SL Avatar Body Survey from Top Fashion Brand Dominated by Maitreya

Mishi Akin, owner of the massively successful virtual fashion brand Blueberry, recently ran a survey among her subscribers, asking them which mesh avatar body they use.  2879 customers responded (a very impressive data sample), and the results (above) are striking:

They show an overwhelming preference for the Maitreya body sold by Onyx LeShelle. In Mishi's survey, respondents could choose more than one body ("they could choose all if they wanted to", she tells me), but even then, Maitreya was far and away the clear choice.

Her reason for conducting this survey also provides insight into the state of the Second Life avatar economy: "I check to see if another body rose in popularity more than the six I design for," she explains, "so I can optimize my products. For example, if a new body was more widely used than the least used body on my design list I would replace it with the new body."

She tells me she conducted a similar survey 2 years ago, and the top choices are unchanged from what you see above: Maitreya, Slink Hourglass and Physique, and Freya, Isis, and Venus from Belleza. Or to put it another away: Three SL avatar body brands overwhelmingly dominate the market. This is partly due to what's called vendor lock-in: Once you buy a product that's dependent on specific accessories, it's very difficult to switch to a competing product.

But why is Maitreya far and away the market leader? Mishi has a fascinating theory there:

Maitreya entered the market at a time when consumers were looking for a new mesh body with a wide range of customizable shaping options -- and came with a heads up display interface that was clean and well- designed (see above). My own guess is the HUD made all the difference, creating a fun, easy to use customization toolbox on top of the (frankly difficult to use) default from Linden Lab.

For all intents and purposes, then, Maitreya has pretty much become the default avatar for Second Life's active user base -- the avatar template that users adopt and build on when they graduate from being a noob who shuffles off the body Linden Lab gives them when they're born. 

Above pic by Ellen Moonites from the Maitreya Mesh Body Developers group on Flickr.

Comments

[ToySoldier Thor]

So the man's Signature mesh avatar... From what I understand the most popular male mesh on the market... Didn't even make the list??

Sounds strange to me.

[Summer Haas]

The reason no male mesh avatars made this list is because Blueberry is a women's store. On another note, I wouldn't be surprised if e-body gave the others a run for their money very soon. I'm surprised to see people still wear TMP.

[Aliasi Stonebender]

Also, I'm unsurprised Kemono is a minority - I think there's quite a few more users than that in SL as a whole, but they aren't going to be shopping at a store like Blueberry for the same reason the muscular male and female bodies devsir sells aren't going to show. Different audience.

[Pulsar]

It's interesting to note that Slink Hourglass and Beleza Freya are the curviest ones of their respective brands and the first alternative behind Maitreya Lara. Large breasts sell in SL. If they were released at the same time of Maitreya's one, I'm not sure it the latter would be so dominant now.
The HUD helped for sure, especially compared to TMP (the first "fitted-mesh" body). The current HUD has been improved since the image above, but it maintains the K.I.S.S. principle. Another factor was the price: the first Belleza body (Venus) and the full version of TMP (deluxe) were more expensive. With Slink Physique, hands and feet were sold separately, but if you had them already, the body was a cheaper choice - in the beginning SLink hands and feet were meant as enhancement for the classic avatar, so a number of people had them - however, Lara had better alpha cuts and her feet position could be set from the HUD. Slink instead requires to buy 3 different feet (then they released further positions), one for each position.
Other bodies came with their own pros too, but probably not enough to outweigh the above and to become more popular.

Then Maitreya included automatic alpha cuts hiding in their body, making it even more user friendly. To be fair, TMP has that too, but I'm not aware of any TMP clothing with that feature, besides those in TMP shop. TMP wasn't friendly even to makers.

Then again Maitreya was the first brand to have a body with bento hands. Belleza still lacks those and you need to buy bento hands from another brand.

[David Cartier]

Interesting. Now I'm wishing that Matreya made something for men. Perhaps one of the leading menswear designers will do this too, and them all a better idea of which mesh bodies they should be designing for. As for why people still wear TMP, despite abysmally rude customer service and a horrifically confusing and inconvenient shopping experience, the TMP meshes - the heads aside - are still pretty good looking and you can get them for $500. And all of their clothing is still free. There are a lot of people out there who can't just drop forty bucks on an avatar, and they are wearing TMP or the rather nice, and free, Altamura body.

[Pulsar]

Slink feet were another vendor lock-in. At one point you had to get those feet, if you wanted shoes, even if you didn't like the shape and you liked different mesh feet (there were several). Now new shoes are made for Maitreya too almost always, and in many cases for Belleza too. But here comes another issue.
When TMP released their fitted-mesh body, it came with both fitted-mesh hands and feet, with the accompanying shoes. You could resize your feet and your shoes would diligently follow.
Maitreya sold shoes even before they released their body, and Slink was a de-facto standard, when fitted mesh didn't exist yet, bento even less. Making the feet realizable would mean to break the compatibility with all those shoes (hands accessories weren't as common as shoes; while hands and their animations play a large role in expressiveness and interaction. I'm sorry for a couple of my old gloves, but that worth it).
Therefore now there is an huge amount of shoes made for (obsolete tech) feet that cannot be resized, nor they take advantage of the current bento technology (as far as I know there is a toe bone too). The topic of another article of this blog was about SL updates. This is an example how difficult is to insert something new into something well established, even when, like in this case, there aren't tech issues that require workarounds and compromises to make it fit, but just lock-ins and de-facto standards.

