two weeks ago we saw the world speak up when the US attempted to pass legislature that would censor the internet and afford threatening power by big companies. while the ruling would have been an American one, it would have trickled out to the world. that fight is not over and those corporations and groups still want dominion over the web

last week an uproar occured in the US over an international group, the Susan G. Komen foundation, and their politically motivated ending of funding to a US women’s non-profit health group – Planned Parenthood. again the masses spoke up (and a few major contributors) and the Komen group reversed their decision

in both cases regular people from all over the globe spoke up and stated what was right. the masses, you and me, were not being bullies, we were just expressing outrage at clearly wrong thinking and unjust actions

i was very thrilled to read an excellent post by Tateru entitle A landmark ruling in which the Dutch Supreme Court ruled that a boy’s virtual property from Runescape was indeed his property. Runescape has a TOS like Linden Lab, and many others, which says they only grant you a license to your stuff. like Linden Lab, Runescape says they own all the data on their servers and that is one reason you can’t export your own OAR file from Second Life – the LL TOS explicitly says that you do not own it

the Dutch Supreme Court stood up for the individual, for the you and me, and ruled in the obvious and right way that what is yours is yours! way to go Holland! =)

in Runescape, you collect items and if those are deemed as legally being yours, then stuff you make in Second Life should certainly be yours, as well as anything you buy from others

thank you Tateru for finding that ruling and placing it in the proper perspective (go read her post!)

                          

Sharespost evaluates various companies and places a value on their private shares. companies like Facebook, Twitter, Etsy, LinkedIn, and even Linden Lab are monitored and their share values are updated

private shares, similar to public shares, see their values go up and down for many reasons. at the end of the day it’s all about perception of worth and news events can, and do, impact share prices greatly

i’ve been posting on the value of Linden Lab shares since the summer of 2010. there was a certain level of volatility until last april and now the value is holding fairly steadily

the total value of Linden Lab at $311 million is about right since annual revenues are around $70 million (standard MBA formulas take annual revenue times 4 or 5 to estimate the value of a company – what that means in very general terms is that someone could offer to buy Linden Lab for $311 million - but why buy when sim-on-a-stick is free?)  =)

holding steady is better than dropping; ideally investors want to see steady growth on the order of 20% or more annually

                          

machinima – that word intimidates me a little and it shouldn’t – it’s just a word. when i think of machinima, i tend to think of a video that is really nicely polished, has great post-production effects, epic soundtrack, clever acting, and a production crew of several people

machinima can be a little more technical than making things in-world – what with terms like CODECS, 1080i vs. 1080p, chroma keys, kbps, 16 bit vs. 24 bit, variable sampling, hdmi, and a host of acronyms that can make you turn an run (you down with OPP ? yeah you know me <- omg, that was 21 years ago!) o_O

all those acronyms do mean relevant things to making machinima, but they shouldn’t stop you from trying it out. a few basic principles can get you started – like viewer size, a way to record it (like Fraps), and a way to do simple editing (like iMovie or Windows Moviemaker). later on you can get all crazy but those few things are enough to make a video that you can upload to YouTube (two past video posts: 1 | 2)

the best way to get started is to simply give it a try and see what happens. don’t expect to be all Spielberg on your first try and the bottom line is in the content that your are delivering. if you want to make a tutorial on how to build something, then the way you explain and show it are far more important than your production prowess

YouTube is the number one eLearning source in the world and it’s not because everything looks like a million dollar movie. the Khan Academy got over $10 million from Google in 2010 to make more educational videos and a quick click over to their site shows you that it’s not sophisticated, but it teaches extremely well

if you have been looking for some motivation to make the big plunge, then maybe the call for machinima for the 5th annual Virtual Worlds – Best Practices in Education conference will entice you. and you don’t have to be a teacher to enter. here are their categories copied right from their website:

Be Epic! (1-2 min target – 3 min max)
Be creative, bold and inspiring! Shorts in this category are based on the conference theme – “Be Epic.”

Virtual World Outreach (1-2 min target – 3 min max)
Show us why you are here, your virtual community and place in the Metaverse. Are you in multiple virtual worlds? Show us that too!

