In Recent Years, Few SLers Attended SL Anniversary Events -- Declining Sense of SL as a Unified Virtual Community?

Linden Lab isn't directly sponsoring any 9th year anniversary celebrations for Second Life (also called SL9B), which has caused a fair amount of community outrage, so here's a harsh but necessary virtual reality check: In recent years, from what we can tell, hardly any members of the SL community attended Second Life's official anniversary events.

We know this thanks to SL blogger Daniel Voyager, who has a dutiful record of SL attendance:

• In 2009, when there were about 742,000 active SL users, only 17,712 attended SL6B -- about 2% of the userbase.
• In 2010, when there were about 800,000 active SL users, just 2,774 SLers rode the tram system associated with SL7B. We don't have total visitor stats, but let's be generous and assume 10x that number attended. That would be 27,774 visitors -- which would be about 3% of the total userbase.
• Back in 2006, when SL had about 200,000 active users, about 38,000 unique users reportedly turned up for SL3B. That's nearly 20% of the total userbase, much higher than recent years.

Linden Lab didn't release visitor stats for last year's SL8B, but given the massive lag, more sparse attendance was also likely the case. This doesn't necessarily mean more SLers weren't interested in attending. Many probably tried to attend, but couldn't, because the official anniversary sims were at capacity. Still, the upshot is the same.

In any case, it's very notable that anniversary attendance has been declining from its apparent peak in 2006. Why such a decline? Here's my hypothesis:

As SL's userbase has grown, there are fewer SLers who have a deep affinity with SL as a unified virtual community, and more who are just interested in going to their favorite nightclub or roleplaying sim or whatever sub-community they're affiliated with.

If I'm right, that's not necessarily a bad thing -- as a virtual world/game grows and ages, it's probably inevitable that newcomers will feel less invested than those who were there in its early years. Anyway, either due to its architecture, or the diffuse nature of its user community, or both, few SLers expressed active interest in celebrating Second Life anniversaries.

And this decline in numbers is probably another reason why Linden Lab is declining to be directly involved in SL9B. It's a time-consuming effort on their part, and in the end, since most of their customer base doesn't make the effort to attend, their resources are probably better spent elsewhere. Which again is why it's probably for the best that the community take the lead and celebrate SL9B as they see fit, across the grid -- better hundreds of smaller celebrations that dozens can each attend, rather than dozens of sims that few can actually access.

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Comments

[shockwave yareach]

Wait, wait... so someone walking instead of relying on a vehicle -- because vehicles in laggy areas are prone to malfunction -- isn't counted as actually being there? And rather than note they don't have valid statistics, they are basing company decisions on known bad stats that they do have?

I need to write a book for future business classes. All I have to do is look to LL and get all the real world examples of how NOT to run a company I can dream of. First, you raise your prices. Then you fail to deliver the product you sold by changing verbage on a Tos. Then you drive out the deep pocketed customers while showing new users what dismal treatment they can expect if they buy land. Then you can destroy the educational and nonprofit applications while simultaneously ruining the economy, making it difficult for anyone to remain in SL for any reason except nostalgia.

[Mistletoe]

Then they should just say that it's a too much time-and-resource-consuming effort on their part, rather than peeing on our collective leg and telling us it's raining by saying "We're making it ALL ABOUT YOU!" Hell their spin was so unclear you had to go and ask Pete to confirm if that meant there's no single location for SL9B.

[Cindy Bolero]

Well said Shockwave!

SL has so much content and capability, yet everything we've tried to do after spending enormous amounts of tier and labor, LL works just as hard against us.

Regarding SL9B, what a shame. It is the one event we got to know more of the community and ran into friends we hadn't seen in years. Plus the networking was valuable time spent.

What are they up to now that they can't offer resources towards SL9B? I hope not another expensive mistake like Enterprise or V2.

Wishful thinking would be they are working hard on a new viewer that actually makes sense for new users and estate/community managers.

[Ghosty Kips]

"As SL's userbase has grown, there are fewer SLers who have a deep affinity with SL as a unified virtual community, and more who are just interested in going to their favorite nightclub or roleplaying sim or whatever sub-community they're affiliated with."

Riiiight. It wouldn't have anything to do with Linden Lab alienating the user base to the point no one gives a crap anymore. It's gotta be because there's MORE users who could care LESS. Gotta be.

