OpenSim Still Shows Little Meaningful User Growth

In January 2012, HyperGrid Business' Maria Korolov estimated there were 15,700 active OpenSim users. In a new post, Mr. Korolov published active user stats for the 10 most popular OpenSim grids (as at left), and they show very little growth from over the last year and a half: About 18,200 (plus maybe a few hundred more from even smaller grids). So growth of about 3,000 users in 16 months, which is so tiny as to be (as Clay Shirky once put it, describing Second Life growth) a rounding error. Speaking of Second Life, SL still gains about 400,000 new users... a month. This continues a trend of flat growth from Open Sim, for in 2009, an expert insider with the development community confirmed my estimate back then that the userbase was 15,000.

None of this is to be critical of OpenSim developer community, which have come up with some very cool and interesting applications, like sim-on-a-stick. However, this cold water needs to be thrown, and here's why:

Korolov's latest numbers are contained in a post touting OpenSim grids hitting "[a] record high, pass Second Life in land area" -- which actually says little about OpenSim growth, except to say that OpenSim's very small user base is adding more grids, which only they are using.

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Comments

[Metacam Oh]

Mostly because Open Sim installation and maintenance is not designed for the every day user. If Open Sim is ever going to be adopted they need to revamp the entire installation and console windows and set up process. I've been able to do it, don't get me wrong, but I've been playing with computers since DOS, and even being able to get Open Sim working properly I would have no idea how to continually do maintenance on it or ensure that users data and inventory would be secure. It's just not built to be user friendly or for large scale adoption.

[zzpearlbottom]

I do think some hosted grids can say otherwise, Kitely, Inworldz, Avination, osgrid, 3th rock to name a few!

[Ezra]

400,000 sign-ups a month but Second Life still stagnates at 1 million active users and 50,000 average concurrent users or so.

It'd be nice if both Second Life and OpenSim-based grids figured out how to shake stagnation so some growth can happen instead of decline the next 10 years.

[Lani Global]

Linden Labs based their primary business model of Second Life on *Virtual Land*.

For a long time, the "vast land size of SecondLife" was touted as the be-all and end-all of success metrics.

Now that OpenSim worlds have eclipsed Second Life virtual land size, the cheerleader of SL wants to change the metric!

[Gordon Twine]

Nobody wants to change the metrics, but to question the fantasy statistics of the OpenSim propaganda group. The monthly figures of Mrs. Korolov have no significance. The sum of all OpenSim regions is a wild mix of closed, commercial, hypergrid, and stand-alone grids. Not to mention all the unpurged ancient regions of some private docked servers. Even the server software is not on the same level among all these grids. So what is the message of "... pass Second Life in land area"?

It's just ridiculous how a small group of demagogues constantly tries to put Second Life in a bad light. Anyone who has a little notion of the things around, recognizes the intension of this cheap propaganda.

[Lani Global]

The latest region count of OpenSim does not even include all the thousands and thousands of standalone sim servers out there.

The vast virtual land area of the OpenSim metaverse will continue to far exceed Second Life.

That makes the OpenSim metaverse by far the largest 3d user-created avatar environment ever seen in the history of the world.

No matter how Second Life cheerleaders try to spin this, it is bad news for Linden Lab's virtual-land business model.

The virtual-land business model might have been OK when it started 10 years ago. But a decade later brings Second Life negative growth for both "Concurrent avatars" and "Region count" metrics. The virtual flagship of LL continues its downhill slide.

[Remington Aries]

Glad this article is here. The Dev community for Opensim are cold and aloof, and the failure of this potentially excellent concept to show growth is down to these people and how their ideas are given to the rest of the online community. They need to balance their technical skills with social skills of equal measure. Make things automated. The only shining light in this, is the Diva distribution, which applies common sense and ease of use to a package that also addresses users needs.
That being said, having to instal MYSQL as an idea should have died on the drawing board. Until Opensim removes this painful requirement, Opensim is never going to grow.
MYSQL was never designed for everyday use, and completely ignores even the most basic computer GUI, requiring hideously complex tasks from the user, such as setting up paths via command line windows. It is like stepping back 30 years in time.

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

The amount of land doesn't matter, if there are no people.

