New World Notes: Tateru's Mixed Reality Headcount

Monday, May 07, 2007

Tateru's Mixed Reality Headcount

Alayna Kolache high above the mean-- and popular-- streets of the City of Lost Angels

How well are sites sponsored by real world organizations and corporations serving SL's community of 400,000+ active Residents? With Linden Lab's controversial "Traffic" metric soon to be discontinued, Tateru and I introduce "Mixed Reality Headcount", a new NWN feature that'll attempt to track unique visits to some of the most prominent/highly-publicized mixed reality sites. To do that, Tateru will compare visitors to ten prominent corporate-funded sites, against the foot traffic of three "native reality", grassroots sites. Below, the first in a weekly chart. - WJA

Site (* Native reality site)	Estimated average hourly visits	Estimated average hourly visits, SL peak hours	Estimated maximum weekly visits
* Phat Cat's Jazzy Blue Lounge	186	191	31,248
* Sexy Land	129	135	21,728
* City of Lost Angels (Featured on NWN here)	72.67	78	12,208
Pontiac	30	21	5,040
IBM	28	20	4,826
The L Word	24	26	4,056
Weather Channel	17	10	2,901
AOL Pointe	6	6	1,128
Reebok	6	0.29	1,008
Coldwell Banker	2	2	485
Sun Microsystems	1	0.57	224
Sears	0.57	0.57	96
Calvin Klein	0	0	0

On Pontiac island

Tateru Nino's weekly green dot headcount of mixed reality

The native reality sites really came out on top of the figures, by a large margin. Pontiac performed the best of the mixed reality sites, while Calvin Klein - well, we never saw any visitors there at all, during any of our samplings. Methodology after the break.

Methodology

Mixed reality sites in this headcount are selected for their prominence, either from publicity or real world name recognition. Sites with consistent low traffic (500 or less weekly) will be dropped in future Headcounts for other sites.

We collect data three times per day for each site, one sample at peak concurrency (10am-1pm SLT), one at minimum concurrency and one mid-evening, Second Life Time. For each sample we count the number of people at the site at the time. We average those samples across the week, and then assume that average to hold constant, with each visitor spending a half hour on-site. This methodology does not necessarily include one-time events that generate high traffic missed by our sampling, which we'll make note of whenever possible. Headcounts do not factor in returning visitors, so assume that the total number of unique Residents are significantly less than the estimated total visits.

We're able to cover multi-sim sites a lot better with this method, so you'll see those higher in the rankings than the previous metrics we were using.

Disclosure: Pontiac and Sun's sites are produced by NWN partner Millions of Us.

Got a mixed reality tip for Tateru? E-mail her at Tateru.Nino@gmail.com. And visit her blog.

Monday, May 07, 2007 in DEMOGRAPHICS, Mixed Reality Headcount, Mixed Reality Mondays | Permalink

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Comments

Uh, question do the native sites contain camping chairs? I assume the corporate sites don't.

Posted by: Luc | Tuesday, May 08, 2007 at 07:13 AM

Not that I was able to see, no.

Posted by: Tateru Nino | Tuesday, May 08, 2007 at 07:19 AM

When doing random sampling, you need 100+ people to get any sort of accuracy, and that's still only 90% accurate. The margin of error for sets where sampling is 10 - 20 people on average is, well, low. Add to that the fact that 1 or 2 staff could significantly throw off the numbers. Consider that the clubs measured in the "native" sims often have camping chairs and multiple dancers and managers - all can be considered staff - and suddenly accuracy has gone out the window.

For example, the Weather Channel, which was "pretty much owning" (your words) your previous charts, is reporting about "17" per hour. Our own metrics system is measuring at levels of, on a low estimate, around 25 avatars per hour. The thing is, we don't measure it strictly by headcount, because it's so obvious that *length of stay* is just as, if not more, important.

Further, I'm wondering why this is called "mixed reality" headcount. I only count one reality - Second Life.

Posted by: Hiro Pendragon | Wednesday, May 09, 2007 at 03:16 AM

Hiro, would your company consent to allowing a third party bot collecting more extensive visitor stats and publishing them on NWN?

Posted by: Hamlet Au | Wednesday, May 09, 2007 at 10:17 AM

Hamlet, IVM might be open to the idea, but I don't speak for clients. That said, I would prefer a non-bot, because accurate metrics would require testing somewhat frequently - at least hourly, if not every 10 minutes or more. I wouldn't want a bot sitting around any of my clients' sims all the time collecting data, and I wouldn't want to think about how many bots it would take to do metrics for lots of clients.

That said, if there were good third party software, I would consider incorporating that into client builds.

Posted by: Hiro Pendragon | Wednesday, May 09, 2007 at 04:40 PM

I wouldn't mind to have a measuring bot on my land (two SIM's), NO Camping/Sex/Casino at all. We are right now (by our own measures) around REEBOK in weekly numbers. No company, just two (2) Sim's and one Salsa Club (Salsa en Cielo). The only question is, are you able to cover 2 SIM's and one Skybox (of 10.000 qm size in 650 m hight).

TJ Ay

Posted by: TJ Ay | Monday, May 14, 2007 at 07:21 AM