Catriona Fitzgerald greets new visitors and regulars at Phat Cat's
Jazzy Blue Lounge.
How well did real world organizations and companies engage the SL community last week? Tateru Nino runs the hard numbers:
Site (* Native reality site) |
Estimated average hourly visits |
Estimated average hourly visits (SL peak hours) |
Estimated total weekly visits |
---|---|---|---|
* Phat Cat's Jazzy Blue Lounge | 175 | 155 | 29,444(5.77![]() |
* Sexy Land | 152 | 148 | 25,695(18.26![]() |
* Midgar (NWN Featured Site!) | 48 | 34 | 8,153 (New) |
Pontiac | 38 | 62 | 6,454(28.06![]() |
The L Word | 27 | 34 | 4,687(15.56![]() |
IBM | 19 | 27 | 3,342(30.75![]() |
Weather Channel | 13 | 10 | 2,245(22.61![]() |
AOL Pointe | 6 | 7 | 1,108(1.77![]() |
Sears | 2 | 2 | 386(302![]() |
Reebok | 1 | 0.86 | 242(75![]() |
Coldwell Banker | 1 | 2 | 229(52![]() |
Sun Microsystems | 1 | 1 | 194(13![]() |
Calvin Klein | 0.21 | 0 | 35 |
Pontiac, L Word going strong but Phatland jazz rules the roost; Calvin Klein, Sun, other big brands in the big empty
The native reality sites remain on top. Interestingly, all of them show higher average traffic levels away from Second Life's peak hours, compared with a majority of the mixed reality sites which are stronger during peak periods and weaker outside those hours.
Phat Cat's Lounge is always busy. Music, dancing, shopping, freebies and charming hosts and hostesses keep people coming back for more. It's a comfortable and civil social scene in a PG environment.
Pontiac's seductive mix of cars and track is keeping it on top of the mixed reality sites. I've spoken with quite a few people who enjoy sampling Pontiac's offerings. It's always there, and always on.
Other major brands, however, did not fare as well.
Calvin Klein, Sears, Reebok, Sun Microsystems, and Coldwell Banker just aren't doing well enough to warrant further measurement. We'll be switching in other sites next week, instead.
Why such scarce foot traffic? Calvin Klein just doesn't give people much of a reason to visit, let alone return. Nor does Sun Microsystems - Sun's used their site for a few events, but there's really not anything on-site there that might interest most Residents. Reebok and Sears seem to get a little drop-in traffic, but it aren't the sort of sites that keep people engaged and returning. As for Coldwell Banker, if they're really engaging the community, as they claim to be, it's not happening at their office.
Other notes:
Midgar role-players Cloudx3jr Bekkers (left) and Wyrm Potluck (right), prepare for a possible threat.
Instead of the City of Lost Angels this week, we're looking at the traffic of Midgar, Second Lifers' homegrown tribute to Final Fantasy VII. Fans of Square's classic RPG will find a lot to be sentimental about in this loving replica, and the ongoing role-playing takes those feelings to a new level.
We've discovered camping chairs at Sexy Land, so you won't be seeing them on
the list again next week.
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.
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