Second Life Concurrency Exceeds 70K-- Is SL's User Growth Plateau At An End, Too?

Last week Sunday, SL's maximum concurrency was 69,574, and in the last half hour, it's grown to at least 70,821.  With 1000+ additional Residents in-world, it's safe to say the Summer's concurrency plateau is at an end.  This returns us to a larger question-- is Second Life's growth plateau at an end, as well? 

According to an industry rule of thumb, the total number of an MMO's active monthly users is 10x the peak concurrency, which suggests there are now some 700,000+ regular SL users.  Which would be a significant milestone, because as longtime readers know, the number of monthly active users has remained at about 550,000 since July 2007, and according to last known reports, hasn't budged much since.

It was 532,606 in May 2008, and since that time, Linden Lab no longer reports monthly active users on their Economics Stats page, instead preferring to list total active user hours. Indeed, last week when Venture Beat asked company CEO M. Linden how many users Second Life has, he replied, "We focus more on the simultaneous users and usage hours."  The Stats page now lists 873,038 as "Residents Logged-In During Last 30 Day" since September 17th, but this just deepens the confusion, because it's unclear if this figure includes accounts created within that period.  (According to Tateru Nino's stats counter, there's an average of 12,000 new accounts spawned every day.)

I'm checking with M. Linden for more clarification, which is hopefully forthcoming.

Comments

[Ann Otoole]

Yes it wll keep growing.

Want to see growth explode beyond the current system capacity?

LL funds a cable tv marketing campaign with a commercial that shows a hot babe looking all rl...
"So why is Secoondlife different?
Well I can be who *I* want to be. I get to choose and if I don't like what is available I can *make it* and then wear it.
(as each persona is mentioned the subject flips into that appearance)
I can be me! (my real life self)
I don't have to be a bug eyed looking person. Unless I want to.
I don't have to look like a anime cartoon. Unless I want to.
I can be a drqagon.
I can be a wizard.
I can be a night elf.
I can be a vampyre.
I can be a queen.
I can be a fox.
I can be anything I can imagine.
Anywhere else and you get the menu that everyone else has already been there and done that. And you probably have to pay a monthly fee to be there.

Secondlidfe-- Where you really can *free* to be whatever you want to be.

Including yourself.

[Tateru Nino]

Official peak was 70,911 at 1:55PM Pacific.

[rightasrain]

Concurrency is great, but you can still only get 60 people or so on a sim at one time. Concurrency is great, but if the SL economy isn't growing then what is the benefit of having more people on the grid at one point in time? And where are the noobies? Reg is not growing anywhere as fast as new islands.

[Paisley Beebe]

Where are they all going anyway? not too gigs..see my blogpost on it, http://paisleybeebe.com

[Corcosman Voom]

I logged on shortly after 2PM Sunday and saw the same number as on your screenshot.

Logged on, teleported, rezzed stuff....what's going on? Shouldn't I be whining about the poor performance at peak load level?

And a comment about new people. I run into new users almost daily. I have a new user less than a week old on my Friends list. She is logging on (she was on this morning) and having a blast learning how to build. 3D is completely new to her and she is really exuberant about building. She's having fun.

[Caliburn Susanto]

All for publicity, not performance. Cram all those people onto the grid and the databases struggle, things take forever to rez, textures won't load until you've gotten totally bored waiting, and everywhere you look little clouds of fog are zooming around with name tags.

And no, it isn't me. Computer, video, and connection are all smokin'. It's the databases getting millions of requests at the same moment.

Get rid of the cheapskate freeloaders who only camp (ban camping, dammit!), the bot camping farmers, and the free accounts. I will never stop saying so until performance is smooth, fast, and databases are lag and error free.

[T_S_Kimball]

Well, I'll happily eat my own statements a few weeks ago if this continues.

However, having a concurrency jump while still being stable is more important. From the above comments that does still appear spotty.

Please get an update from Mark regarding his stability efforts while you're at it; It's the core of his 'agenda' as CEO so it would be interesting to know what's going on there.

--TSK