How well did RL corporate sites engage SL's community? Tateru counts heads...
|
Site |
Est avg hourly visits |
Est avg hourly visits (peak hrs) |
Estimated total weekly visits |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Pond | 68 | 28 | 11,436 (down 3.15%) |
| IBM | 41 | 43 | 6,960 (down 5.54%) |
| The L Word | 31 | 38 | 5,256 (up 6.57%) |
| Greenies Home | 26 | 40 | 4,392 (up 3.10%) |
| Pontiac | 23 | 19 | 3,912 (stable) |
| The Weather Channel | 16 | 16 | 2,736 (down 18.28%) |
| Nissan | 14 | 11 | 2,364 (down 9.22%) |
| Playboy | 13 | 21 | 2,268 (down 3.08%) |
| Virtual Holland | 12 | 10 | 2,124 (stable) |
| ABC Island | 8.71 | 7.43 | 1,464 (down 10.29%) |
IBM labor protest keeps staff/visitors away; Sun rising over Microsoft
The big labor protest that
took place at IBM's site on Wednesday, though it was
supposed to have lasted twelve hours, caused no noticeable increase at the sample
times (four samples per day, six hours apart). 
From
looking at the number of people at the IBM site at those times, there's nothing
to indicate that it even happened. The peak sample for the IBM regions that day
was 30.
It's quite possible that (outside of the sampling times) the protesters had the claimed 1,850 avatars, bananas and geometric shapes, but they've done little to disturb the overall IBM site traffic this week other than likely being responsible for the overall reduction in visits across the whole week.
Coming up - SUN, surf, and STA Travel, and what's missing from the chart this week.
The Weather Channel's site took a dip in visits this week as well, dropping a little more than 18%. Almost all of the activity at the Weather Channel island is focused around surfing and the social regulars on the surfing beach. Apparently this week wasn't a good one for the Weather Island surfing set - perhaps the surfing weather in the physical world was significantly better.
American Information Technology giant, Sun Microsystems has
been ramping visitor traffic up significantly after many weeks of lackluster
performance. With 1,416 visits this week (up 4.42%) it has inched in front of
Redmond software giant Microsoft (1,404) despite the latter's
own gain of 9.35% in the same period.
STA Travel is also in a growth phase, but is a site that is rather poorly reflected in the overall rankings. I spoke with the site manager, GlobetrekkerBob Lane, during the week. While we don't count the STA Orientation region (per our methodology below), much of the action at STA Travel is happening there.
"Our regular community hangs out there now," Lane said - and indeed, I have seen them there on numerous occasions, "They also help out when I don't have staff on duty."
From observation, STA Travel has quite the community core developing, and can be justifiably proud of their efforts. We just can't accurately reflect their results, while maintaining a fair comparison with other sites. Lane has very different goals from generating pure traffic - and seems quite satisfied with the site's overall performance and growth at the present time.
Absent from the chart this week, you will notice are all the native sites. We're running a separate set of charts for the native sites, and you will see those separately later this week. Stay tuned for that!
Visit my blog tomorrow for the complete list of ranked mixed-reality sites (native sites, you'll see later in the week).
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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