Monthly unique returning SL users -- red numbers extrapolate growth to end of 2010
Today the Lindens are publishing their latest quarterly report, and the key metric is the one you see above: Monthly unique users with repeat logins. As of the end of last March, that number reached 826K, growth of about 66K new returning users since last December. If that rate continues -- and as with anything about SL stats, that's a fairly big if -- Second Life will have close to a million regular users. Quite a milestone in itself, one that I frankly thought would happen in 2008, before the 500K plateau phase hit.
The reported reason for that growth is also interesting: The Lindens attribute it to their AdSense-driven advertising campaigns, one of which was a play on the James Cameron movie Avatar, the other a mixed reality campaign more or less directed against the "fat guy in a basement" meme. Public relations Linden Peter tells me both campaigns were about equally effective. "The real driver of the growth is the search ads." The rise in search queries, of course, were driven by massive interest in Avatar. The movie, the Linden report argues, "created a halo effect around 3D immersion. As a result, searches and organic traffic to Second Life web properties increased in the quarter." With Avatar no longer in theaters, the question is if the halo will persist. While growth is good, this is still painfully slow progress compared to other successful worlds, more akin to trench warfare, than viral buzz.
I know I have seen an increase in those newcomers who T Linden characterizes as "consumers", differentiating them from "creatives" who are not currently being courted by the marketing. Evidently that is planned for a later date.
I know that I have seen a big exodus of skilled creators, and am having more difficulty finding well made items in SL. Search on XStreet reveals a lot of things built one to two years ago, or new business-in-a-box quality items.
Inworld search is functionally pretty useless, with boolean searches not being supported. There is going to be a need for content if LL plans on keeping these "consumers" interested. I will be most fascinated where that content will come from and how anyone will find it.
Posted by: Fogwoman Gray | Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 11:23 AM
so LL claims success after;
1. using anothers IP unpaid for- Camerons Avatar "copy" Ad Banner "campaign". INMU still uses it--but then we know how many verbal creators think of IMVU;)
2. Hijacking others IP value via new TOS/Policies
yep, gonna be a Myspace or Geocities of quality very soon.
but at least M makes "art" for the consumers... and you can buy it at slx.:)
Posted by: cube inada | Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 11:57 AM
Wasn't it a million in concurrency that they were actually after? Or am I misremembering?
Posted by: Tateru Nino | Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 01:13 PM
It is my hope that movies like Avatar will set the bar impossibly high for VR in the public imagination.
Public demand for naturalistic, immersive VR might prod more R&D into making it something consumers take for granted rather than a backwater for visionaries and hobbyists.
Posted by: Arcadia Codesmith | Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 01:23 PM
Extrapolating data is best left to people who understand that a single unusually high data point does not indicate a long term trend.
http://xkcd.com/605/
Posted by: Jacek Antonelli | Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 07:33 PM
That's exactly why I wrote this qualifier:
"If that rate continues -- and as with anything about SL stats, that's a fairly big if"
Posted by: Hamlet Au | Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 08:32 PM
Hamlet: I saw the qualifier. It doesn't absolve you of the fact that you made a sensational claim in the headline based on your own garbage statistics, then based your entire article around it. That's extremely shoddy journalism.
The headline should have been "Second Life On Track to Have 1M Regular Users This Year -- Except Not, Because I Just Made Up The Numbers So I'd Have A Story."
Posted by: Jacek Antonelli | Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 09:34 PM
It's hardly a sensational claim, read the full report, most of the trends are pretty good. With 826K monthly uniques already and eight months to go, 1M is actually a conservative forecast. But in the event I'm wrong, I'll be happy to admit so here.
Posted by: Hamlet Au | Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 10:04 PM