Active OpenSimulator User Community Estimated To Be 15K

The Hippo OpenSim viewer of Mana Janus is the most used among the OpenSimulator community, and as it happens, Mr. Janus tracks the number of people who've downloaded and logged in with it over the last 30 days, based on their MAC addresses (details here). By this month, the number of monthly users should exceed 10,000. Extrapolating from that figure, it's likely that the total amount of monthly active OpenSim community members is currently about 15,000 total. (I checked that rough estimate with a leading OpenSim developer, who said it sounded about right.) That's a pretty solid community of very early adopters, who've got involved since OpenSim launched in Janurary 2007. By contrast, however, Second Life now counts about 750,000 monthly active users and some 15 million accounts. While there's a tremendous level of innovation coming out of the OpenSimulator community, much of it out-pacing Linden Lab's efforts, I believe this stark contrast of user numbers suggests that Second Life will remain central to the metaverse experience, at least for the near future.

Comments

[Chaddington Boomhauer]

Is that stat counting SL logins? The Hippo Viewer is used by many people for all grids, so some SL-only users might be in those stats?

[Mo Hax]

Yes, many use Hippo for Second Life as well as OpenSim and vice versa, but it is a good rough estimate of how many might be using OpenSim. I regularly use Emerald or the SL Preview client to connect to my preview OpenSim instance that would be pretty impossible to count. Some more solid stats would be nice, but really tough to come by. Curious what gave that OS developer the impression that 15,000 sounds 'about right.' My feeling is that it is a little high. Maybe gabbing some numbers from the big OS grids would help get closer to a number with less margin for error.