Avian Fever: Virtual Chickens (Briefly) Added 60K Paying Users To Second Life's Economy!

Remember the Sion Chicken, that pokey but incredibly viral form of artificial life that briefly took Second Life by storm last year? Created and sold by Sion Zaius, the chickens grow and die, and Sion also sold the feed and other supplies to keep your chickens alive and thriving. The Lindens' latest economic report has a very interesting footnote to that, in the chart of unique Residents spending Linden Dollars in Second Life. That number is now 517K, an impressive proportion to SL's current 826K unique monthly users. Even more impressive: In June of last year, that number suddenly spiked to 525K from May 2009's total of 465K. The reason for that sudden jump? Says the Lindens:

The June 2009 spike is correlated to the dramatic rise in popularity of the Sion Chicken in that month.

To put this another way, the Chickens brought about 60,000 people into the economy. To put it still another way, if we assume the average revenue per user for Chicken owners was $2 in Linden Dollars, Mr. Sion grossed six figures in a single month. This is a striking example of a viral product, and suggests how SL content creators and the Lindens could bring more paying users into the economy. Unfortunately for Sion, the Chickens were too viral, and in the negative sense: There were so many of them (100K at one point!) they caused lag and a lot of social backlash.  (Annoyed by the lag caused next door, irked neighbors to chicken owners began organizing Sion hunting parties.)  And for those reasons and more, Chicken ownership plummeted as quickly as it had spiked (as evidenced by the number of SL consumers returning to previous levels the very next month.) Which suggests another lesson for other SL entrepreneurs: You want to be viral enough to continue steady sales, but no viral that your product starts hurting the larger economy.

If you haven't seen the O'Reilly presentation about Sion Chickens, by the way, here it is after the break. It will give a good sense of the Chicken backlash:

Comments

[Alicia Chenaux]

I'm still pissed off that my photos were used for that presentation without my permission. That's all I have to say.

[Tymmerie Thorne]

Correlation is NOT causation.

While, I appreciate your efforts to bring real numbers to your articles, you need to be careful of how you are interpreting the data. I have noticed a misuse of statistics in more than one article on NWN.

I am guessing that the true cause might be something else - after all the scion chicken fad lasted more than one month. The rise and drops are very steep. What were the numbers for the same month last year? What other events in and out of SL were happening? Were there changes in policies at LL?

[Miyo]

Well yea I thought Sion Chicken´s was very annoying in Second Life because the lag and so.

However this is a good example of viral marketing for sure.

It was just a big success indeed.

Second Life can be crazy sometimes! ;)

[Hamlet Au]

Tym, since the Lindens themselves made that correlation, it's reasonable to believe no other significant factors were at work to explain the spike -- after all, while they won't publicly report it, they can and do track sales of specific items. (I do know for sure they were tracking Chickens closely!) They're probably only citing the correlation so as to not specify how many customers Sion had. For myself, I can't think of any other factors that would cause such a brief but notable spike.

[Buckaroo Mu]

July is also, if I remember correctly, the finale of the Relay for Life in Second Life. LOTS of people raising money for the American Cancer Society. I can easily see this event causing a huge jump in L$-using users - in 2009, they raised something like $350,000 USD over the entire Relay.

That being said, I'm really incredibly glad that the damned chickens are gone. A sim-mate put up a chicken farm and every 20 seconds, anyone moving would suddenly fly across the sim before bouncing back to where they were. Thankfully, the Labs acted on my "Misuse of simulator resources" AR and made the owner take them up.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Blame the chicken owners all you want for performance issues, but if creators had a robust, up-to-date platform to work with, there wouldn't be any performance issues.

[Pappy Enoch]

Well, it am a proud day because NWN are a coverin' the REAL news of the fake world.

I ain't talkin' about the near-pokeyclipse today when them Lindens spilled Koolaid in the server cluster (whatever the heck that are), but them-there fake chikkins.

I misses Doc Zaius' ckikkins. They was good eatin, specially the purple eggs.

[Lem Skall]

@Alicia, get over it. Or gee, maybe I should be pissed off too, my name and picture are in there (on Pixeleen Mistral's Facebook page) and they are not blurred or something.

How many people should you also ask for permission then when you take your pictures? And DID you ask them all for their permission?

I agree it's not a simple matter. It can't become a world of free for all and changes have to be made in IP legislations to bring about the right balance. But, first of all, this case is most likely a case of fair use. And most of all, it's getting ridiculous when some amateur publishing some trivial thing on the Internet feels so entitled.

[Hamlet Au]

I dunno, Lem, the dude could have at least credited her blog in a title or something.

[Lem Skall]

Hamlet, he had a 5 minute presentation that used a lot of pictures from many people. Alicia's picture(s) (I recognized only one) was even only tangential to the subject and not the subject itself. I think it would be just as ridiculous to have a 5 minute clip and then tens of credits. Especially when the clip is not a work of art or a commercial product (and neither are Alicia's pictures) but just a presentation that is published for free.

Alicia is not even asking for credit, she is asking for permission. And it's one thing to just feel miffed, it's another thing to make a public statement. Demands like that only obstruct the creativity of others.

Like I said, there has to be a balance. And I think that demands like that are far off-balance.