Tateru's Mixed Reality Headcount

How well did real world corporate sites engage the community?  Tateru Nino counts the heads...

Site (* Native reality site)	Est avg hourly visits	Est avg hourly visits (peak hrs)	Estimated total weekly visits
* Phat Cat's Jazzy Blue Lounge	163	197	27,396 (up 4%)
* Lost Gardens of Apollo	83	114	13,944 (up 6%)
* New Citizens Incorporated	82	103	13,824 (stable, up a little)
IBM	48	50	8,076 (down 2%)
The Pond	43	30	7,248 (up 12%)
Pontiac	36	53	6,096 (up 23%)
The L Word	30	44	5,148 (down 3%)
Rezzable/Greenies	21	26	3,588 (new!)
Nissan	19	17	3,264 (up 26%)
The Weather Channel	18	21	3,168 (up 9%)
Microsoft	15	17	2,568 (up 16%)
Virtual Holland	12	22	2,112 (up 89%)
ABC Island	11	10	1,920 (down 16%)

Nissan, Pontiac racing ahead; Virtual Holland blooming brighter; welcome the Greenies!

Up until a few weeks ago, nobody was really paying Nissan that much attention. Sure, they'd expanded and changed some, but everyone was expecting more of the same. Not so, say the visitor numbers; Nissan is doing something right.  How about the others?  Well, there's been a fair bit of activity, often from the most unlikeliest places. More movement after the fold!

Pontiac's also doing well; it's growth isn't quite the ramp-up that we've been seeing in Nissan recently, but it's drawing large numbers of visits and bringing people back. It took a bit of a dip last week, but then, a lot of sites did. The trend seems to be for slow, but steady growth. A lot of people are keen on cars, although as both Pontiac and Nissan have demonstrated, it takes time to get the formula quite right. 

Virtual Holland is another dark horse. Mostly ignored by the media, the small continent of Virtual Holland mostly seemed to be deserted for a long time, but things are definitely looking up for this mixed-reality outpost.

Progression isn't smooth, but the trend is definitely upwards, with growth rates any company CEO would be proud of. I spoke with Virtual Holland member Indira Bekkers about the reasons for the growth of traffic and visitors throughout Virtual Holland. The builders of Virtual Holland are using a formula similar to that of many successful native sites - experimentation and adaptation. New things are tried, the more successful experiments evolve, and the less-successful ideas are either adapted or discarded. Techniques like this steadily home in on engagement while making sure there's almost always something new.

The Greenies Home (pictured above) came in just barely below native site Svarga (3,696). Greenies Home is performing very strongly indeed, considering that only a small number of avatars at a time (12) can be present - it's almost always at or near capacity. A part of Rezzable Productions, this site is a recreation of a studio apartment at Brobdingnagian scale, occupied (or infested) by cute and mischievous creatures known as Greenies. Since the site opened, it's turned out to be an overnight hit, almost always filled to capacity by curious visitors. Hamlet will be bringing you more information about Rezzable Productions and their current and future projects. Look for that soon.

Native sites Lost Gardens of Apollo and New Citizens Incorporated, overtook the City of Lost Angels (13,692 - a close fourth), changing the top three native sites significantly for the first time in quite a while.

Down below the top ten, there's been a fair but of motion, traffic at the site of Useful Technology (924) has more than doubled, with new development appearing on one of their sims. AOL Pointe (888) is also pulling more traffic this week - perhaps it's a sign that we're pulling out of the Summer doldrums, though it's still a bit early to tell.

Reebok (240) also is getting a little more air-time than rival Adidas (108). It's still not drawing a lot of visits but it did twice as well as Adidas this last week.

Conversely, NBA (756) and Dell (336) continue their slow slide, and Ratepoint (168), Comcast (156) and Adidas are down so far that any signs of activity cause their traffic ratings to palpitate.

Ratepoint itself holds daily events that fall firmly between our sample periods. What is telling is that it isn't holding a lot of interest between times. That said, I have hopes that - given time and commitment from the Ratepoint people - that it can become a solid contender in the rankings. Unless you've got cute little green aliens, it's hard to become an instant hit.

Visit my blog tomorrow for the complete list of ranked sites (mixed and native.)

Tateru Nino is a Second Life consultant and widely-read blogger who counts heads every week for New World Notes.  Contact her for more info on her mixed reality reports.

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) may be dropped in future Headcounts in favor of other sites. We do not count sites with camping chairs, or visitors in the orientation sims, as there seems to be little evidence to suggest that they will become visitors to the parent site - and if they do, we catch them when we headcount the site anyway.

We collect data four times per day for each site at 2am, 8am, 2pm and 8pm (times in SLT/US Pacific) plus/minus 1 hour. 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 likely to be significantly less than the estimated total visits.

Comments

[Nightbird Glineux]

Yay Greenies! I'm surprised that Rezzable is considered "mixed." I guess I'll have to wait for Hamlet's post to find out why.