds of events daily,” Ebbe Altberg, the CEO of Linden Lab, the creators of Second Life, tells VICE.

So how big an increase is it? Ryan Schultz thought about the 2013 statistics in the article about Second Life in the December 2017 edition of The Atlantic, which estimated the number of regular users were 600,000. That's not necessarily a 50% increase from just before the Coronavirus pandemic. In a Backchannel article (published via Wired Magazine) in Feb 2017, the number of monthly residents was estimated to be 800,000 by Linden Lab, down from 1.1 million from 2006.

So at least according to the Lab, the userbase fell by almost half from it's peak of 1.1 million to 600,000 in 2013. Then it grew some over the next four years to 800,000. And in the past three years, presumably mostly in the past few months, it's grown some more to 900,000.

While a one-eighth increase in usership is less dramatic than a 50% one, an increase is still an increase. It does seem to suggest that while many more are at least trying out Second Life, once again only a fraction are staying.

Sources: Vice, The Atlantic, Ryan Schultz, Wired   

Bixyl Shuftan

News and Commentary: Will The Corona Crisis Mean More People Using Second Life?

With the Coronavirus epidemic having reached around the world, life has changed greatly. For Americans, there hasn't been anything quite like this since the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 2001. Countries around the world are erecting travel bans. There are numerous stories about panic buying and hoarding in the US, Canada, and Australia. Major events are being canceled. Schools and colleges are being closed. People are being encouraged not to gather in large groups. Businesses are having more people work at home.

With more people staying home, some have been asking a question. Will this mean more people coming to Second Life?

In my opinion, there will be a few new users. But we'll likely see more infrequent users spend more time here.

In the golden age of the virtual world, we had plenty of people coming here as it was the talk of tech media and even in TV shows such as CSI. Today, advertising and word of mouth (or word of mouse) draws some here, though not as many. There's also that in addition to online games, people have simpler places to go to online such as Facebook and Netflix. With the high learning curve, only those with friends already here and the curious are likely to stay beyond a few visits.

Will more people from colleges and universities come here? Maybe a few. But I don't see more than a possible tiny few institutions joining those already here. Probably none. After Linden Lab discontinued it's educational/nonprofit discount in 2010, many places of learning responded by leaving and never coming back, not even when the Lab brought it back a few years later.

People from charities and support groups may start making more use of Second Life. With real-life "Relay for Life" gatherings being canceled, supporters will likely look to donate online and find out about the Second Life chapter. Members of groups like Alcoholics Anonymous have met in Second Life before. With the epidemic, we'll likely see many such support group meetings of these and others inworld. A number of veterans have continued to use Second Life for years to meet up. It's likely we'll see a few more of them as well.

But what about those residents already here?

Not everyone with accounts comes to Second Life every day. Their main interests and/or group of friends may be elsewhere online, so come here only occasionally to check up on someone or somewhere they like. They might have been too busy with a job with long hours, or perhaps working two jobs. And other reasons. It's on the record that there are a few people whom drop by once a month or so just to pay the tier on their virtual homes, maybe spend a few minutes to look at the scenery, then leave. These are the kinds of people we'll be likely to see more of.

Eventually, the crisis will pass. And many of these people will go back to their old schedules. But others will have found some reasons to stick around here. Maybe a club where a DJ plays tunes they hadn't heard for years. Maybe a place that appeals to them deep down. Maybe a group of people that gives them a sense of purpose (such as the Relay for Life). So out of the crisis, Second Life very well could get a few new users, and some more active users.

Bixyl Shuftan

The Blind Users Support Group

When it comes to using computers, it's pretty difficult for most of us to imagine using one's computer without their eyes. But that's what some residents do, either being legally blind or having total blindness. The Newser recently interviewed the head of the Blind Users Support Group, Mermaid Celene (CeleneHighwater Resident). So how would a blind person get about Second Life and how has the group been doing?

Read the interview in People.

A Virtual Traveller Speaks On The Split Future of InWorldz's Residents

It was last week that Islandz, the virtual world created by the Inworldz team following the closure of their previous virtual world in July, came online. A number of InWorldz's old residents promptly headed over to log on. But the question remains: will the new virtual world recover the numbers of it's predecessor. Bain Finch didn't think so. While we at the Newser know Bain best for his being part of the Relay for Life in Second Life, he's also been in InWorldz and other places. He made the following commentary on Facebook about where the residents of InWorldz would go.


