Data via SimilarWeb
Since social VR users numbers are still extremely low (with the possible exception of VRChat), a better metric of consumer awareness is visits to social VR websites, since that reflects active users logging into the company web portal, as well as potential users visiting to see what the fuss is about. Here's a comparison of the websites to High Fidelity, Philip Rosedale's new VR/virtual world platform, compared to that of Decentraland, the open standards-based social VR world project which sold virtual land plots worth USD $25 million In Ethereum last August.
Last month's page views were 104K for High Fidelity versus 260K for Decentraland, which is curious for several reasons, chief among them these two:
Thanks to Philip leading development of High Fidelity, that platform gets much more media coverage. And Decentraland has not actually launched its VR platform yet, with most user activity focused on buying virtual land that doesn't yet exist, even digitally. (This virtual land tulip mania largely explains the massive spike in web activity for Decentraland last December, when monthly page views jumped well over 1 million.)
It's possible Decentraland may become more of a web-based activity, with more users buying and selling virtual land and currency than actually visiting the virtual world through VR. As for High Fidelity, we should see slow but gradual growth of web traffic as more people buy VR headsets, and browse the web for content to play with. (Assuming VR headsets keep selling.)
I hadn't heard of decentralland till they started spamming my twitter by copying me in to dozens of posts.
Posted by: Judas | Thursday, April 12, 2018 at 10:14 PM
The essential difference between Decentraland and High Fidelity - or SL for that matter - is not that Philip doesn't understand even the basic concepts of marketing; it's that he and everyone else he's ever worked with project this elitist contempt for selling their product to Joe and Joanne Average. Those people in the desirable demographics. Retail is not just giving horny sailors a glimpse of your crotch through a dirty window. It's an art, and you have to understand and respect what your customer wants. You cannot judge them for it. Even now High Fidelity and Linden Lab just don't get it that nobody wants to share YOUR dream, but they are perfectly happy to buy or lease their own dream from you. We have prettier, better tasting tulips than Decentraland can ever hope for, but rather than offering the implied scarcity of Decentraland's fresh, unsullied, virgin lands or the insipid sexiness of their avatars, visitors to SL are offered even more of the post-apocalyptic blight of our poisoned Mainland; Linden Lab's version of Section 8 ghettoes, and a selection of hideously ugly vampire starter avatars that nobody ever chooses to start with. Linden Lab need to stop their foolish investing in even more unwanted band-aid innovations and to start throwing wads of cash at some capable branding company like Response Marketing or BBDO or Dentsu, an agency that knows how to rebrand an old, tired product with a bad reputation and make people lust for it. Even if they don't care about US, they do have responsibilities to their long-suffering investors.
Posted by: David Cartier | Friday, April 13, 2018 at 11:52 AM