How-to/Instructional (3 min target – 4 min max)
The perfect three minute machinima. Can you teach something well in three minutes? Show us how you do this.

Educational (5 min target – 7 min max)
Show us an educational machinima that is currently being used for the F2F, blended or virtual classroom.

Teen (2-5 min target – 6 min max)
Show us your best! Open to more than Second Life – give us OpenSim, Halo, WoW, Minecraft! We’re ready for it.

Digital Storytelling (2- 5 min target – 6 min max)
Do you have a story? We have an audience.

Brave Beginner (1 min target – 2 min max)
For first time producers who have never made or uploaded a machinima to YouTube before. So be honest (first-timers only) and be brave!

Other (1-5 min target – 6 min max)

don’t be put off by thinking your idea isn’t good enough or that your technique is too beginner. some of the most effective videos are done in very simple ways (like CommonCraft – their work rocks and is pretty funny to watch – like their surviving zombies video)

the due date for submission is february 15th and it’s not limited to OpenSim; Second Life, World of Warcraft, Club Penguin, and even Minecraft are okay too! =)

uber big thanks to GridJumper for bringing this to my attention, i may team up with subQuark to make an educational entry  =)

schmancy pants camera eh? =D

                          

Daniel Voyager wrote a short but poignant post today about the one year anniversary of the Teen Grid in Second Life closing. i think he may be the only one to bring that up, i had forgotten about the date

the teen grid was always small but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t important to students and teachers. when Linden Lab removed (merged) the teen grid they changed the TOS to allow 16 and 17 year olds to access the regular grid and they also added language to the TOS allowing 13 to 15 year olds to “access Second Life through an affiliated organization and will be restricted to the private estate of that organization.”

i don’t know if any such organisations ever came into existence and suspect that the abandonment of the ed/non-profit pricing sent a clear message that Linden Lab was no longer interested in helping any such groups

i’d like to think that kids who enjoyed using Second Life may have set up their own private OpenSim network and kept doing their thing. kids are definitely adept enough to be able to setup OpenSim on their own

the only image i could find online for the Teen Grid - from an aug 14th, 2010 post i did

                          

Maria published her monthly counts and analysis of OpenSim growth yesterday and she counts a total of 22,651 OpenSim regions and these include OSGrid, and public and private grids that report their numbers. her totals will always be less than all deployed OpenSim regions because not everyone reports their numbers

22,651 regions is a new high for OpenSim and approaches Second Life’s 23,619 private estates and isn’t too shabby compared to SL’s total sims of 30,840

while you can’t compare an OpenSim region to a Second Life sim as exact equals, you also can’t say that OpenSim is small from a land perspective. of course user accounts are still tiny for OpenSim compared to what SL has. they claim 10,000 signups per day but what’s the value in that number? i have 33,000 Twitter followers and what does that prove? maybe that i am OCD but as far as success goes, sims is a meaningful number since they represents the main revenue stream for Linden Lab

OpenSim can no longer be seen as a second-rate alternative to Second Life

people are showing the viability of OpenSim with where they decide to set up home, shops, and clubs. this does not mean Second Life is dead, it just means that equal or better options are available

Second Life lost over 1,000 private sims in the last year which could be as much as 3 to 3.5 million dollars per year (a loss of about 5% of LL’s annual revenue). some of that is flat-out attrition – people leaving that don’t want to do virtual world stuff, but some of that are people choosing something else that meets or exceeds their needs

Maria points out that 391 private sims inSL poofed last month and i’d say a good number of those were from the “no setup fee” special LL did October 21-23  (gee, i’d like the setup fees from my 19 sims refunded! i could buy a car!). the first month’s tier would have started on November 21-23 and that $295 is a big chunk of change to come up with!

so what does this mean?

for OpenSim it means we will likely see the number of regions surpass those in Second Life in 2012

overall, it means that virtual worlds are doing well and becoming more widely adopted. despite the small drop inSL sims, the growth of virtual worlds when you combine Second Life with OpenSim is significant with a total of over 53,000 sims/regions

