Tateru's Mixed Reality Headcount

IBM towers over the other mixed reality sites this week, but for how long?

How well did real world organizations and companies engage the SL community last week?  Tateru Nino runs the hard numbers. First, the top ten:

Mixed Reality Site	Est avg hourly visits	Est avg hourly visits (peak hrs)	Estimated total weekly visits
IBM	31	40	5,312 (26)
Pontiac	29	54	4,912 (5)
The L Word	24	32	4,112 (2)
Weather Channel	12	13	2,128 (5)
AOL Pointe	6.6	6.8	1,120 (25)
Virtual Holland	4.5	0.5	768 (128)
Coca Cola	4.1	10	688 (309)
NBA	3.1	5.7	528 (47)
Microsoft	2.9	5.4	496 (67)
Coldwell Banker	1.9	2.5	320 (Returning)

NBA drops the ball, joins Dell, Microsoft on the bench; Virtual Holland's tulips wilt; Coca Cola fails to fizz

Big Blue, which most think of as a mighty monolithic corporation, has climbed to the top of the mixed-reality heap. Who would have thought that IBM would be more compelling than these other mixed reality sites?

Still, as you have probably already noticed, Mixed Reality Headcount is expanding. We'll be tracking more sites and changing the format here a little, starting this week. We're already tracking a mixed reality site that stands to shoulder Big Blue aside, and perhaps even edge into the coveted territory held by the native reality sites. More on that site next week.

Right now, you will notice that the chart here only includes the top ten mixed reality sites that we are tracking. You'll see a fuller list with the native reality sites combined, after the fold.

For now, the native reality sites continue as kings and queens of the hill. You'll see some old friends on the fuller chart below.

Site (* Native reality site)	Est avg hourly visits	Est avg hourly visits (peak hrs)	Estimated total weekly visits
* Phat Cat's Jazzy Blue Lounge	166	177	28,000  (10 )
* Lost Gardens of Apollo	78	91	13,136  (3)
* City of Lost Angels	72	78	12,224 (Returning)
* New Citizens Incorporated	68	87	11,440 (New)
* The Shelter	47	70	7,936 (21)
* Midgar	45	64	7,664 (Returning)
IBM	31	40	5,312 (26)
Pontiac	29	54	4,912 (5)
The L Word	24	32	4,112 (2)
Weather Channel	12	13	2,128 (5)
AOL Pointe	6.6	6.8	1,120 (25)
Virtual Holland	4.5	0.5	768 (128)
Coca Cola	4.1	10	688 (309)
NBA	3.1	5.7	528 (47)
Microsoft	2.9	5.4	496 (67)
Coldwell Banker	1.9	2.5	320 (Returning)
Dell	1.7	2	288 (14)
Sun Microsystems	0.6	0.8	112 (Returning)

Pontiac still hovers in a close second, with Showtime's The L Word not far behind.

Virtual Holland draws a growing trickle of traffic but the numbers so far fail to excite, considering the sheer size of the area. And considering the strong and interesting theming, it seems odd that it doesn't attract more interest from the Residents.

Coca Cola draws interested visitors to its displays, even though that is not really a part of their marketing plan. Coca Cola aims at a grid-wide viral penetration through Resident-placed themed objects, rather than establishing a marketing presence at the current time.

Microsoft's traffic falls as it fails to present an engaging experience beyond the initial grid-wide egg-hunt. After an initial week of relatively stable visitor numbers, the numbers began to drop noticeably through the week. There's just nothing much to hold people there than scenery, and there's plenty of scenery in Second Life. Most of the visitors to the site seem to be spending their time in traditional Resident pastimes, comparing avatars, and swapping tips about building, animation and scripting.

The NBA, though, is a real surprise. It's bright and pretty and people tell me it presents an engaging experience for the basketball fan. Are the fans just not coming to Second Life? Or are the fans finding something even more engaging in Second Life than basketball, and not coming to the NBA?

Dell, which we added to our charts last time has failed to draw and hold people again. There's a build - but like Microsoft, there's no presence.

Next week, we'll be adding more mixed reality sites into the mix, some old, some new, and at least one surprising, as we mentioned earlier. Stay tuned!

Virtual Holland may yet bloom.

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.

E-mail Tateru at Tateru.Nino@gmail.com or visit her blog.

Comments

[anon]

IBM's site is frequently mostly by its own people. How does that factor in to comparing with outward-facing sites? And why is this "Tateru runs the hard numbers"?

These *aren't* hard numbers, they are estimates with large statistical margins of errors.

Your smugness of which you dismiss companies is based on shaky data. You and Hamlet are sounding like Shirkey.

[Gary Hayes]

Yes these figures are heavily skewed. Much better analysis is provided by looking at the dwell figures provided by the Open traffic numbers that everyone can see - vs some background methodology set up by a US time focused measurement system.

The Project Factory have been running brand measurements for the past two months available to all at http://www.theprojectfactory.com and that I referred to in a CeBit talk on this issue at http://www.personalizemedia.com/index.php/2007/05/06/brand-and-media-survival-guide-to-virtual-worlds-talk-transcript/

It is a nonsense to suggest these are hard numbers using SL time, the world is round (peak concurrency means US and Europe not Australasia for example - remember that part of the world) and sites like BigPond (with 11 islands and many sub-parcels) for instance have significant traffic (in fact one 4k plot here gets more traffic than than all of Pontiac put together in the last week!) - this is not reflected in Tatarus figures at all - so they are obviously flawed. I can check the TPF figures by going inworld and using search, I can't check Tatarus as they are far from transparent.

The LL traffic figures are not perfect BUT they are the only true way of comparing like for like and anything else will just be taken on trust.

Gary

[Hamlet Au]

Tateru did use LL's Traffic numbers, actually, for a chat she's been running the last several months before this. But that attracted about as many objections. Here at least actual Residents are being counted-- the "hard numbers" referred to in the subhead.

[Tateru Nino]

We started with those numbers, but they gave us much less useful results overall - the way they are calculated in the substrate reflects poorly on actual attendance and visitors - plus, they're gameable in a variety of ways.

[Gary Hayes]

So if they are gameable please tell us why the most traffic'd brand BigPond are not even on your list - see my image and comments on your next post.

Anyway at least I can see those figures and not take on trust - the future of the branded metaverse will depend on open, transparent metrics. Your methodology is neither and even more gameable.

[Laetizia Coronet]

not Australasia for example - remember that part of the world

To the best of my knowledge that's where Tateru actually lives, Gary.

[Ancient Shriner]

As someone that has what I believe to be the most advanced metrics capture and reporting tool for Second Life, I'm most curious to see where these 'Hare Numbers' come from. I know my software is rock solid and it doesn't come up with anything close to what you say, more so, I have 100% control of the Coldwell Banker land so I want to know how you put scripts/objects on Coldwell Banker property to get these 'Hard Number'. I think you guys blowing a lot of smoke, but it wouldn't be the first time.