New World Notes

Best of New World Notes 2011: My Favorite 10 Posts

I noted 2011's top NWN posts by popularity last week, now here's a selection of my own personal favorites that I think (hope!) are still worth reading. At the very top is "Sander's Villa: The Man Who Gave His Father a Second Life" which is what I consider the essential NWN story, showing how online worlds can shape culture in the digital age-- in this case, how we respond to the death of a loved one, and pre-digital art. Another top favorite is "Second Life Used to Design Wisconsin Retirement Home With Input from Senior Citizens", a story illustrating how SL can still be used for practically and socially transformative RL applications. I wish I had time to write more of these -- here's to doing that in 2012.

More favorites from 2011:

• Why Second Life Can't Survive on Its Current Users Alone
• Linden Lab To End Era As Second Life-Only Company In 2012
• When the Brand Becomes a Liability - How to Rebrand Second Life (for The CMO Site)
• Should Access to Social Networks be a Basic Human Right? Google & Facebook's Recent Moves Make Me Think So
• Academic Study: People Get More Happiness from Being in Second Life Than Good News from Real Life
• How Can Ray Kurzweil be Right About the Singularity When He Seems So Wrong About Second Life?
• The Myth of Second Life's Failure to Go Big: It Wasn't Lack of Practical Applications, But Poor Execution & Market Timing
• Newt Gingrich's Second Life: The Leading GOP Presidential Candidate Visited the Virtual World With All-Female Avatar Bodyguards, Suggested Congress Meet in SL Too

Also, some guest posts worth reading if you haven't already:

• To Save Second Life, Linden Lab Must Create Something Successful Besides Second Life (by Dizzy Banjo)
• Second Life Art Maven Bettina Tizzy Explains Why SL Artists Should Credit Works With Their Real Life Names

The Mystery of Second Life's Flat Growth in 2011 -- Despite 16K New Users Daily! (As NWN Readers Predicted)

In January 2011, I asked New World Notes readers how much Second Life would grow in terms of users this year, and a plurality of you had it about right:

As it stands, Second Life has about 1.05 million monthly users, a metric Linden Lab changed over the Summer. (When the Lindens reported 800K users last year, they were defining "user" as a returning user who's logged into SL at least twice; now, a single login suffices.) So while 2011 has seen some growth, we're also seeing quite a lot of churn. Seriously, a spectacular lot of churn.

In fact, this remains Second Life's greatest mystery to me: The company reports that Second Life still attracts an average of 16,000 new users a day, i.e. 480,000 a month, i.e. 5,760,000 new users a year. Yet somehow, total growth of retained, returning users remains nearly non-existent -- from Q2 2011 to Q3 2011, it was in the four figures.

Top New World Notes Posts for 2011 by Popularity

Here's a collection of New World Notes posts from 2011 which generated the most page views. Interestingly, the most read post by far was not directly about Second Life, but about Google's (ongoing) policy of banning pseudonymous names from its social network, a post picked up by Techmeme, which went viral soon after. Other posts exploded due to reader recommendations (thank you!), Tweets by follks like William Gibson, traffic from big sites like Boing Boing and Kotaku, and online communities like Reddit and Stumbleupon. I'm also grateful to see a nice mix of SL and non-SL posts being popular. As Linden Lab itself expands its development to other games besides Second Life, so, I suspect, will New World Notes.

Here's 2011's top SL-related NWN posts:

• Game God Will Wright Joins Linden Lab's Board of Directors!
• Interview with Rod Humble, Linden Lab's New CEO, on the Future of Second Life
• Second Life's Survival Seriously Threatened by Second Life Users' Hate and Fear of Change
• Newt Gingrich's Second Life: The Leading GOP Presidential Candidate Visited the Virtual World With All-Female Avatar Bodyguards, Suggested Congress Meet in SL Too
• Meeroos Starving Due to SL Griefers Selling Fraudulent Food & Linden Lab Closing Their Legitimate Food Source
• William Gibson Wants to See a Mixed Reality Photo Blog (Pictured above)
• The Myth of Second Life's Failure to Go Big: It Wasn't Lack of Practical Applications, But Poor Execution & Market Timing
• Felicia Day's Dragon Age II Character Tallis Needs a Virtual Fashion Makeover -- Here's How She Should Look!
• Why Second Life Can't Survive on Its Current Users Alone (And Why Only Mass Growth Will Save It)
• Linden Lab Adds Avatar Physics (I.E. Bouncing Breasts) to Latest Second Life Dev Viewer, Here's How to Get Them
• Virtual Pet Owners Now Hiring Virtual Pet Sitters

And here's most of NWN's top gaming/technology-related posts for 2011:

• Valve Writer Erik Wolpaw on Rick, Under-Appreciated Star of Portal 2
• NEA Now Awarding Grants to Gaming & Machinima: Huge Milestone in Recognizing Games as Art
• Google Confirms: Non-Real Name Google Profiles Risk Suspension (I.E., Google Still Doesn’t Get Social)
• Moral Revolution: About Half Who Played Deus Ex's Malik Mission Earned the Difficult "Good Soul" Achievement
• Bitcoin Can't Be Free from the Powers That Be, Because It Rides on Rails That They Control
• John Carmack on Euclideon's Unlimited Detail Demo, Notch's Reaction To It & Carmack's Own Plans for a Voxel Renderer

I'm probably missing a few biggies -- if so, please remind me in Comments!