
Data courtesy Tyche Shepherd
While newer virtual world usage so far seems to be flat in the wake of recent coronavirus news, legacy world Second Life has indeed seen some growth in usage. As renowned Second Life grid analyst Tyche Shepherd puts it to me today:
"This weekend there seems to have been more activity above expectations -- Median Daily Concurrency was up by 10% on Saturday 14th (45,000) and Sunday 15th (44,000) over expectations. There was also uplifts in Maximum and Average Daily Concurrency."
Notably, the World Health Organization designated the Coronavirus a global pandemic on March 11, while the White House declared a national emergency on March 13th.
"However," as Tyche cautions, "this effect has only been in the last 4 days of data (13th onwards). We'll see what happens over the weeks to come."
In terms of actual users, ten percent growth in concurrency translates to about 5,000 people; not a lot, but not nothing. And to be sure, correlation does not prove not causality. (Except in the sense that writing about a correlation causes Internet commenters to angrily write, "Correlation does not prove causation!") But common sense suggests at least some of this growth is the result of more people staying indoors longer, looking for new (and classic) social outlets to play in.
Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg did just confirm this growth, and also associated it to the coronavirus:
Second Life Usage Now Higher Than Its 2007 Hype Level Period?
Interesting comment from Amanda Dallin, reflecting on SL's recently reported "pandemic boost":
This sounds right. 2007 saw a lot more churn due to massively promoted events like a cross-over experience for the television show CSI, mostly from people who were unable to install the program or get past the orientation. However, the definition of a monthly active user has definitely changed since 2007 -- back then, Linden Lab would mainly refer to "Total Residents", i.e. anyone who signed up for an account, whether or not they even installed the program and went in-world.
The definition that hasn't changed is the amount of concurrent users, and that is indisputably much larger now than it was in 2007:
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Posted on Monday, June 22, 2020 at 02:50 PM in Comment of the Week, DEMOGRAPHICS, Economics of SL | Permalink | Comments (3)
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