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 | 147 | 163 | 24,792 (down 6%) |
| * Lost Gardens of Apollo | 80 | 118 | 13,596 (up 2%) |
| * City of Lost Angels | 80 | 84 | 13,488 (down 4%) |
| The Pond | 67 | 29 | 11,292 (up 25%) |
| IBM | 48 | 52 | 8,196 (down 2%) |
| Pontiac | 29 | 46 | 4,968 (down 12%) |
| The L Word | 24 | 31 | 4,056 (down 9%) |
| Greenies Home | 23 | 39 | 3,948 (down 10%) |
| Nissan | 17 | 13 | 2,868 (up 2%) |
| The Weather Channel | 17 | 22 | 2,856 (stable) |
| Virtual Holland | 13 | 15 | 2,220 (down 6%) |
| Microsoft | 13 | 18 | 2,208 (down 21%) |
| ABC Island | 10 | 12 | 1,776 (down 10%) |
Grid problems this week do nobody any favors, but The Pond continues to make a splash.
Numerous operating failures in the bowels of the grid impacted everything this week, locking many out and taking regions down.
Despite all this, Telstra/Big Pond's The Pond has gone from
strength-to-strength this week, increasing the gap between them and the
next-nearest mixed-reality site, IBM - and this trend seems
likely to continue as traffic levels and the grid start to stabilize.
The Pond's new rentals program, which we wrote about last week, certainly seems to be a winner for the normally staid and conservative Australian ISP. Not only are they increasing their reach and profile among Second Life Residents, but the costs (only a drop in the overall marketing bucket) are being subsidized by Second Life Residents themselves. As it happens, Big Pond, who have a spotty RL reputation from their ongoing tussles with government regulators, are so far putting on a darn fine showing in Second Life, even turning to be sterling landlords.
Coming up: New chart entry Manpower. Skilled at bringing people to positions, worldwide, can they bring people to their island in Second Life? Also more about Coldwell Banker's $3 million dollar house. Coldwell Banker drew 792 visitors this week, but how many of those were interested in the house? Go on, guess. Answer after the fold.
Last week we took a brief look at Coldwell Banker's $3 million dollar house. Actually, it's a fine idea, all things considered. I know I'd be keen on this sort of thing - if only it didn't actually cost, you know, three million dollars. Most people who've been house-hunting will tell you that the making appointments, and driving around to see a place that is almost immediately not suitable for you is a pest. I love the idea of being able to give myself a quick tour and talk things over with the family, before we waste our time and the estate-agent's time on the travel and live walk-through.
But... three million dollars? That's... a bit out of my price range (and yours, I bet). That's not a realistic item. That's a stunt, and the traffic figures for the week (a mere 153 estimated visitors this week) seem to bear that out. It's only marginally more successful than British apparel brand Reebok (120) - a subsidiary of Germany's Adidas (204).
Standing with Manpower's helpful staff avatar, Buford Philbin.
This week, we're introducing new site Manpower who, despite the issues with the Second Life grid this week, came in at a respectable 896, putting them between AOL Pointe (996) and well, Coldwell Banker (792).
Manpower HQ is staffed 24x7 at the present time, and there's always at least one staff member in attendance and usually one or more interested visitors looking around.
"Manpower feels it important to have this island covered all the time," offered Buford Philbin, one of Manpower's staff avatars, "With someone present, visitors always have someone to interact with."
Manpower's only very new on the Second Life scene, and their presence isn't yet very well known, but it seems likely that their attention to actual staff presence will put them in front of any competition that doesn't start on that basis.
While Manpower's services in Second Life are initially quite limited, they are planning a rapid expansion towards offering their full range of services in the virtual world.
Notes:
Due to multiple outages this week, we were not able to obtain every sample, and large numbers of regions were down on some other occasions. In those cases we've reused data from the corresponding sample period in the previous week, so as to give a better picture of the trends resulting from the outages and issues, rather than allowing the zeros to drag the prevailing trends out of line.
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.
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