[Metacam Oh]

SL4B they sent out one of those blue dialogue notices saying come see Philips keynote, there were about 30,000 people on, and 4 sims that could hold 40 avatars each.

[Eric Hackathorn]

IMHO, Second Life cannot survive as a "unified community" with its current walled garden business model. The grid is starting to rot! Many people have been exploring other hosting options working to create the reality of a distributed metaverse. A real community needs room to grow and unfortunately LL lost its path.

[Pussycat Catnap]

Those statistics are -NOT- LLs stats, but our user made ones. They are therefore guesses.

Hamlet is using them to extrapolate a trend and a logical explanation. And he is more than likely right: attendance probably going down.

But I would also guess that very few folks ride those trains.

None of this really invalidates the value of an Expo though. Not everyone attends a world's faire - but it can still have impact.

The point is that trend-setters show up, look around, and make statements and judgements which others then follow.

The value of an Expo is served if it can cause people to cross community lines. This is valuable to a platform as it helps the platform stay vibrant by showing people other forms of interest they could pursue.

The more people who cross lines, the more vibrant things appear, and therefore the easier it becomes to get both retention stable and new accounts coming in.

Expos aim at trend setters... so if only 2 or 3% or whatever of the total population show up - that can still be quite a success. In a marketing campaign, it would be an impact worth celebrating. Especially if it then becomes the talk of the town - which SLxB has always become in past.

[Pussycat Catnap]

"IMHO, Second Life cannot survive as a "unified community" with its current walled garden business model."

One reason to support mainland over estate sims. :)

LLs seems to realize this with all the pushes of late to get people onto premium accounts. We need to see each other more often. It is just too bad that another side of LLs business doesn't see this and so doesn't see why an Expo of the grid has value.

[Hamlet Au]

"Those statistics are -NOT- LLs stats, but our user made ones"

Actually, no, they're from Linden Lab. For example, the visitor stats for SL6B were mentioned by Philip during his SL6B talk.

[Ann Otoole InSL]

Lag. LL regions cannot handle more than 30 max. And the glow. The overuse of glow just makes those slb regions look stupid.

That is why people stopped going. LL refuses to adopt proper build regulations and there is something wrong with their region code anyway.

Not to mention they probably have SL in end of life maintenance mode with minimal effort to bleed the last bit of money out.

[Eve Kazan]

i'm tottally agree with your article Hamlet !

i love familly diner, but with boyfriend's familly, friend 's familly, neighbor's familly, nothing works, nobody hear what the old grandma says ... young people are disrespectful ... little friendly meeting is better !

Sry for the funny comparison ^^

I just hope that Linden people will participate to these little meeting :)

[Orca Flotta]

One must be really really bored in order to even think about attending those lagfests. Like with many older SLers my SLife is usually just much too busy to sacrifice precious online time for such senseless happenings.
I was once at the SL burning man festival, had enough of all the broohaha after around 10 minutes and left again.

I think Hamlet is spot on with his diagnosis, the new n00bs just don't have that pioneer feeling anymore and we old salts have found our own communities which don't have much in common with the SL residentship as a whole.

Also LL has let us down too much and too often for us to muster any motivation for doing their job and organizing their own birthday parties.

[Mistletoe]

Actually Eve's "family dinner" analogy and Pussycat's statement of percentages makes me think. By this logic, a really good local restaurant with fantastic food and a welcoming atmosphere isn't very successful, as it's only attended by a small percentage of the population. Plus, I mean, all the time it takes for the food to cook, what a lagfest.

Apparently, if we go by this article's logic, a restaurant is really only a success and worth visiting if Billions and Billions are Served.

[Tateru Nino]

And the 2006 stat was only for one location out of the dozens of community-run sites across the grid that year.

As soon as the event was centralised (2007) attendance fell down to Burning Life levels, which is hardly surprising if you think about it.

[Missy Restless]

Nobody goes there anymore - it's too crowded

[Shug Maitland]

I prefer to see this as LL giving us the opportunity to take a more innovative and active part in SL9B *as a community*. It is up to us now to show what we can do.
Shug takes off her rose tinted glasses and climbs off her soap box.

[Adromaw]

Even if the sims were at an attendance close to 100 with each user spending at least a couple of hours, those numbers are perceptually not so bad.

Also taking into account that the anniversary is a limited short time event, it can't be held year round (and shouldn't).