Islandz will never be the size of InWorldz for a simple reason. The existing residents of InWorldz is forever fractured into two main camps. Those that will not go back and those that will. And of those that will, that camp further broken down into two, those that will check it out but not 'home' there, and those that will make Islandz their primary (virtual world).

The other wave that happened, many of the other ranking open sims, benefited by the exodus. All the grids that are benefiting by the hyper connectivity to facilitate grid hopping, will drive the development cross grid technology for security and commerce. And there is a new focus in those directions, with the addition of all these new residents. Just taking the combined total of residents on all the hyper connected grids, is I'm guessing, is now a rather large population, taking the uniqueness of the individual and not duplicate accounts on multiple grids, into account. Then add to the mix, new open sim grids, such as Infinity further dipping into the pool of people. Many of the grid have registered spikes in new residents, the open sim market place also noted a huge spike in sales, and people are not going to walk away from those investments.

And then, there is all the whispers, one hears on the song of birds, of things in the works, in far away rooms. So in the end, what will have happened, people that enjoy virtual life, will have several options. Life in the big city of SL, or the small town feel or themed community, of a bunch of smaller girds. A few will be closed grids that will require separate logins, but would offer unique benefits, the inter connected, hyper open sim, can't do.

The friendships, that was established in InWorldz, will mature all these grid together, and a good many folks will explore across many grids and be involved on those grids. Sounds like fun to me.


So despite the disporia, Bain feels everything will work out for the better for the former residents of InWorldz, and other residents of virtual worlds.

What do you the readers think? Feel free to comment below.

Number of Second Life Users Down to 800,000, But ...

Earlier this month, Backchannel Magazine wrote about the Creations for Parkinsons area, a article that Barbie Alchemi mentioned in a press release. The article gave it's population, or user base, estimated to be at 1.1 million in 2006. In 2013, Linden Lab claimed an active user base of one million. And today, Backchannel stated "An estimated 800,000 users are active on a monthly basis," saying they were told by Linden Lab. While there are a total of almost 50 million accounts according to Daniel Voyager's Second Life Statistic's page, it's not clear how many are alt accounts.

Eight hundred thousand seems small compared to Facebook, which Backchannel stated as having close to two billion users. World of Warcraft, which came around about the same time as Second Life has sometimes been used as a comparison as to how virtual reality hadn't quite caught on the same way as massive multiplayer online games, boasted a total of 100 million accounts (in 2014) with up to over 12 million active players. But it didn't last, and it's numbers of active players dropped to 5.5 million in late 2015 when it's owners announced they would no longer be publishing reports of active numbers. It's probably safe to assume it's dropped further.

Hamlet Au suggested recently in New World Notes that this lower number of active users may not be what it seems at first. Talking with Peter Gray (Pete Linden), he was told, "We've made a number of optimizations to our user acquisition efforts to get more qualified traffic ... As a result, though the total number of monthly actives has come down, the number of paying SL users has held steady."

In layman's terms, Pete Linden says the Lab has changed their advertising to get people more likely to stay and spend time and money in Second Life. Hamlet went on to say he's felt it's more active users numbered closer to 600,000 for some years, "So most likely, dropping from 1,000,000 to 800,000 reported users isn't so much a loss of actual people as a trimming of marketing fluff."

What do you the readers think? Have you noticed fewer people coming in, or has the number of those people leaving been replaced by new users coming in?

Sourcres: Blackchannel, Daniel Voyager, New World Notes

Bixyl Shuftan

InWorldz Reaches 100,000 Accounts

This week, the virtual world of InWorldz reached a milestone. The official total number of residents passed the 100,000 mark. 

Daniel Voyager wrote the landmark number had been reached on May 15 at 6:37AM SL time. "It's taken almost 4 years to reach the 100,000 registered users milestone, and in another four years, I would imagine InWorldz (will have) reached the 200,000 ... mark if rates continue as they are."

Inworldz had a total of 1000 registered on February 16, 2010. It would take to June 20th that year to reach 5000, August 12 to hit 10,000, and Dec 12 to get to 25,000. It would take to Jan 15th 2012 to reach a total number of 50,000 users, and to May 3 2013 to get to 75,000 in number. 

Congratulations to InWorldz.

Flickr Posting Has Little-Known Restrictions

The Flickr photosharing service is very popular among Second Life residents. Many use it to record pictures of Second Life events, such as Daniel Voyager's screenshots of the "One Billion Rising" event last week. But how often do people think about it's rules. That one doesn't use it to post images showing graphic sexuality and violence is obvious, or copy others without giving credit. But as it turns out, there are others not that many are aware of.

