Cloud Party has gained 2000 users from June 19 to the 25th, according to AppData, the Facebook traffic tracking service, which is shortly after Robert "Dizzy Banjo" Thomas alerted me to a stream of Linden Lab staff past and present (including Cory Ondrejka, funder/adviser) crowding into Cloud Party, and I blogged about it. These 2,000 users include anyone using Facebook Connect to log in through the game's main website, which AppData also counts. That's a pretty decent spike of new users, but the real challenge is whether that growth will continue, beyond one time tries and early adopters. It's still quite small compared to the monthly usage of Second Life (about a million) or IMVU (about three million) Facebook, or for that matter, a popular Facebook game:
Those can gain hundreds of thousands or even millions of users in a single weekend. Though those kind of numbers usually only come from heavy advertising and cross-promotion from existing games by the developer. I've seen a fair amount of viral promotion of Cloud Party, via screenshots posted to people's Facebook walls, but that kind of virality can only grow the userbase so much.
Considering they are just a Beta and not even mentioning their existance to the FB bunch far and wide, and only those of us listening to certain blogs knew about it, I'd say that the potential for growth will be explosive just as soon as the Beta finishes and they open their doors. They've not even launched. It's way premature to wonder about growth plateau when you aren't even open for business yet.
Posted by: shockwave yareach | Tuesday, June 26, 2012 at 01:44 PM
On the other hand, I was one of those visitors and left after 20 minutes.
Posted by: Jo Yardley | Tuesday, June 26, 2012 at 02:26 PM
Strange thing ... when I logged in, 90% of the people I saw were from Second Life
Posted by: Ramesh Ramloll | Tuesday, June 26, 2012 at 02:39 PM
^What Jo said. People dropping by via facebook to see what everyone's jerkin it about is NOT the same as a "user".
The emergenty hype about cloud party has reached the point of being stupid, and a little perspective is in order.
Cloud party is not twinity, nor is it IMVU and the only thing going for it is
1)it's small
2)it's cute
3)it's fast (for a vw)
Oh, and I guess it's got enough linden connection that everyone and their dog is touching themselves while moaning about it being a "secondlife killer" and/or "linden lab should totes buy this".
Don't buy the hype people; it's a cute, small VR that is potentially fit for mobile devices. It's not the second coming of Linden Lab or w/e.
It's basically IMVU mobile.
Posted by: Han Held | Tuesday, June 26, 2012 at 02:45 PM
It's no longer a Facebook app, so no point in watching AppData anymore.
Posted by: Ezra | Tuesday, June 26, 2012 at 03:36 PM
Tell anybody that there is gold in the middle of the road or a car crash and they'll go look. These figures mean nothing.
If anything I find it a surprisingly low number given the amount of dedicated Virtual Worlders worldwide who would naturally, out of curiosity, go and have a peek. Moreover, ss somebody has already mentioned, most people I saw there were SL residents who weren't overly impressed at all.
Posted by: Sy Beck | Tuesday, June 26, 2012 at 04:24 PM
"It's no longer a Facebook app, so no point in watching AppData anymore."
Ezra, might want to read the post again.
Posted by: Hamlet Au | Tuesday, June 26, 2012 at 07:57 PM
Oh ok, my bad, Facebook Connect counts.
Still though, after the Facebook app was pulled there's been a whole lot more anonymous logins it seems to me. So even for this short amount of time AppData doesn't tell half the whole story of early interest.
If the interest keeps up and anonymous logins remain on pace with Facebook logins, they're going to have to offer up alternatives.
Posted by: Ezra | Tuesday, June 26, 2012 at 08:49 PM
That's a good point, I wonder how many anonymous logins they're getting. If they see a lot, I bet they will add Twitter OAuth and other such.
Posted by: Hamlet Au | Tuesday, June 26, 2012 at 08:54 PM
@Han:
"The emergenty hype about cloud party has reached the point of being stupid"
You know what was really stupid? Here's a list:
- the hype about Blue Mars
- the hype about worlds using Unity 3D
- the hype about LL's "Project Skylight"
- the dissing of WebGL by Prok and some people on SLU
Posted by: Masami Kuramoto | Wednesday, June 27, 2012 at 01:46 AM
Masami, without naming a name, there are some who hate anything that cannot be monetized quickly or that would undercut their little empires in SL. I don't think the CP setup would allow land barons to emerge.
Time will tell if CP makes any sort of dent in SL. Right now, I've got a house, a rug, and a couch. One friend from SL lives on my island. That's great, but it's not a "world" yet. The technology is there and while the concept is not innovative, from my experience the tech is.
I think CP's success will depend upon the quality of the premade content, our trust in their virtual currency, and whether or not they can reach non-SLers when they market this thing.
I hope so because LL needs the competition.
Posted by: Iggy | Wednesday, June 27, 2012 at 03:40 AM
I suspect that they will have even more one time users than SL does.
A lot of people just click any old button that appears on their screen in Facebook. Play around for 5 minutes, and then click the next button that shows up.
While I think its a danger to SL - in keeping people from wanting to look for other options... I don't think it will be a success itself. Being linked to Facebook just ensures it won't get users who want to seriously invest into it.
But it might still make money hand over fist, from a few hundreds of millions of people all buying 1 or 2 10¢ items...
This is the future of gaming - low content short investment splurgy items that make money for their dev's, who then IPO and then run on to the next project, but fail to deliver any meaningful content to the users who either get used to quick buzz fixes, or become a small minority of vocally annoyed critics in constant search of something to be engaged with.
The customer is always wrong, and meaningless, when there is an endless supply of new suckers and you can con them just long enough to collect your IPO check.
Posted by: Pussycat Catnap | Wednesday, June 27, 2012 at 09:21 AM
Pussycat, when did you join Second Life?
I joined in 2007, when SL was in its 4th year.
If you had seen what I saw back then, the lag, the prims that didn't rez, the textures that didn't load, the teleports that didn't complete, the viewers that kept crashing, the regions that kept restarting... if you had been there and seen all that, maybe then you would be able to realize what an amazing achievement Cloud Party is, created by a team of five in about nine months.
This is nothing short of brilliant, and if quality and efficiency still mean something, then Cloud Party deserves to prevail and SL deserves to die. Anything else would be just plain wrong.
Posted by: Masami Kuramoto | Thursday, June 28, 2012 at 12:38 AM