If the sims are instanced and you can keep cramming people in without splitting friends, perhaps it'll be healthier.

"rather than dozens of sims that few can actually access." <- sounds like that is one of the key issues with the events and pair that with marketing reach and actually garnering interest.

[Graham Mills]

Coming at it from one direction, surely it shouldn't be financially or technically beyond the Lab's capabilities to shard?

Coming at it from the opposite direction, maybe it is time that the SL brand took a backseat and there were interest-specific channels (with programming) such as Linden Games, Linden Music, Fashion, Education, etc with the totality reverting to Linden World?

[Moni Duettmann]

I have never been invited to participate in any events. I always got notice of forthcomimg celebrations, when it was too lat to apply. So... in my view these vents were limited to some sort of elite users, no chance to get in there.

[Rin Tae]

The point about the communities and that those are very much divided and don't interact much with each other is right. The problem has been there since I have been in SL and it grew bigger together with SL growing bigger nad more communities apearing. It has no reached a point where people spend their SLives in one place and only interact with people in their community and get the idea, that there is nothing else outthere to see.
They usualyl got surprised when dragged to otehr places what is both funny to see and sad.

It is however also a good point on why those celebrations ahve been so great because everyone who visited, had the chance to see lots of what is going on.

The sad thing here is, that since 2007/08 the celebrations declined in quality. Not so much the quality of what the people build there, but the quality of set up by LL as well as their support and involvment. Instead of nicely build places with a way we could walk along and vitness all the different builds and communites we got clustered up, mainland-like parecel-buiilds that made it pure chance for the visitor to find something they would be interested in.

No wonder it was laggy considering that everything was more or less on top of each other and pushed so close together. Add people to this and you got the problem.

I don't wonder that less people visited those celebrations in recent years since I have, and so have seen how it looked. But this is not a comunity problem of people seemingly not caring .. it is one of LL shruging it off completly after they reduced their effort to almost nothing already in the previous celebrations and all things regarding SL traditions in general (and I would also say the lost drive to solve the technical problems of allowing more people to be in one spot). But then ... LL does not have a marketing team or those marketing people have no idea of what they are doing ... sad .. sad .. sad ..

One interesting fact is, that when I told that LL has called off the birthday celebration to people who I know have not visited or cared much about the celebrations in the previous years, they too said that it is a bad sign and a grave mistake by LL.

And .. I never rode the tram since ... don't lag and drive ;P

[Madeliefste Oh]

"As SL's userbase has grown, there are fewer SLers who have a deep affinity with SL as a unified virtual community, and more who are just interested in going to their favorite nightclub or roleplaying sim or whatever sub-community they're affiliated with."

Who made us feel less involved?
When I arrived here in 2007 LL made me feel involved. I was part of this community and I wanted to contribute to our world. By buying a piece of land you owned a part of this virtual world.

Then under M. Linden the policy changed. The land Philip sold us as something we own, was not something we owned any longer. The only thing you had bought by buying land in SL, turned out to be 'the right to pay tier'.

The whole spirit changed, we were no longer the residents involved in this adventure with LL, we became LL's customers. It's LL themselves who created an 'us and them' culture, in stead of one big 'SL culture' were LL and the residents are in together.

Take in account that the customer service and communication with customers have never been the strongest point of LL. They let us fall so often, they have caused so many frustrations...
So why should we pop up at their anniversary? It's their party, not ours.

[Tateru Nino]

"So why should we pop up at their anniversary? It's their party, not ours."

It's always been ours. The Lab just borrowed it for a few years. Now its given it back.

[Orca Flotta]

The point about the communities and that those are very much divided and don't interact much with each other is right. The problem has been there since I have been in SL and it grew bigger together with SL growing bigger nad more communities apearing.

-----------------------------

I don't see that as a problem at all. It's just natural. Why should my community (sailors) interact with the Meroos breeders community or the vampire community? The typical day only has like 24 hours more or less, even less than those we spend usually in SL. And when I'm in SL I spend most of my online time organizing or attending sail races. In my avie's spare time I have a café and art gallery to run (oh, that's another community LOL).

I believe most of the older, more involved (immersed) residents have a schedule similar to mine and just don't have the time or seeing a reason why they should get involved in aimless noobie activities like birthday parties and festivals and stuff.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

I think there are multiple valid points raised here.

To my mind, the key factors are planning, inclusiveness and passion.