[Nalates Urriah]

@Pulsar, Slink updated their HUD this month. All three HUDs, hands, feet, and body, are now in one HUD.
/@Pulsar

The coming ACI and Land Impact changes may change the market dynamics for mesh bodies. Also, the Bakes-On feature may reshape the mesh body market.

The simplest explanation for Maitreya's dominance is the number of people making clothes for it. Also, the number of Maitreya exclusives is impressive.

[Filthy Larry]

2 things!

That fashionatic Ad makes me just want to go deep insi....HMMMmmm...YeaaaH

People found out about Kemono! #2736

http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/general-sl-discussion/63903-mesh-police-ripped-content-watch-110.html#post2444862

[Filthy Larry]

Slink has done more updates perfecting things then most.

Buying things for Matreya are more expensive while Slink has better customer service.

[Pulsar]

@Nalates: true and other bodies improved since the first release, e.g. there are others that added auto alpha, as well as new features. When Maitreya released Lara, the situation was different, and that's was a reason for their success.

«The simplest explanation for Maitreya's dominance is the number of people making clothes for it» That's the effect, not the cause. At most that's another reason for people to buy it now. :) But what made it dominant?
1st. when the first bodies were released, Maitreya Lara didn't come first, but came with an user friendly and K.I.S.S. HUD + more and better alpha cuts + simpler feet + low price
=> people were choosing Lara more than other bodies for these reasons
=> Maitreya Lara got more costumers and its market share surpassed the previous bodies
=> more creators were making clothes, shoes and accessories for a body that could reach more costumers (and they use the pools above for this reason). Shops that didn't make their own models, got the templates from those creators anyway - Almost always you could find clothes at least for Belleza, Maireya, SLink, but Maitreya got more, from the pools already years ago.
=> It resulted in the current virtuous (for Maitreya) / vicious (for the lock-in) circle: more costumers, more people creating for it, more available accessories for it, people purchase it more... even if other bodies have been improved and have their own pros (for instance, I'd prefer a mod body); so much that, as I said, if they were like that from the beginning, Maitreya Lara maybe won't be so dominant now.
And it's true that now this went up to the point that there are clothes released for Maitreya only, with the risk of turning the dominance into a monopoly.

Bento hands could have changed the market too (as Maitreya changed that for Slink shoes), but Maitreya was quick to adapt with that too (unlike TMP and Belleza, for example), other bodies adapted for complexity (Maitreya Lara showed a low ACI already), and it's hard to know if Maitreya won't adapt as quickly for the upcoming changes for ACI and baking, so that they may change the market.

[AlexBrangwin]

Well over at Hugo's Design, Maitreya dealt us a rather weird blow.
A lot of designers are making mesh body appliers for latex clothing and making good use of materials to give it the shine.
We use Omega Appliers so any body that supports Omega can apply our clothing and have it look spectacular...except Maitreya.
Maitreya is the only one that does not support materials effects if you use an Omega Applier.
Kinda weird but Maitreya was never intended for the fetish market...more like Vogue Photo shoots with autumn colours or whatever.

[Pussycat Catnap]

Another survey shows less extreme results, but the same trendline:
http://meshbodyaddicts.com/time-poll-mesh-bodies-heads/
Maitreya there is 48% rather than over 80%, still dominant but other bodies fill in more space.

Blueberry is one merchant, but meshbodyaddicts is more general. However Blueberry captures people that actually visit their store... mechbodyaddicts captures people that visit SL related blogs.

For the wider SL... the accurate result could be somewhere in between or both could be off mark.

I would hazard to guess that the 'standard' for SL is not so much Maitreya, as it is 'Maitreya and Belleza Freya', when you look at overall trends around SL. But that is my subjective guess.

There's a topic on the SL forums on this, and on how we might figure out accurate measures:
https://community.secondlife.com/forums/topic/419687-maitreya-vs-belleza-body/

My suspicion on Maitreya's success is that it is due to Belleza being extremely slow to do updates. Maitreya overtook Belleza during a very long period of no update from Belleza after a new feature came out. Similar to now with Bento.

Belleza tends to take an extra year to get up to date, but when they do so they do it best. Maitreya tends to patch in the new feature right away... but doesn't come back to fix if they don't get it right.

- This is why we have avatar physics in Belleza for the belly and butt, but not Maitreya. Belleza took the time to make sure these features didn't move other body parts. Maitreya just quickly added the most visible element: the breast. But Maitreya's breast physics get 'too much' when you dial too far away from the 'common baseline', whereas Belleza can have a good look with the dials anywhere from 0 to 100.

BOTH are actually slow to update... but Maitreya frontloads it's updates so as soon as a new feature goes live customers have something to play with... they just then get stuck with however that first version of it came out.

The bigger issue is developer kits...

When Belleza feels a new update is in the work, in the past they have shut down handing out developer kits. There was an entire year long period, in I think mid 2015 to mid 2016, where Belleza gave out no kits. Not surprisingly this is the same year Maitreya overook Belleza... Maitreya used that year to not only give out kits, but appears to have done something to convince many people to go Maitreya exclusive...
- I remember ranting at the Belleza people in a steady stream at that time telling them they were hurting their business... but I don't think they ever heard me... (They did hear me on some key features that got added in the 2016 update...

I think it is also worth noting, as a final comment... that the displays in Blueberry seem to feature Maitreya models only. By contrast in Addams they appear to be Belleza only. You can visually see the difference. I think this also influences who might be shopping in which store more...
- But that's just a gut feeling.

I know that as a Belleza person, Addams is ALWAYS a perfect fit for me, but Blueberry I have to demo. The reverse might be true for a Maitreya user.

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