New World Notes

Twitter Usage Started Sharply Dropping When Gamergate Went Viral on Twitter

Correlation does not prove causation, as any anonymous Internet commenter will tell you.* That said, here's some very interesting data on Twitter usage reported on by Business Insider, which shows a sharp dropoff starting in August 2014. (See chart above.)

What happened then? Well, for one thing: "Gamergate" first became a pseudo-movement on Twitter in August 2014, with thousands of anonymous anti-feminist reactionaries trolling and abusing anyone they blamed for introducing feminist/social justice issues into games on Twitter. (Especially women.) Business Insider attributes the spike and subsequent drop to the end of the World Cup, but here's the thing: Media coverage of Gamergate and the abusive behavior Twitter also starting going up in August 2014, which is a great way to discourage most people from using the social network at all (especially women).

This correlation was first pointed out by Redditor "/lastres0rt", who puts it this way:

Despite 5M Shipments, Google Cardboard Shows Little Use

Google recently announced the company has shipped 5 million units of its Cardboard virtual reality HMD, but that figure can be very misleading. That definitely doesn't mean 5 million people are using Cardboard on a regular basis. Because from Google's own data, it seems more like 300,000-500,000 people use Cardboard with any high degree of engagement. Look at this infographic from the announcement:

According to Google Play, the basic app itself has been downloaded 5-10 million times. Looking at third party Cardboard apps, only a handful have been downloaded between 100,000 to 500,000 times -- most of the rest, much less. Unless I'm missing it, only this Star Wars Cardboard app has gotten downloads in the 500,000-1 million range. These numbers indicate a strong "one try then bye bye" effect -- the vast majority of Cardboard owners downloading the main app and one or two more, noodling around a bit, then sticking it back on the shelf to gather dust.

Don't believe me? Here's how many VR-enabled videos for Cardboard have been viewed:

Why Do People Keep Googling My Virtual Reality Blog in Search for an 18th Century Painting?

New World Notes has been around so long, about 20% of my daily traffic comes from Google searches -- most of which make sense, but some leave me totally perplexed. For instance, here's four posts that always show up in my traffic feed every day:

• /female-second-life-avatars-bare-more-skin.html
• /nwn/2013/07/skyrim-slavery-mods.html
• /nwn/2014/10/boudicca-amat-pinky.html
• /nwn/2014/10/gamerghazi-gamergate.html

Even from just reading the HTML code you can guess what people are searching for in the first two and the fourth one. (The second, on Skyrim's disturbing slavery mods, is a classic by Janine Hawkins.)

The third one, however, I don't know WTF. It's Janine's post about an SLer who modeled her avatar after "Pinky", Thomas Lawrence's classic painting from 1794. Thing is, I don't even know what search terms are bringing people to it, because using any keyword related to that painting doesn't display my blog. And it's brought something like ten thousand people to New World Notes from I don't know where, for I don't know why.

MMO Racism: Slurs Usable as Search Terms in Both Second Life's Marketplace & In-World

Second Life blogger Aemeth Lysette, who has African-American heritage in real life, recently noticed something fairly disturbing in Second Life's web-based Marketplace and in its in-world search engine: Racial slurs usable as search terms, and fairly commonly so. (See screengrab, which I'm leaving blurry for obvious reasons.)

This is also surprising, because hateful speech is explicitly banned by Linden Lab's own Community Standards:

Intolerance Combating intolerance is a cornerstone of Second Life's Community Standards. Actions that marginalize, belittle, or defame individuals or groups inhibit the satisfying exchange of ideas and diminish the Second Life community as a whole. The use of derogatory or demeaning language or images in reference to another Resident's race, ethnicity, gender, religion, or sexual orientation is never allowed in Second Life.

... and only last year, the company had a similar controversy when users discovered the racist Confederate Flag being openly sold in SL -- after which, apparently removed these items without discussing it publicly. I just double-checked you can use slurs in the Marketplace, and sad to say, I can confirm you can. 

The solution, as Aemeth writes, is pretty obvious:

SL Avatar Photography Veteran Plays With Black Desert

After posting about Black Desert's free character creator, longtime avatar photographer Connie Arida whipped this above pic up in about 30 minutes. Pretty impressive in such short a time, though IMO Black Desert's hair modeling is not ideal. And while I like the emotional expressiveness here, the smile seems a bit off -- not engaging all the facial muscles we'd associate with a genuine smile. Connie created another version that works a bit better in my view:

A Real World Presidential Survey for Virtual World Fans

... because with a real world election so unpredictable and insane, why not ask virtual world fans for their expert opinion?

And yes, I'm reposting this survey after misformatting a previous version I had to delete -- massive apologies for the confusion. Vote here and vote in the actual primaries!

Despite Little Usage, New York Times Puts Its Virtual Reality-Based News Coverage on Front Page

Yesterday, I went to the New York Times' website, saw this right on the very top, and simultaneously said "Ughh" and "Whoa" out loud:

"Whoa", because from a certain point of view, it's truly impressive that virtual reality is not only being featured on the front page of the world's most important news outlet, the paper itself is using the technology as part of its reporting of crucial current events -- a major milestone in virtual reality adoption.

"Ugh" because despite this prominent promotion, there's a small problem: Hardly any of New York Times' readers are actually using the New York Times' VR app.

Seriously:

The Times has tens of millions of readers, but according to Google Play, the NYT VR app has only been installed 100,000-500,000 times. (This despite the fact that Google's shipped 5 million units of the Google Cardboard VR viewer, which works with the NYT's app.) On App Annie, the analytics service, the app doesn't even register among Google Play's top 1000 apps (after a brief appearance at the top during its November launch), suggesting little viral or organic growth. Despite being frequently promoted on, you know, the world's most influential news site.

All of which reminds of Reuters' failed virtual reality experiment in Second Life, and what I wrote when the NYT announced its program last October:

Flickr of the Day: Silhouette Study of a Second Life Avatar

I saw this Strawberry Singh SL screenshot that's also a silhouette and it promptly caught my breath. We should see more such silhouettes, wouldn't you say? See more about it on Ms. Singh's site.

Top Five New World Notes Posts from Last Week!

• High Fidelity Reportedly Scales to 200 Fully-Rendered Concurrent Avatars in a Proximate Space on Same Server
• Goldman Sach's Virtual Reality Growth Forecasts Depend on Seriously Questionable Assumptions About Usability
• A 3D Recreation of Undertale is Being Built in Second Life
• Brain-Melting Demo by Longtime Virtual Reality Pioneer Seems to Bend Space & Time in 360 Degrees
• Project Sansar Open Beta: Probably Not Until December