New World Notes

THE WORLD AT A PLATEAU

I had an inkling that meaningful population growth in Second Life had gone flat, these last couple months, so I contacted New World Notes demographics expert Tateru Nino to do the research and to draw up a chart of maximum concurrency over the last 150 days. 

"All the signs seem to indicate that the grid basically hit capacity," Tateru confirms. "As concurrency climbs each day, performance decreases, lowering it past the threshold of what Residents find acceptable."

The plateau began in mid-April, when the total number of Residents in-world during peak hours reached 39,000.  And while growth in new sign-ups has continued to increase at a rapid clip since, surpassing 6 million total just a couple days ago, the steady growth of maximum concurrency finally began to slow on February 25, the foothill of the plateau; from then on, it's been idling between 36-39K.  "Since that time," says Tateru, "we have spent 88.86 hours at or above that level, as reported by the Linden Lab data feeds."

When Tateru last concerned herself over demographics in this space, it's worth pointing out, she was writing about the scalability trouble from two million accounts.  The world had reached that point last December.  Four months later, four million more accounts created.  This is irony at its most brutal, for during a period when some were openly speculating that Second Life was over-hyped because it had few active participants, the world was actually being throttled by mass enthusiasm.

"Middle of the day is worst," Tateru adds, "Say 10am to 3pm [PST]."  That is also the time frame when European and American activity intersect most, and Second Life's in-world population is at its most international.  And in this way, a brotherhood of nations come together every day in a single place, to create and to be convivial, and to clobber the living bejesus out of several thousand servers.

ONE FOR THREE

So New World Notes readers predicted for 2007, so it has already come to pass: "When you open your log-in screen and see in the upper right hand corner Grid Status: Restricted, you’ll know that only those Second Life Residents who have transacted with Linden Lab either by being a premium account holder, owning land, or purchasing currency on the LindeX, will be able to log-in."  Never would have guessed that prediction would bear out in under a month.  Does that mean Second Life exceeds a million active users and gets bought by a big company before Summer's out, too?

COPY POLL

Make Free Online Polls

For those who prefer to register their opinion anonymously (or express it yet another venue), this poll will be running for the next 7 days.   The topic's Open Forum, however, will be open indefinitely.

OPEN FORUM: SECURITY BREACH AND TRUE NAMES

Update, 9/13: Here's Tateru's report on the growth spike after the breach.

So on September 6th, according to Linden Lab's official blog, there was a web-based security breach.  Payment information was not exposed, Robin Linden posts there, but potentially revealed were "Second Life account names, real life names and contact information".

Update, 9/10: Sex and security-- this post updated and bumped up to include an anonymous  reader's concerns over this breach.

POLLING IT OFF

The SLCC survey results are in, and they're decidedly mixed for Linden Lab.  The question was, "At SLCC '06, your concerns over Second Life's current and future issues (user-interface, grid downtime, land management, scalability, IP rights enforcement, etc.) were addressed by Linden Lab..."  Of the 43 readers who voted, only 23.3% chose "Sufficiently" or "Somewhat sufficiently", while nearly 40% selected "Somewhat insufficiently" or "Insufficiently".  Judging by that, questions and concerns still remain for the company to better address.  (Full details here.)

POST-SLCC POLLING!

Days before SLCC '06, I launched a web poll asking NWN readers to select the most important issue Linden Lab should publicly address at the Convention.  Now's your chance to decide if your concerns were addressed adequately enough, because I just started a new, week-long poll.  Right column, mid-page:  "At SLCC '06, your concerns over Second Life's current and future issues (user-interface, grid downtime, land management, scalability, IP rights enforcement, etc.) were addressed by Linden Lab... Sufficiently/Somewhat sufficiently/Somewhat insufficiently/ Insuffienciently/Don't Know."  If you weren't at the Convention, you should first check on coverage around the SL blogosphere, starting with the great talk notes taken by 3pointD here and here.  View aggregate the poll results as they arrive here.

(Photo of Cory and Philip Linden at SLCC taken with generous permission from Pathfinder Linden's Flickr stream.)

STILL POLLING

My blog survey, "The most important issue Linden Lab should publicly address at SLCC 06 is...", continues on the right column, middle page, and will run until the beginning of the Convention, this Friday.  So far, "Improvements to the user interface" and "Frequent grid downtimes" are running far ahead, and battling neck and neck.  Scroll down, click in your own opinion, and discuss here.

LOSING KIN

Iris Ophelia

Beginning with a reference to a Mao biography and 1984, SL blogger and Metaverse Messenger contributor Iris Ophelia has concentrated her ire on the apparent banning of Kin Keiko, a leading hair designer:  Rage, Ophelia.  It's arguably overwrought, but Kin's account troubles with Linden Lab have ripped through the SL blogosphere, even inspiring Neil and Nephilaine Protagonist, the husband and wife team who are among the world's most established and respected developers, to close down their anime-themed Nakama island, for a day of protest-- no small step. 

I just contacted and received Linden Lab's side of the matter, while also following up with Iris, to get an update-- read after the break.

SLCC SURVEY

With the second Second Life Community Convention only days away, I've created a web survey, located right column, middle page: "The most important issue Linden Lab should publicly address at SLCC '06 is..."  Scroll down, click your choice there, and feel free to discuss it here.  I'm moderating one of SLCC's panels, and intend to bring up the results then.

MARK OF THE BEAST

Yesterday's update of SL comes, as promised, with a new account status panel, designating whether a given user's account has payment info on file with Linden Lab.  (Though the new panel doesn't seem to factor in former contract workers who were given a comp account on their way out the door.)  This feature, coupled with the ability to restrict land access based on payment info status-- another tool coming down the pike, according to Robin Linden-- may be an effective guard against would-be griefers and minors who've fudged their way into the world.  If it works as intended, it'll address much of the concerns raised in last week's protest against the recent removal of the credit card/age verification process, at sign-up.  Then again, it might work, but still create a polarizing, tiered service effect with negative social consequences-- Mark Wallace speculates on those.  I'm too busy getting ready for a much-needed vacation to give much thought to the topic either way, but if the past is any guide, the new system will provoke an outcry, a strong reply to the outcry, a backlash against the reply, and then a strong outcry against the backlash.  And then a month or two later, no one will even remember what the fuss was over.