Cloud Party Usage and Growth Seems to Plateau

Cloud Party, the WebGL-powered virtual world platform backed by Second Life co-founder Cory Ondrejka, has a lot of potential, so I've written a lot about it, but here's something it still doesn't have a lot of: Users. According to AppData, a Facebook application traffic tracking service, Cloud Party reached 4,000 monthly active users (or MAU) a couple weeks ago, but usage has been trailing off since then. (It now stands at under 3,300 MAU.) More concerning is what Facebook game developers call the DAU/MAU percent, as in "daily active users as a percentage of monthly active users". According to AppData, that number has been slipping percipitously in the few weeks:

It's gone from over 50%, at the start of July, to well under 10% right now. (I.E., in the last week, only 200 or so of those 3,300 MAU are logging in on a daily basis.) This is indicative of an app that's generating a lot of "one try then bye bye" usage -- thousands of people coming in, looking around, and not returning.

To be fair, Cloud Party is in extremely early Beta stages, and we'll probably see spikes in usage every time new features and new content from well-known creators go online. It's also possible there have been some scaling problems since launch. And while Cloud Party does require Facebook Connect for full usage of the platform, you can also log in anonymously with limited features, and it's possible (likely) they're seeing more growth of anonymous log-ins lately. (I'll check with Cloud Party CEO Sam Thompson about all this, hopefully soon.)

In any case, as long as Cloud Party is primarily driven by Facebook Connect, I recommend checking out its AppData listing, because however innovative I think it is (and I do), AppData has the most important metric for Cloud Party's future.

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Comments

[Sandy Adam]

Not really that surprising, is it? Initial onslaught by many SL users I suspect. (shrugs) Despite the fact that it's early Beta, it was lacking in ease of use for content creation. And, if attempting to attract a non-SL/Opensim audience then perhaps not enough direction as to what they are supposed to do with it.

[MrBungle]

Here's something that many fans of virtual worlds don't recognize:

For many, perhaps most, people one world is exhausting enough. Now those of us who are VW advocates find participating, at some level, in a toyworld to be relaxing. I'd wager that the great bulk of people do not, and would indeed find it a significant stressor.

[Hitomi Tiponi]

This is to be expected until new features to make it easier to use start appearing, as I'm sure they will. This doesn't seem too worrying as it will be some time before Cloud Party is ready for a major launch to those not familiar with VWs.

[Ezra]

All of Cloud Party's best features right now center around content creation. So it's not surprising this early in beta the only one's there are content creators.

It's still totally lacking in social; groups, better IMs, better friend lists, actual local chat, etc.. And there's no economy yet; no giving nor receiving of creations, via the marketplace that doesn't exist yet or otherwise.

It seems to me they're tackling giant problems first and leaving the small ones for last. But until those small ones are handled, there's large masses of SLers that have no need for CP. Being able to own a roleplay area four times the area of a SL sim for one-third the price is great for example, but pointless if there's no concept of chat range in CP yet.

And of course there's still the Facebook-only authentication issue which has been the number 1 no-no in my own telling SL friends about CP.

[Danielle]

Like many others, I went there for a few days to kick the tires and see what was there. But there are way too many missing features to commit any serious time to it.

[A.J.]

I think it was a mistake to introduce this without all of the bells and whistles.

I'm not sure the Facebook crowd is really that adventurous.

[elizabeth (16)]

like others said. is a mistake these days to launch a beta thats not a beta and is more a prealpha

is best to keep it closed until you got a Preview release where all the normal stuff that normal people expect to work works

mod my avatar, chat, IM, buy/get stuff off others. teleport/explore. get a room/home and mount my stuff i buy/get

modding avatar and mounting your stuff in your own room/home is not building/creating in the normal sense. is important dif i think

[Little Lost Linden]

Really though, it was missing the hot sex. And, I didn't see any water when I was there. That's it. Water and Sex. Once it has those two things, get ready for a landslide.

[sirhc desantis]

Would be interesting to see how those reported figures pan out if we could see the rate of anonymous log ins (having gone in both ways). To be honest I treated it as I would any other VW that wanders across my attention window - log in, have a peek and rummage and move on unless something really catches my fancy.