                          

arrr matey! no, not that type of fun-loving, whiskey-drinking, parrot-toting, treasure-pillaging buccaneer pirate

piracy becomes more meaningful to people when they have actually put time and effort into making things – whether that be a song or a pair of virtual shoes. piracy is rampant in the digital world because it is pretty easy to steal

lots of piracy isn’t even criminally intentional – the professional videographer that films your wedding and sets the final piece to Peter Gabriels’ In Your Eyes  is a pirate unless they pay royalties. the local pizza shop playing the local radio station is also a pirate, unless they pay ASCAP dues. singing Happy Birthday probably has us all guilty of piracy since “unauthorized public performances of the song are technically illegal unless royalties are paid to it” (wiki)

piracy in virtual worlds is bad and stops many good content makers from getting into OpenSim. control over that is continually improving though and more content makers are coming over

pending legislation in the US could clamp down even more on piracy but might also cause more grief for commercial grid operators. it truly sucks to have to act as the copyright police but the new law could force grids, like InWorldz and 3rd Rock Grid, to have to be even more vigilant than they already are

i’m not really sure of the possible ramifications, i suppose no one really is until it passes, but it’s worth a read and for that i’ll send you over to Hamlet Au’s blog where i first read about this and where there are links to more information and activists’ sites

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2012/01/eff-says-sopa-threatens-second-life.html

                          

librarians leaving SL – that’s a sad one, but a fundraising scam? sorry, that one is just dumb

in february of 2007 the American Library Association launched their Second Life island. the ALA went on to become one of the most significant contributors to the Second Life community. the ALA did thousands of activities, workshops, and events in their very active 5 years. library scientists are an intense group – they aren’t the mousey bespeckled frumpy and stern stereotypes that we see on TV, most have Masters in Science and are technologically adept

they recognised Second Life as another channel of communication and a powerful tool to disseminate information

their sim closed on january 1st and it’s a sad loss and i hope to see them rebuild on their own servers using OpenSim

the problem for most organizations is that they used custom-made content plus content that does not allow for export. in hindsight, it seems dumb to have spent so much money for content that you could never truly own. that’s the curse of hindsight though . . . (and something i was guilty of as well) =\

here’s an example of how library scientists are intense – WesternPrairie has a small forum for a library and on that forum there is an OpenSim section. there are only a dozen or so posts, but some really good info like changing the “chatter” level of your OpenSim console to make it fire up faster. it’s a specific tip but one that could be used for sim-on-a-stick and reduce a 45 second start-up time to maybe 15 seconds (i know, that does not seem like much, but to an OCD spaz like me, i think it’s awesome!) =D

now onto the second title point – a scam in Second Life? no way! o_O

derr, i have little tolerance for this one but some people continue to believe all things they see online. there are many reputable and phenomenal charities but it only takes a few scammers to make people leery of any online fundraising. if you want to read what, to me, seems like a total drama but great investigative reporting including an online receipt generator - here’s the post (nod to Hamlet Au for bringing his to my attention)

thankfully, you guys are among the smartest in the virtual world community, and use common sense in monetary dealings (like using OpenSim!)

there has been some incredible fundraising done in Second Life – particularly by the American Cancer Society – and it just takes a few clicks to determine if it’s a legit endeavor

with a departure like the ALA and bad charity press in the first week of 2012, i think my prediction of 1000 fewer private SL sims will be closer to 2000

btw, please give generously to the “Feed a hungry frog” fund – i can assure you it is a legit dealio because i’d like someone else to pay for my snacking! =D

the ALA sim used to be here

                          

i was going to write a post about a Canadian Government manager who went on a $40,000 spending spree including $4,000 in Second Life! apart from being deeply ashamed (not really) of a fellow Canadian about this appalling fraudulent activity i was curious as to what she spent her Lindens on, but the article did not say (that’s a lot of Zhao shoes!) =)

i was going to tie that into SL concurrency trends and what the current real world economic conditions mean for the distribution of people between Second Life and OpenSim-based grids but when i went over to secondlife.com to see what information i could tie into this i was surprised to see a familiar, and i thought lost, tag line

Your World. Your Imagination.