An event that is poorly planned can still be great, but that's entirely dependent on chance (and chances are not good).

An event that is exclusive rather than inclusive can be great, but only for those who don't feel excluded.

And you can stage a great event that you're not passionate about, but more often it is a cynical, hollow farce.

I've stated before that Linden Lab should continue to sponsor the event, but if they're not enthusiastic about it, won't give it the logistic support it needs, and insist on excluding anything even mildly controversial, then perhaps they're not the right people to host the event.

And perhaps they're not the right people to host a virtual world.

[shockwave yareach]

The SLxB is the ONLY real marketing push LL has ever had. It permitted those outside of the grid to see what happened in their big Expo once a year, via people's blogs and flickrs and youtubes and a host of other venues. By saying "ah, who gives a d***?" and cancelling the whole thing, they give up almost all their positive spin and marketing.

They give it up to any swinging d*** who walks along and decides to launch a birthday bash in the adult sim of "Cornholetopia", where the customer always comes first. And as ribald as my pun may be, it is STILL superior to what LL's approach to customer relations; in which the customer not only doesn't come first, but isn't allowed to come at all!

And they wonder why people are quitting and new members aren't signing up? Makes one wonder what sort of skillbase is necessary to work in the ivory towers of Lindenland. How can any bunch create such a wonderful nirvana like SL and then actively turn it into a hades?

[Ajax Manatiso]

It just shows the level at which LL has alienated their customer base. Sure your half dozen support requests are unanswered and never will be answered but come to our party! Its not what YOU want, its what We want -- don't you get it???

[virtual life game]

I think the virtual world topic will be bigger and bigger in the future. Their comes a time where we only life in virtual worlds.

[Hitomi Tiponi]

One of the big problems with SLB has been having performance/DJing areas alongside user build sims. This did cause bad lag - but could I please dispel one falsehood.

I never had any problem logging into the SL8B sims, even the busy ones. Admittedly with my netbook things could get a bit slow, but on a decent laptop/pc (with a spec less than Hamlet's alienware laptop) things worked fine, and I thoroughly enjoyed wandering around the builds with some friends, riding dolphins, playing the mouse game and being fired out of cannons - it will be sorely missed.

[Pussycat Catnap]

""Those statistics are -NOT- LLs stats, but our user made ones"

Actually, no, they're from Linden Lab. For example, the visitor stats for SL6B were mentioned by Philip during his SL6B talk."

Then your article needs a correction.

You list Daniel Voyager as the one tracking the train ride, not LLs.

[Pussycat Catnap]

"I prefer to see this as LL giving us the opportunity to take a more innovative and active part in SL9B *as a community*. It is up to us now to show what we can do.
Shug takes off her rose tinted glasses and climbs off her soap box."

No central location. So as far as I'm concerned, there is no SL9B, at all. Dead. Nada. Move on.

Pointless.
***************************************

"The sad thing here is, that since 2007/08 the celebrations declined in quality. Not so much the quality of what the people build there, but the quality of set up by LL as well as their support and involvment."

Do what they do in the linden home sims. Disable the ability to put an item for sale.

Quality will improve, when folks cannot just 'dial it in' by rezzing a copy of their shop.

[Iggy]

To hear Philip Rosedale once at Burning Life, a friend and I had to get there three hours in advance. The folks on the podium remained gray the entire time.

Other BL events always went well for me, with little lag. But crowds rarely work in SL. I'm not defending LL's choice about SL9B, but why host a lag-fest that shows how poorly your platform performs for groups?

Tateru's correct, however; let's take this thing back while it's still there. My sponsor and I will show our build at Glasgow Caledonian U for the birthday festivities, and I thank Tateru for that inspiration. I'll even spend a few thou to spruce it up!

May not be there next year, so party like it's 1999!

[Uccello]

It should be of note that a large number of visitors to the past several SLxB celebrations have been Noobies and I can't think of a more impressive introduction to Our World. The follow-ups I've had since last year indicate a very high retention rate amongst those what attended SL8B as their first experience in Second Life.

[foneco zuzu]

I wonder if any realizes a simple thing as this!
How many wish to celebrate something that does not have anything to do with them?
Be the users or the Lab, all most users wish or want is to achieve their goals with the less hassle (lag, spammers, giefers, bad viewers and so on)possible!
Those goals are not for sure to celebrate a tool, that works bad, is expensive as ship and not reliable for anything but one, to know that most there are adults in search of a goal!

