66K And Holding: Now SL Concurrency Growth Plateaus, Too

Yesterday the world's maximum concurrency hit a new record-- 66,527, according to Tateru-- but this growth in peak usage belies the more substantial trend.  Up until the end of March, user concurrency had been growing roughly 500 per week, on average.  This was the optimistic upside to the plateau in monthly active users, which has hovered at around 550,000 for nearly a year.  Since April, however, daily max concurrency has usually been lingering between 60-66K, with no discernible or consistent move beyond that window.  Hard to say why, just yet.  A plateau in aggregate user interest?  Or is 60-66K the range where the system lag gets so bad, a substantial number of users begin logging off in frustration?  Then again, the chief culprit could just be the coming of Summer (at least in North America and the EU), which traditionally translates into less online time.

Comments

[Truthseeker]

Well, it's also no secret that the system requirements have been climbing steadily (protestations about "turning off atmoshperic shaders!!" aside...)

Maybe, just for the time being, SL has basically reached everyone who has *both* the desire to come into the Grid *and* a machine pimp-enough to run the client?

[Pierre-Olivier Carles]

I guess the current system is near to its max with 70K (some tech guys say 100K)... It could be a - good - reason why we had so many troubles in Q1.

If I'm right, being blocked so far from figures that could be considered as a massive adoption are really not good news. Whatever is the value of the content we'll produce in a near future, it will make the system availability even worse... and the user experience awful.

I hope I'm wrong :-)

[Stone Semyorka]

Remember the decades of the latter half of the 20th century when people didn't watch as much TV in the summer? Probably a similar effect here.

But, new this year is the horrible economic situation. It costs a bundle for most people just to get to work now. And we are beginning to feel the pass-through of transportation costs in goods and services.

There are hidden as well as obvious costs in taking up residency in Second Life. A lot of people might be hunkering down and not spending the money to join us in-world as frequently as they might have in better times.