that was the tag line when i started inSL and one that seemed to be true back in 2006 and helped to make Second Life a super star of the media. it was a magical time when anything did actually seem possible. but, for whatever reasons, Linden Lab started changing policies, TOS, and just a bunch of things that eroded away the spirit behind that tag line. and one day, the tag line was gone . . .

for all my griping and my perception of Second Life, they do have a lot of it right. a sincere philosophical and genuine cultural shift by Linden Lab back to what Your World. Your Imagination. truly means could be the rebirth of Second Life

i’m glad to see it back and i hope it signals a renaissance of Second Life

                          

i’m not one to be very political, maybe because i’m a commie socialist idiot (according to Prok which is good enough for me), but when i saw this from an article in Think Progress, it may me feel pleased to be a socialist commie scum =)

Gingrich made a political speech to Second Life in 2007 in which he said that the “3-D Internet in all of its various forms” will help create a better “parallel country.” “It’s a parallel that enables us to do things that would be much more difficult to do in the real world.. [It's a] world that works.”

no wonder Linden Lab has been stuck on a plateau! Newt endorses Second Life!

*where’s Sarah when ya need her?* =p

                          

i’ve been lamenting about getting a new machine for doing OpenSim stuff but find it hard to part with the $$$. i built my current machine almost 5 years ago via an online PC configurator site and it’s been a great machine. it initially cost about $500 but i later needed a better power supply and motherboard which added another $150 (i have an MSDN license so i got the OS for free – w00t!)

i’ve been using CyberPowerPC as a way to get an idea of what i can get for the money and my mental limit is about $700. i figure that 5 years later i should be able to get a significantly faster machine for that budget

however, it’s hard to build one for $700 that has better graphics performance than my current machine

it turns out that i simply lucked out with the video card i bought back then – an overclocked NVidia 9600GT with a gig of RAM. but surely new middle-of-the-road cards should be faster? nope – and now i finally have a resource to help me figure out what card to get IF i decide to get a new machine

i was reading Nalates Urriah’s blog and was particularly interested in her viewer reviews. i’m so set in my ways that it’s hard for me to drop Imprudence 1.3.2 unless i read something very compelling about another viewer

i had no idea that SL had a wiki page with graphic card benchmarks! derr! i feel dumb and am appreciative for Natales’ link! *needs to get out of Enclave Harbour more!*

the image was updated february of this year (click for full size or hit its wiki page)

                          

after being with Linden Lab for a year, Kim moves on. i don’t think there’s anything particularly telling about this but since i had written a few times about her in the past, this brings her full circle with Second Life

she had been with Electronic Arts and thus knows Rod Humble but these types of hires, people that you know from past jobs, are not unusual at higher exec levels

she moves on to be a VP with Citysearch and you can read the press release here

                          

i was commenting on Maria’s recent post about OpenSim growth and the comments were going back and forth about active users versus total accounts and what is a measure of success for an OpenSim grid (whether InWorldz, OSGrid, or in my opinion, even your own OpenSim on a stick or your home machine)

i don’t think active versus inactive users is needed to judge success for the use of OpenSim. i also think you’ll never achieve concensus on what an “active” user is (i believe Linden Lab defines one hour per month as active)

i think total region counts may reflect a certain type of success since they incur a real cost to the provider because there is hardware, bandwidth, and admin time. that’s true for Second Life and grids like InWorldz

if InWorldz has 1000 regions – that’s indicative of their success just like 25,000 private sims is for Second Life. Enclave Harbour has 16 and that has zip to do with its success because no one can live there, they will only be able to visit – its success will be measured in book sales by subQuark

how about the Fern Seed? that’s the OpenSim genetics study on ferns (which have spores, not seeds btw) and i bet it has fewer than 4 active users - so is that a success? i say the million dollar Federal grant indicates it is!

we no longer have to be constrained by the Second Life paradigm and that includes how we measure success

if you load up OpenSim on your own machine (like from simonastick.com) to give your kid a creative to stay busy, is that a success? (/me says that’s a huge win!) \o/

Second Life defined collaborative creative virtual worlds and brought them to the world’s attention, so it’s natural to use them as the yardstick to measure OpenSim. Linden Lab created a map that many of us using OpenSim benefit from

that map, as helpful as it is, also serves as blinders to a certain extent

i think we will continue to see new and innovative uses of OpenSim on both the commercial and personal level =)

                          

i got some flack the other day about the post quoting Rod Humble as not caring about bugs. there is nothing wrong with giving me grief because your opinion is as important as mine – no one died and made me the boss  =D

but holy crap, what’s your take on this???