Iris Ophellia found out about Cory Edo, a builder and the owner of a furniture store whom ran afoul of Flickr's management. They restricted her account and a number of images were blocked. Unable to "get a straight answer from support after two requests," she checked the Flickr forums, and found "it's not enough to not link a sales site - you can't have pricing, you can't link to your blog."

As Iris pointed out, rules "that almost every other designer, blogger, and photographer in SL" are breaking because they "aren't exactly shared openly by Flickr to begin with."

Cory wrote details on her Plurk account, "and if you get a notice from support about your account, don't bother asking them for details b/c they just give you a c/p response that doesn't clarify any of the above additional stipulations ... keep in mind this is what the forums people on Flickr are telling me, its not in the TOS, I was told to respect the 'ethos' and I guess figure all this out myself. ... I was told that linking to my wordpress blog (that I do not sell anything from directly) was still advertising. Bloggers usually link to the stores that they're featuring, sooo ... "

Cory got some feedback from other Flickr users, Damien Fate commenting, "Well I only use flickr FOR advertising, and I pay for a pro account. If that's not allowed then their loss, I'll remove my pro subscription." Luna Jubilee wrote, "This comes up and around through the sl community every year or so ... flickr reserves the right to remove that photo or set ... up to your entire account. with or without warning." Daphne Klossovsky wrote, "Yeah, we had this problem before too. Someone flagged something and the mods also flagged us for commercial. So I just deleted all text (we don't have prices on our posters). They seemed satisfied with that, But I don't see why you can't link to your blog."

Cory made the decision to go from a pay to free account, "I've just been contacted by another Flickr user (not support) who offered to tell me the secrets of what violates Flickr's TOS and I don't even care. I'm dropping the Pro account and deleting most of the pix ... if I'm paying a company I expect to talk to their support and not a bunch of self-righteous hall monitors in their forums. ... I've gotten the impression they barely tolerate SL users in general, again that whole 'we're a real photography site' attitude. ... "


So what to do? Ophelia wondered if Second Life residents should start looking for alternatives, mentioning "Tumblr" and "Pintrest." One of the people responding to Cory wrote, "I used photobucket before SL...but then switched since flickr was where everyone was hosting." As Ophelia put it, "But unless there is a major shift in where the SL community at large wants to be, most of us will probably cling to Flickr for as long as possible, even if the service is ill suited for our needs."

Sources: Iris Ophelia's NWN article, Cory Edo's Plurk

Bixyl Shuftan

Inworldz Reaches 50,000 Users, OpenSim Shrinking

According to a recent post by Daniel Voyager, the virtual world Inworldz recently hit the 50,000 mark in the number of it's registered users. Considering this is double what it was thirteen months ago, reaching 25,000 in Dec. 2010, this would suggest the future of the alternative virtual worlds is a bright one.

Hamlet Au's recent article on OpenSim, however, suggested this was not necessarily the case, at least with all of them. In June 2009, this original of the alternative virtual worlds based on Second Life's open source code had nearly over 33,000 total users, close to 10,000 whom had been active in the past month. Today, OpenSim has a greater number of regions and their total number of accounts has more than doubled. But, the number of those active within the past thirty days is just under 3,300. A shrinkage of active users by about 66%.

Exactly why this many have stopped using OpenSim one can only guess, although this place lacks an inworld currency, and therefore has a limited economic potential. It should be noted that OpenSim is just one of a number of worlds that fall into the list of "Open Simulator" based worlds, including Avination, which although is currently the second-largest of these grids is thought to have a stable, if not growing, population. And this world, like InWorldz, does have an in-game currency, as well as boasting combat systems, and has been attracting events. And there's that Avination's viewer has a Macintosh version. One needs a PC to get to OpenSim.

Hamlet Au thought OpenSim's decline was important to pay attention to. With people looking at ways to get around their high tiers, particularly during the persistant bad economic times, some have suggested OpenSim. But to paraphrase Hamlet, such a move would shrink one's potential market of users. While one can (and some are) making accounts in both Second Life and one of these other virtual worlds, not a great deal many are doing that.

Although InWorldz is still growing, its success is not being repeated in most other open virtual worlds. And even then, it's number on at any one time remains small compared to Second Life, which will continue to be dominate other Grids in users for the forseable future.

Source: Daniel Voyager's Blog, New World Notes

Bixyl Shuftan