Here's the top twenty most popular regions in Second Life last month, according to data compiled by Louis Platini of Metaverse Business, an invaluable service which uses a bot-driven avatar counting system to tally up unique visits. Here they are, listed according to ranking, minimum number of visitors at any given moment, maximum number, average, and ranking in November:
The top listing, Cidade Do Medo, Portuguese for "City of Fear" (official listing and SLurl here), is a Brazilian RPG sim that uses the popular DCS roleplaying engine, and covers numerous bases on the roleplaying front: "a dark-themed Brazilian RPG," reads the description, "where you can assume the role of an angel, demon, hunter, wizard, neko or vampire." By my rough count, at least 4 of the top 20 Second Life sims are targeted at Brazilian Second Lifers (Cidade do Medo, Lendas Urbanas, Brasil Sul, and Sol Hermosa), reflecting a disproportionately large presence in SL that's remained consistent over the last few years.
Based on content ratings, 14 of the top 20 were Mature, 4 rated Adult, and just 2 rated PG:
MATURE (MODERATE):
- Cidade do Medo
- Sexy Islands
- Lendas Urbanas
- AL SHELH
- tempura island
- Jaded Island
- Brasil Sul
- A Lesbian Paradise
- Platinum World
- Rawk The Docks
- Second China
- Schirr
- Sol Hermosa
- James Isle
ADULT:
- Gor-jus Events
- escort oasis
- Caladan Island
- Bondage Ranch
PG (GENERAL):
- Franks Place 2
- Sweethearts
Notes on potential bots: If you believe any of these regions are heavily bot-populated, state your concerns (civilly!) in Comments, and I'll contact the region owner, for confirmation.
So "unique visitors" would report high numbers for places many people visit once vs places with large fairly stable populations, then?
Posted by: Fogwoman Gray | Wednesday, January 05, 2011 at 02:57 PM
Actually, I meant to write "unique visits", not visitors, and just corrected accordingly. Louis' system doesn't track unique users per se, just counts how many are in a sim at any given moment. I'd look at the difference between minimum and maximum visitors to gauge a sim's volatility. Most of them range widely, which I suspect suggests their national character (busy only during Brazil peak hours, for example.)
Posted by: Hamlet Au | Wednesday, January 05, 2011 at 03:16 PM
How do you know it's unique visitors and not the same people visiting over and over again?
I can honestly say that there are only three places out of the 20, That I've even been to. Tempura island (because it's beautiful) and Franks Place and Sweethearts, (because I love to dance).
I had never even HEARD of most of these other places, so I'm quite curious how you came up with these statistics?
Posted by: Cellandra Zon. | Wednesday, January 05, 2011 at 04:28 PM
"Jaded Island": I have to go there just for the name...I've been jaded for the last two years in SL.
Posted by: Ignatius Onomatopoeia | Wednesday, January 05, 2011 at 05:36 PM
I must be totally out of touch.. cos I do not know any of the sims mentioned.
I ll visit them asap.
Posted by: Chantal Harvey | Wednesday, January 05, 2011 at 06:16 PM
will definately post a link to this page on my site. I'm certain my followers will find this article really useful.
Posted by: powerpoint themes | Thursday, January 06, 2011 at 02:13 AM
And how many of these are RedZone sims, one wonders? I know of at least one that definitely is, and another that I am pretty certain also uses the system. All of that juicy datascraping swelling the size and value of zFire's database!
One wonders how many of these would *remain* in the top 20 if it became widely known that their visitors were being scanned and harvested into a large off-world database outside of the jurisdiction of the LL ToS?
Posted by: Scylla Rhiadra | Monday, March 07, 2011 at 04:37 PM
Very interesting!
Posted by: powerpoint templates | Friday, February 28, 2014 at 09:58 AM