[foneco zuzu]

Its all about the money!
Get real and if you don't feel that, move to grids that can give you that with love and dedication (Inworldz, Kitely, Avination and more!), or to open grids where money simply does not exist!
But on SL, get real and remember, is all about the money, sucked from the "country boys and girls!"
And as English spoken residents are less then 10 pct of actual SL users, how many will even understood or care about what we are saying!

[Daniel Voyager]

I'm really disappointed that Linden Lab are no longer hosting the Second Life birthday event and the SL community feels sad about this decision overall.

I'm sure for the SL9B week in June 2012 the SL community will do something special to celebrate 9 years. It would be nice to see around 4-10 regions if possible that is SL community driven for SL9B. I know BURN2 works really well every year in Second Life which is community supported.

Last year I decided to gather stats I could about all SL birthdays because its good to have a historical record of it. If anyone knows any stats then please contact me so I can add it to this blog post..

http://danielvoyager.wordpress.com/2011/06/27/second-life-birthday-statistics-so-far/

Here are all the themes from all SL birthdays since SL1B...http://secondlife.wikia.com/wiki/Second_Life_Birthday

SL1B - Second Life First Year Anniversary Gala
SL2B - Giant museum displaying various large builds, pictures of SL over time
SL3B - Hooray for diversity and Looking towards the future
SL4B - “era” of SL
SL5B - SL Culture
SL6B - The Future of Virtual Worlds
SL7B - Unexpected Collaborations
SL8B - Magic of Second Life

Check out my snapshots of SL birthdays...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/danielvoyager/collections/72157626959149450/

SL9B & SL10B perhaps we could come up some themes and ideas/plans?

[Saffia Widdershins]

Orca said:

Why should my community (sailors) interact with the Meroos breeders community or the vampire community? The typical day only has like 24 hours more or less, even less than those we spend usually in SL. And when I'm in SL I spend most of my online time organizing or attending sail races. In my avie's spare time I have a café and art gallery to run (oh, that's another community LOL).

But really, the point is that there may be some vampires out there who don't know about sailing, but who would LOVE to sail. There may be some sailors who would find the meeroos rather cute and would like to start breeding them ...

The point is that SLxB events are open - you have a chance to see some of the amazing and creative things that are going on across the grid - and maybe find a new hobby or roleplay to indulge in. Maybe someone'll end up as a golf champion, or learn Spanish or Findi, or maybe you will find great new artists that you can exhibit in your gallery!

[elizabeth (16)]

maybe the LEA people could do something on their sims

if they do then hope they invite the Yokohama Marching Band. am going to miss them if is no party or anything

[Pierre Ceriano]

You come to my birthday eh?

The controversy about the non-official participation of Linden Labs to the annual anniversary of the game takes a turn for ridicule. Especially with their latest statement that basically says they do not organize this event because fewer and fewer residents are involved [View stats kept by Daniel Voyageur]. But whose fault is it?

If I wanted to organize a monstuous birthday, I think I would send a PERSONAL invitation to everyone. Have you been invited to the birthdays of Second Life in the past ?

Who will participate in an elitist event, if the elite itself ? Are Linden afraid to see some disgruntled residents rot the party?

As for statistics, should we invite our alts instead of coming alone?

Would require that Linden Labs are asking the right questions before they react like teenagers : "I do not organize anything because no one comes." Pathetic ...

Sorry for my bad English, it is not my native ^^

[Dave Bell]

I wouldn't trust the figures for attendance, as presented, because they lack a key element.

How many regions were involved?

The SLB events I have seen have been limited by the region-capacity available, both AVs in a region. and the network capacity to deliver the scenery to the users. The big central stage at SL8B was at the intersection of four low-content regions. The automatic vehicles were passing through a continously-changing environment of different builds, and if you stuck with a vehicle the world was often grey.

Dcattering SL9B builds across the Grid might work well, but it needs something better than Destination Guide listings to link those builds. If feels almost as if the plan was going to include the teleports of the Linden Realms game, linking between places in different regions, but we'll be lucky to see an in-world LM dispenser.

[Scarp Godenot]

Getting rid of the across grid events like the birthday is just plain stupid from a marketing perspective.

The costs to the lab are minimal and ALL the work is done by residents.

And to those who don't believe there is a SL 'culture', you are just plain mistaken....