[drfran]

I have been roaming around since CP opened. I have met many of my SL friends there. The folks who stayed and stayed were the heavy mesh and content creators, which remains a small proportion of Second Life users.
What I think is that those early adopters who fight the poor build tools and create usable content will stand to make a bit of money when the floodgates open. Henmations is already holding dance parties, and claudia222 Jewell has her jaw-dropping mesh installed on her sphere world (the non-contiguous land is upsetting to me). I think there are opportunities, but it will be a while before it is realized.
Thanks SLers for doing the beta-testing.

[drfran]

I have been roaming around since CP opened. I have met many of my SL friends there. The folks who stayed and stayed were the heavy mesh and content creators, which remains a small proportion of Second Life users.
What I think is that those early adopters who fight the poor build tools and create usable content will stand to make a bit of money when the floodgates open. Henmations is already holding dance parties, and claudia222 Jewell has her jaw-dropping mesh installed on her sphere world (the non-contiguous land is upsetting to me). I think there are opportunities, but it will be a while before it is realized.
Thanks SLers for doing the beta-testing.

[foneco zuzu]

Only one simple word about this!
F*******

[Ener Hax]

facebook peeps like things such as Farmville - it has directed play and is drop-dead simple. sounds like Cloud Party is too much like SL in that it needs users to create content. that model is already in place and is called SL - why would anyone expect different results>

my two cents (i've never checked it out and based my opinion on Hamlet's posts)

[shockwave yareach]

Um, aren't they still in beta and not yet open to all? That's like saying a restaurant's numbers are down when they are still putting in the stove.

[Adeon Writer]

As one of their "Try once then bye bye" users, I'm simply waiting until Facebook is not needed.

I suspect this is not a minority situation; Facebook and virtual lives are polar.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Premature extrapolation.

It's true though, after a test drive, some are holding off.

Others are waiting for the new rigs to come out.

Others are waiting for non Facebook logins to be implemented.

Others are holding out for feature X and Y to get done.

It's one wave of people checking things out after a small burst of blog posts exclusive to SL people, with no other advertising.

Some people will say this is not my beautiful SL and move on.

It's not SL, and probably shouldn't try to mimic SL too closely, there's not much sense (or success in following an ailing model) in that.

Time will tell if they understand their own bigger picture for their product.

Usage patterns on a non advertised alpha/beta project by a 4 developer team is a bit of a stretch though. More useful to cover the evolving features.

[Chrismcbride69]

As a content creator, I am extremely excited about Cloud Party - it has options that I expected SL to have when I started using it back in 2005. Basic things to creating 3D content that SL just has never had (normal/specular maps, flexible materials, custom skeletons, weights, etc.) The potential for CP to look much better than SL is already there, and the fact that it runs fluidly in a browser is a major advantage. Once the WebGL tech in tablets and phones becomes common (right around the corner) it will have a much larger mass-market reach than anything else that has come before it.

I agree there are many missing components at this stage if you are a SL user - but, in my experience with the developers, they are responsive, friendly and are getting the 'basics' right before moving on to the larger picture. They added support for my 3D package's COLLADA/mesh output in less than 48 hours!

Give it some time and be open minded - honestly, it is the first time in a while I have been excited about virtual worlds, and I would like to see it become a success.

My $0.02

[Liam Kitty]

They weren't expecting the SL crowd to get poked about this, they weren't expecting this blog to write write write about it, and they weren't expecting to have to compete with SL in terms of capabilities.

It was fun, it was cute, It's not SL and not even close. Moving on ...

[Rusalka Writer]

Joined, got my house, uploaded some mesh. got tired of the HUGELY awkward interface. Waiting for improvement or implosion.

[beetle]

I quite like it. Because you have a lot of the builders in there it is like an expert class in a whole new sandbox.

I don't like facebook integration, particularly facebook like but I do know that the next big breakthrough in virtual worlds will be one which is more clearly linked to your real life identity. I may not like it, but I know it's coming.

I do like the fact that after an admittedly buggy goal type introduction I got to have my own place and somewhere to try out building. For free.

I think because it doesn't have to deal with all the legacy that SL does and because it explicitly links to real life identity it is a new model that everyone should watch real close. It might not be Cloud Party that is there at the final curtain but it has certainly set the stage running.