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 | 150 | 158 | 25,308 (down 15%) |
| * City of Lost Angels | 81 | 88 | 13,740 (down 1%) |
| * Lost Gardens of Apollo | 81 | 103 | 13,644 (down 2%) |
| IBM | 63 | 65 | 10,692 (up 7%) |
| The Pond | 46 | 29 | 7,788 (down 16%) |
| The L Word | 37 | 50 | 6,360 (down 4%) |
| Pontiac | 33 | 49 | 5,544 (stable) |
| The Weather Channel | 16 | 26 | 2,772 (down 13%) |
| Playboy | 16 | 18 | 2,772 (down 7%) |
| Microsoft | 15 | 14 | 2,664 (stable) |
| Nissan | 14 | 11 | 2,472 (up 29%) |
| ABC Island | 14 | 17 | 2,436 (down 8%) |
| STA Travel | 8.36 | 13 | 1,404 (new) |
IBM, Pontiac, Microsoft hold their own; STA Travel, Ratepoint enter the ring
It's generally accepted wisdom among older Residents that the last week of June is not a good one for traffic, and this year has not given us any reason to change that assessment. It's Summer and schools are out, it's the last week of the financial year in many countries, and US Residents ready for the July 4th festivities. The Second Life Community Convention and the ramp-up for the SL Relay for Life also draw key people and attention away.
For the week ending June 24, the twenty corporate sites I'm tracking drew 51,600 visits; last week, however, they only attracted 48,948 total.
After the break, more analysis, and an introduction to our two new tracked locations.
Ratepoint adds a social space and live music venue to its facilities
Our tracked native sites are still holding the top ranks, though IBM is maintaining a comfortable residency in that space (topping native sites Midgar and The Shelter at 8,484 and 8,268, respectively), and is continuing to expand its holdings in Second Life at a steady pace, with more new islands appearing every week.
Extra publicity for Australian sites ABC Island and The Pond (both in the form of an The Australian Women's Weekly piece this last week and an Australian 60 Minutes report the previous week) didn't prevent a noticeable reduction in counted heads through the week this week.
New entries this week are STA Travel, sliding in at the number ten mixed-reality spot, just ahead of the NBA (1,152), and Ratepoint (204) coming in at 18th, level with Adidas (204).
STA Travel (pictured above) the student travel agency, is throwing themselves into new media outlets, such as Second Life, Facebook, and blogs. They maintain their own signup and orientation system and blog about both the site and their ongoing support and events for it on a website dedicated to their Second Life activities.
Ratepoint leverages new media to enhance the quality of online and offline businesses. Established last year, they embraced Second Life rapidly, introducing a system to allow the rating of people and places within Second Life. While they've been quiet for a while, we've noticed more activity at their island, and regular music events beginning to take place.
While many oldtimers can tell you about the effects on traffic of the last week of June, nobody seems very clear on what the first week of July bodes. It would seem quite odd to expect everything to snap right back, but odder things have certainly happened. Stay tuned next week, and we'll bring you the picture.
Visit my blog tomorrow for the complete list of ranked sites (mixed and native.)
Tateru Nino counts heads every week for New World Notes. Contact her for more info.
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.
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