While he is still chairman of Linden Lab, the company that created “Second Life,” Rosedale talks about that venture in the past tense.

“The problem with creating an immersive 3-D experience is that it is just too involved, and so it’s hard to get people to engage,” he said. “Smart people in rural areas, the handicapped, people looking for companionship, they love it. But you have to be highly motivated to get on and learn to use it.”

dang? you’d think he’d at least say it was awesome. but his words seem harsh (full post here)

but if you are a horny and smart physically-challenged person living in Hicksville, then SL is for you!

and what’s with his dissing of people who have worked hard to go to college?

“I would rather hire a kid in Brazil who is hungry for work for a project than hire a Stanford graduate,” he said.

not everyone that goes to college has done so on their parent’s money (i didn’t but it sounds like Philip did)

anyway, i just found it curious that Philip is so over SL . . . (and doesn’t want to help the 99%)

meanwhile, i’ll proudly remain a smart and horny hick (hmm, i was raised in the country in Canada, maybe there’s truth to that) =p

                          

that post title is not inflammatory, it’s based on a direct quote from Rod Humble:

Usually they spend their time bug fixing. Instead, I tell them they’ve got a little blue ocean time.

read about his philosophy in a short post on Gamasutra and see if it means the same to you

roadmap? who needs it! just do trial and error and maybe stumble onto something cool

fix lag? nah, it’s more fun to flail about in the blue ocean (or is that just Tidy Bowl?)

“programmers who have downtime“? really? nothing to work on eh? just twiddling their thumbs?

“At worst, the R&D might improve their skill sets a bit.” i’d love to be paid to increase my skill set rather than do real work or address anything for paying customers . . .

the shame of it is that Second Life is very cool and their residents have been clamoring with all sorts of cool ideas for years but the Lab does not seem to be able to listen . . .

                          

Second Life is a computer-based virtual world with a simulated environment where users inhabit and interact via avatars, or graphical representations, the virtual world may depict a real world or a fantasy world. Users communicate through text-chat and real-time voice-based chat. Second Life provides versatility and anonymity and allows for covert communications. Because of its anonymity and versatility, gang members could potentially use Second Life to recruit, spread propaganda, commit other crimes such as drug trafficking, and receive training for real-world criminal operations.

 source: FBI 2011 National Gang Assessment

                          

OpenSim peeps are a very small community and way smaller than the Second Life community. SL was the first to package virtual worlds in a way that was highly accessible and easy for people to create almost anything they wanted. while Linden Lab did “invent” a particular kind of virtual world, they did not invent virtual worlds, but they did put it out there in a way that was easy for people to participate in. SL went live in a decade ago and the current sim prices have been in place for over 5 years – $1000 in one time setup fees and $295 a month for a standard private region

in the last five years, hardware has improved and the “class” of server Linden Lab uses has also been upgraded several times. also in the past five years, server prices and leasing has gone down. the server that SimHost set up for us can run anywhere from $140 to $240 a month for an individual and is equivalent to four Second Life sims (plus it has “extra” RAM compared to an SL sim)

in this time Linden Lab has not lowered the setup fee or the monthly tier. while you and i can get a leased server that would run 4 plus sims for $140 to $240 a month, you can be certain the price for Linden Lab is quite a bit less. i have no idea how they operate their servers or who they lease them from, but they cost less than what you and i can get them for. just as a way to frame this, let’s take the low-end “sale” price you can find for a 4 plus sim server of $140 and use that as reference. i won’t discount that number because that is an unmanaged server and clearly Linden Lab spends money on management

