2007 Predictions Recap: 4 Out of 10 Ain't Bad

I just launched an Open Forum for the future of Second Life in 2008-- go there to post your predictions.  I'll choose my favorite ten in a reader survey.

Before you do that, however, maybe you should check the predictions that were made for 2007.  Several were eerily on-target, a few more were near-misses... and the rest were inadvertent exercises in humility.  A round-up after the break.

Last year, I offered some of my own, and selected most from reader comments.  Here's the ten we voted on-- result tallies in that image link on the right.

Server problems force LL to cap concurrent logins during peak periods. (A. Celebrity)

- Correct, caps began in Spring, as I recall.

IPO track, or major company buys/partners with SL/ LL. (A. Chamberlin, M. Vig, H. Au, G. Llewelyn)

- Arguably correct, with the resource-sharing partnership announcement made with IBM in October.

Regular SLers-- people logging in weekly 3 months after account creation-- passes 1 million. (H.Au)

- Off by half-- it's now a bit over half a million.

Clay Shirky says, "OK, maybe SL's not as over-hyped as I thought in 2006." (H. Au)

- Not that I'm aware of.

Peak concurrency eclipses 200,000 (H. Au)

- Off by quite a lot-- currently it's just under 60,000.

A non-profit charity raises US$100K through an in-world fundraising event. (R. Riel)

- Correct, thanks to the American Cancer Society, with $15,000 to spare.

Second Life-based income becomes taxable. (R. Ginsburg)

- No specific US policy posted. (Though it was true in Australia back in November 2006.)

SL is ported to a next gen game console. (C. Creeggan)

- Not exactly, though hacking the Wii for SL is arguably a near-miss.

A "Botter" crisis forces real Residents out of the world. (R. Baysklef)

- Arguably true-- my story on that later.

Linux distros feature the SL client as part of the code. (G. Llewelyn)

- Not that I'm aware of.

Of the reader suggested/voted questions, I'm calling 40% as Correct or close enough.  Considering all the variable at play, not bad at all. 

As for my own ten predictions, let's see:

- Peak concurrency will eclipse 100,000. - No
- Total registered accounts will exceed 10 million. - Yes
- Regular users-- defined as people who log in at least once a week three months after creating an account-- will exceed 1 million. - No
- Accessing Second Life will be made illegal in at least one country. - No, though the policy changes on sexual "age play" and gambling seem to have been moves to prevent that from happening.
- A Congressperson will formally introduce a bill which, if passed, directly impacts Second Life. - No
- The Second Life viewer will be open-sourced. - Yes
- A major party political candidate will open an official Presidential headquarters in Second Life. - Thanks to Senator Gravel and a small gold dragon, Yes.
- Linden Lab will announce plans to IPO. - No
- Linden Lab and/or Second Life will be purchased by a major corporation. - No
- Clay Shirky will write or say something to the effect of, "OK, I guess this thing's not as over-hyped as I thought it was last year." - No

I did worse than my readers with 30% correct.

Think you can prophesy better?  Try your hand in my Open Forum.

Comments

[Seraphine]

Hi Hamlet. I've completed the "Tag" you gave me to post 8 Random Things about me, and I forwarded it to eight others. Hugs-

[Tateru Nino]

Hmm. Caps were *implemented* but I don't believe they were ever used. Linden Lab said they'd post an announcement if they ever had cause to turn the cap on. This apparently did not take place.

[Hamlet Au]

During peak periods, you're often given a log-in wait time-- I'd say that also qualifies as a cap.

[Dedric Mauriac]

RE: SL is ported to a next gen game console.

Um ... Can't you run SL on the linux partition of PS3?

[rockwell ginsbErg]

glad that my prediction didn't exactly come true. i don't want to pay the irs anymore of my hard earned money! happy new year hamlet!

[T_S_Kimball]

Debian I believe has SL available for download via apt-get, though not directly part of a distro CD/DVD (obviously, its too much of a moving target for that).

Source:

http://www.byteme.org.uk/secondlife-amd64/apt-get-a-secondlife.html

--TSK

[Benjamin Duranske]

I think it is actually pretty well accepted that income made in virtual worlds is taxable -- at least when it is withdrawn as dollars. The big question for most tax experts is whether it is taxable before it is withdrawn as "real" money.

[Hamlet Au]

Yeah, I'd wondered about that prediction's phrasing-- I think it's meant to be when the IRS explicitly says L$ income is taxable, just as they say about contest winnings, casino payouts, and other non-standard forms of income listed in our 1040s.