As I've said before, OpenSim is for not-very-social Sandboxers who basically want a cheap vanity sandbox of their own to build/script in.

I met a new content creator recently...she was moving from one of the "small grids" to SL because she wanted to see if she could succeed in "the Big City" and that's exactly what she called it.

SL is "The Big City"... Avination, Kitely, etc are the boondocks.

[zzpearlbottom]

I agree that Sl is the big city but there will be always those enjoy living on small towns!
It's all about choices!
The biggest mistake LL made was that they could have been really the big city connecting all those lil towns!

[David Cartier]

Linden Lab needs to make some hard choices concerning the Marketplace, Linden Homes and the Mainland. The Marketplace and Linden Homes have demolished the real estate market and much of the socializing and travel that used to be common. The Mainland is a post-apocalyptic blighted ghetto. There are areas that have not been visited by their owners in close to a decade. The plug needs to be pulled on about 70% of the Mainland areas.

[sparky]

I've tried Opensim, both Standalone and Grid Attached. There's too many issues for anyone who wants to use it seriously. I really wanted HyperGrid to work, but it's a long way from prime time.

The hosting co's are nice enough, they just can't provide the kind of support you need for the amount of cash they charge.

[Gordon Twine]

"No matter how Second Life cheerleaders try to spin this,..."

I only see one cheerleader here in the comments. With a fertile imagination concerning statistical interpretations.

[Aeonix Aeon]

400,000 new users per month is a misnomer. If the total is still about 1,000,000 and about 50,000 *active* concurrent users, then Second Life has a user *retention* issue.

In the grand scheme of things, neither SL nor OpenSim are doing better, and in fact either stagnated at best and declining at worst.

What's the point in touting the numbers if you can't keep them?

[Tonya Souther]

Lani, having all that land available is great, wonderful, fantastic...but there are no users in many of those far-flung sims to interact with, and there's a paucity of content to use. I've been looking for a tiger avatar for a couple of years with no success.

People get on SL to interact with their friends in a world and as a person of their own making. OpenSim makes the latter part of that easy and inexpensive, but the former just isn't there. As long as people's friends are on SL, nobody will move.

[Ener Hax]

different strokes for different folks

i evangelised for years about SL and didn't mind the $2,920 a month tier fee for the little estate i had . . . i thought SL was the most amazing thing ever. i thought i would be inSL forever

now i haven't even logged into SL for over two years and am "big" into OpenSim (Sim-on-a-Stick and all that noise)

SL got me started in virtual worlds and Torley inspired me to build anything i could dream of

things changed and SL no longer met my needs (naive as those were)

one is not better than the other, depends what you want to do. i want second graders to explore science stuff and that isn't possible inSL

i no longer want to run an estate business, so i can't afford SL but can afford $35 a month at Kitely (and afford lots of SoaS workshops)

arguing which is better is a subjective thing and it all depends on what you want to do

does it matter much what font Rowling's uses for Harry Potter? nah, it's the content and audience that matters

yay for choices and you can choose to love both, hate both, love one and hate the other

it's your choice and since none of us are dictator-in-chief of the world, it doesn't matter that much

i hope SL continues forever - it's perfect for many things. i hope OpenSim continues too, it's just right for me at this moment =)

btw, Happy Canada day! =)

[Nara]

Isn't that 17% growth? That doesn't sound bad to me.

[Lani Global]

@Tonya Souther said: "Lani, having all that land available is great, wonderful, fantastic...but there are no users in many of those far-flung sims to interact with, and there's a paucity of content to use."

I reply:
Well, according to you Tonya, those 15,000+ unique visitors who enjoyed my OpenSim region over the recent year are just figments of our imagination. It must be that erroneous visitor counter database? Yep, that's got to be it, since "there are no users".

Upon your advice, I shall try to just ignore those 'imaginary friends' when they run around role-playing, driving vehicles, and exploring.

All those Sci Fi products made by a dozen OpenSim creators in the sim's store probably don't exist either. They are only good for imaginary users to fill their paucity of content inventories with.

Lani Global

--"Judging by their response, the meanest thing you can do to people on the Internet is to give them really good software for free." -Anil Dash: '10 Rules of the Internet'