$140 divided by 4 gives a per sim cost of $35 which gets you one core and one gig of RAM. the $1000 setup fee that LL charges would cover over two years of hosting! their cost may even be less, probably are less, but they add their expertise and time into running it. so the setup fee is making good money and the $295 a month is a solid return on $35 a month of hardware

with the reduction in server costs over the last 5 years AND the improvements in that hardware, Linden Lab has never given any of those savings back to its community. as we know from running OpenSim, LL could increase the prim limits on sims and that would get their customers excited. i know when i had the iliveisl estate, i would have thought LL was awesome id they had upped prim limits just from 15,000 to 20,000 per sim. at the end of the day, you charge per prim when you run a private estate. a 5,000 prim increase would be like a 33% bonus!

but Linden Lab has held tightly to its high fees and subscription (tier) despite the very slow reduction in private sims and the larger reduction in user hours . . . until friday before last, the 21st, when the Lab announced a weekend sale where they waived the $1000 set up fee! (for a well-formed analysis on their sale and the repercussions it will likely have, read this article by Avril Korman)

with OpenSim becoming more of a Beta-plus application (imho) and with outstanding private grids like InWorldz, i think we may see more activity such as Linden’s weekend sale. now is the time for them to realise that they are slipping and to take proactive measures. if they continue with Rod Humble’s spin that user hours have “plateaued”, then they may get to a point that regardless of what they do, they won’t be able to stop their steady decline

reference: my posts on user hour decline & private region decline

                          

the virtual world landscape has changed drastically since 2006

if you had nice clothing, hair, shoes, furniture, or buildings back in 2006, then you stood a good chance to make some money in Second Life. the online headlines heralded Second Life as the next dot-com boom and it sure seemed like anything was possible in Second Life. it was the perfect mix of technology, people, and Philip’s energy - but now, five years later, Philip is completely absent, many great people are gone, the technology has not improved as much as expected, and Linden Lab is fully corporate and no longer “Your World. Your imagination.”

you can still make money in Second Life and great products will always be worth paying for

and for those that are entrepreneurial the options have expanded beyond Second Life and are becoming well established. this last year has seen OpenSim options become more deeply rooted, more trusted, and more populous. there are a number of private commercial grids who are “serious” players plus independent grids, like our Enclave Harbour, and the ever growing collection of individual regions that make up the OSGrid

this last year has also seen many improvements in OpenSim code regarding permissions and creator name persistence. while the code continues to improve, the protection for content creators and merchants is not as strong as what you find in private commercial grids

personally, i don’t think we will ever see one unified virtual world currency for a number of reasons. one is that a universal online currency like bitcoin has issues of its own, another is international law, and most private grids will want to “own” their own currency for security, reduction of fraud, and to get a piece of the conversion pie (nothing wrong with that because it does take effort and regulation adherence to maintain a currency). my top reason for thinking there won’t be one virtual world currency is that one already exists and it’s called real money. nothing stops anyone from accepting credit cards or PayPal

this ever changing, and still maturing, virtual world landscape creates an opportunity for confident merchants to expand their storefronts

is there risk? yes there is but that risk also translates to new opportunities and success

the “new” face of the virtual world merchant entrepreneur is often the savvy Second Life merchant who has been around the virtual block

my dear, and longest running, virtual world friend has always been keenly passionate about the virtual world and about making her mark in it by creating wonderful clothing and being an entrepreneur. she holds festivals, has fireworks, and is always willing to talk anytime with others (both customers and non-customers)

to me Sunny embodies the content creator and merchant of the future by being in many virtual worlds now. having store fronts in many places is analogous to having stores in many countries

Sunny’s Total Avatar Shop can be found in the following worlds:

• Kitely
• InWorldz
• Avination
• Second Life
• osHaven
• OSGrid
• New World Grid
• My Open Grid
• Tertiary Grid
• Virtual Worlds Grid
• Virtyou
• Hypergrid Mall

great job Sunny! =)

you have embraced what virtual worlds are today and what they will become tomorrow. virtual worlds are changing, growing, maturing, and evolving and one constant that will be ever present are those individuals, like Sunny, who see the possibilities =)

my Sunny, she lives up to her name, especially in my heart =)

