Tateru's Mixed Reality Headcount

AOL Pointe makes a significant traffic gain this week with their Linkin Park concert. Can they keep their gains in the coming days?

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	151.52	168.29	25,456  (13.41 )
* Lost Gardens of Apollo (NWN featured)	75.88	85.71	12,748  (New)
* The Shelter	39	50	6,560 (New)
Pontiac	31	62	5,296 (17.04)
The L Word	25	36	4,288 (5.47)
IBM	25	28	4,208 (31.83)
Weather Channel	12	15	2,032 (6.96)
AOL Pointe	9	13	1,600 (58.73)
Microsoft	9	11	1,568 (New)
NBA	6	13	1,024 (New)
Dell	2	3	416 (New)
Virtual Holland	2	2	400 (New)
Coca Cola	1	1	288 (New)

AOL gets Linkin Park; IBM gets business sales center. But native content remains king.

The native reality sites continue to thrive at the top of the heap. We've added the the Lost Gardens of Apollo, and the Shelter to the mix this week, both popular destinations for Second Life Residents for a variety of reasons, the former for its physical beauty and ideal design for secluded romance, the latter for its community service. Phat Cat's Lounge, a PG-rated dance hangout, has dipped a little, but remains solidly in front of the pack.

How are the others faring?

The Shelter hosts a thriving social space, freebies, dancing, and help oriented for the betterment of new Residents.

Of the Mixed Reality sites, Pontiac remains the closest to the prestigious top three spots. IBM's new virtual business center boosted traffic to IBM public areas this week, and will likely continue to bring people through. AOL's Linkin Park concert pulled visitors in, but can they keep pulling in the punters next week?

Bottom of the heap this week are the new entries, Dell, Virtual Holland, and Coca Cola. We'll keep an eye on them and if they fail to attract an estimated 500 visitors this week, we'll have to find some new mixed-reality sites to examine.

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.

Comments

[Abi Goldflake]

hi Tateru, it'd be great if you could include the Australian islands which are currently no 1 and no 3 in terms of dwell figures (the stats Linden Labs provide)for all global brands - the Australian national broadcaster - ABC and the main telco in Australia - Telstra. I'd be really interested to see how they'd show up on your methodology, thanks, Abi

[Mug Wildung]

Tateru,

Are you counting all 7 sims that make up Pontiac's Motorati presence or only the sim that is named Pontiac? The sims that make up the entire Motorati Island are Garage, Drive In, Ride, Motor, Motorati, Velocity, and Pontiac.

[Tateru Nino]

I'm counting all seven, Mug.