New World Newsfeed: The BBC's Wrong/Misleading Second Life Report Rehashed on New Hampshire Public Radio

New Hampshire Public Radio's "Word of Mouth" program has an extended rehash of the BBC's woefully wrong-headed article on Second Life from last week, inviting the article's author, BBC intern Lauren Hansen, to explain/defend her thesis on air. (I briefly appear in a pre-recorded portion.) I listened just long enough to note that Hansen continues mistaking total SL registration numbers with active users, claiming that the 2006 hype wave brought "millions" of them. (In a supreme irony, this is also the misunderstanding that caused most reporters to over-hype Second Life.) By her logic, that would mean there are now over 17 million Second Life users. Anyway, I give "Word of Mouth" props for at least contextualizing her with other perspectives -- listen and respond here if you're so inclined.

Comments

[Kitty O'Toole]

Oh Wagner, I really hoped that this nonsense wasn't going to make a return visit...

Ah well, I guess what matters in the opinion of the Second Life community itself, not some intern who obviously just doesn't 'get' SL.

=^..^=

[Kitty O'Toole]

OOH OOH! Look! M Linden has posted a response!!

[Pooky Amsterdam]

I had seen Reporter Hansens' request in a Help A Reporter Out post specifically for people who "had used Second Life, and now no longer wanted to." The reporter had her slant on the story well before she conducted her interviews, in fact, she looked ONLY for stories to support this myopic notion of Second Life.

[LittleLostLinden]

Actually, I somewhat agree with Erick. Unfortunately, if everyone else would have looked at that map that was posted, and realized that half of the map is bots and campers, then the map, does not seem very impressive at all.

Anyone who has done any research at all into bots\campers, knows that there are just as many of them now as there has ever been, and they continue to grow.

And, you can not report them. And the Lindens only selectively stop a few of the worse offenders from time to time, but that is it. The problem is still massive.

Anytime you logon and you see 75,000 online, you can be assured it really only means 40,000 real people online with the rest being bots and campers. This is a fact but most people seem to ignore it.

Erick, if you want a story, I mean a real SL story with real fraud tied into it, you should do yourself a favor and research SL Bots and Campers. Then, you will have a real story.

This has been ongoing for so long now it is pathetic. Lindens know we have an issue with bots and campers and they will admit to having a problem, but they will never, ever, admit to how incredibly large the problem really is.

I have been doing research on it and the Lindens are still just ignoring it because they know it will bring down the daily logon numbers tremendously. I've tried reporting bots and campers but what happens is they will just tell you they are scanning search results, which, they are only doing a small amount of. There is no way on earth they could be missing the bots and campers that I am finding every single day if they were doing even a halfway decent job of locating them.

And, yes, there was a story a while back about how the Lindens admitted the numbers in the past quarter had taken a drop due to the bots and campers that THEY had discovered.

This amount, which affected there numbers in a major why, is truly, only a tiny amount of bots and campers that were stopped.

If they would have stopped ALL or near all of the bots and campers, the drop in current users online would have split almost in half. This will never be admitted, and this is where the story is, if you take the time to do the research. Just thought you might like to know in case you wanted to do a followup story to your original story.