                          

i had a few people challenge the notion that user hours are down in Second Life and tell me that overall they continue to plateau

i’m a frog and the word plateau is a commonly used word in french and my undergrad degree is in geology where the word plateau is a morphologic feature. unless the Second Life definition of plateau means something other than level and flat, then the chart below is not reflecting a plateau of any kind (and in geology it’s an elevated flat place, the graph below is moving away from elevated place to perhaps a basin)

the numbers are directly from Linden Lab

                          

in today’s world we toss around big numbers like millions, billions, and even trillions as if we have a grasp of just how big those numbers are. i had a college physics professor once that put a meaningful context of how large a million is and i wish i could eloquently do the same

the global life expectancy of females is 69.5 years and 65 for males (sucks to be you) or 609,487 hours for girls and 570,024 for boys. for me, an hour of time is easy to picture – an extra hour of sleep can make me feel great and an hour less of sleep can make the entire day drag. an hour can fly by in virtual worlds when engrossed in building or visiting with friends. i can make a nice dinner in an hour or an hour can be sheer torment if i’m cleaning the bathroom and doing laundry =\

what does an hour mean to you?

an hour can be half a movie or an episode of Psych, and 4,320 heartbeats and 960 breaths *sigh*

when i look at LL’s graph (below) from their Q3 post a week ago, i look at the total 16 months they present. 109 to 101 million is an 8 million drop divided by the 109 gives us a 7.3% percent drop

8 million hours of people, like you and me, logged in to SL is a big number!

8 million user hours means a loss of 103,300 users spending 10 hours each a week inSL (or 206,600 at 5 hours per week, etc). holy crap! you can spin those numbers all kinds of ways, but dang, that’s a hell of a drop isn’t it?

how would you feel about a 7.3% reduction in your pay (or turn it around and ask yourself how you’d like a 7.3% increase in the money you bring home)

combine this 16 month decline with the private region decline we illustrated here last week and you have something that all of us know and which is not surprising news

if you go back to LL’s 2009 Q2 user hours of 126 million, you have a longer trend which helps reduce errant spikes and provide a more meaningful look at Linden Lab’s situation. the difference from that time to now is a 19.4% decline! (the sky has fallen)

Second Life is declining, there are more and more alternatives competing for users’ time, and the global economy is not helping (plus that awesome Ener Hax’s free sim-on-stick thing, that sounds like some kind of socialistic Canadian programme!) =p

                          

last week i wrote about an apparent 200 private sim drop in a very short time period of two weeks whereas the overall last year decline was about an 800 sims. a sudden dip like that seemed worrisome because the decline of private sims in Second Life has been a slow and steady decrease

the best days of Second Life are behind Linden Lab now and it seems that the Gartner Hype Cycle‘s Slope of Enlightenment is spread among many virtual world platforms and not directly benefiting Second Life

the Slope of Enlightenment occurs as users find realistic uses for the technology. however, in this case, Second Life is no longer the only decent choice for virtual worlds. in my opinion, Second Life is also not the only choice for the benefits that a walled garden offers

a walled garden world is very good for community life and for a strong economic environment. i think something like OSGrid will see more options for in-world economy and stronger copyright protection but i also think people like the comfort of a well defined walled garden (to me this is analogous to living in a big city, like San Francisco, where you can pretty much find anything you want within a few miles as contrasted to living “globally”)

as a very viable option to Second Life I’d point to InWorldz which is small compared to SL but has the hardware infrastructure and roadmap to scale to a size larger than Second Life

virtual world options outside of a walled garden are becoming more stable and feature rich as well. of course I am biased, but OpenSim can be deployed in many ways and at many price points – from as free as anything can be that runs on computers to highly specialized and custom deployements (even though Unity is not OpenSim, it is growing and a real part of the Slope of Enlightenment)

Maria shows that OpenSim continues growing in her monthly stats analysis and the private grids she does not have visibility into are also increasing in number. even a little 16 region grid like Enclave Harbour has added one region to OSGrid as a future hypergrid spot

with more options and the freedom from TOS and high prices, i believe we will see the Slope of Enlightenment continue growing despite Second Life’s steady decline

this chart was created from Tyche Shepherd's SLUniverse posts