Over on Storygeek there's a lovely rebuttal of some of Wired's and the L. A. Times' comments about SL always being empty.It's a bit of a fan-being's article: there are many potential flaws you can find, but it does raise some interesting points about the criticisms including:
- SL isn't as crowded as the middle of your nearest big city, sure, but then most of the world's surface isn't either.
- Shops can be largely empty but still doing well (the temptation to say especially boy's shops is strong) because you search for what you want, tp in, look around a bit, buy it, tp out
The list carries on, and makes interesting and thought provoking reading. Even if it's not 100% right there ARE issues about how you measure success in SL that simply looking for dots on the map don't address.
(Thanks to Mark Bell for the lead on SLRL)
1. Second Life is far from empty... Last night I was a bit curious about "user retention" as it applies to customers of an in-world combat system that I am one of the developers for (http://www.combatsi.com), so I ran a few db queries and came up with this:
9,271 Total number of recorded C:SI fighters
1,838 People who fought at least once in the month of June
90,313 Total number of duels in June
49 Average number of fights per person in June (weighted average)
Our small little corner(s) of the grid, practically insignificant compared to the whole, had nearly 2000 active participating members in the month of June, with over 90000 "fights" during that period of time. That doesn't include the time spent in our sub-communities just chatting, building, shopping, etc. Those numbers are only recorded for those avatars that have won or lost a duel using the C:SI combat system during that period, and fall far short of the total number of people active in the community at that time.
Our main Sim's traffic numbers are consistently over 14000, and that's only one of more than 10 themed Sims available to the community, some of which are absolutely beautiful and a pleasure to hang out in.
If Second Life's clubs and more popular places have the kind of traffic that they claim, then their numbers probably put ours to shame.
Second Life is very far from empty.
Posted at 3:30PM on Jul 30th 2007 by RobbyRacoon