New World Notes

SL Name Survey Results: 75% Wouldn't Pay to Change Their Avatar Name

What's the value of an avatar name? With 138 responses, here's the results to our survey, "Will you spend $15 to $50 to change your Second Life account name?" (Which is how much it costs to do just that, via a new Linden Lab offer.) Nearly 75% answered No.

In Comments to the survey post, readers were mostly not impressed:

"I really don't understand why this needs to cost money. There is no justification for this... why does it cost money? It's not like the Labs are employing someone to sit there and mash through a pile of paperwork forms."

Then again, the results also show that over 1 in 10 respondents are so interested in changing their avatar name, which when you think about, is quite a lot:

Survey: Will You Pay $15-50 to Change Your Second Life Account Name?

New Linden Lab offer, new SL user survey (above, take on laptop/desktop for best results):

That’s right, as [last week] everyone can change their avatar name regardless of their subscription level. Not just the Premium subscribers that have always been able to do so, but all of our Basic accounts as well! This is something we’ve been trying to offer for a long time, and something that we get requests for on a consistent basis, so we couldn’t be more pleased to finally be able to announce it.

As an exciting new option for Basic accounts, here’s what it looks like today. Not only do you have the option to change your avatar’s first name to anything you can imagine, but we also offer a rotating list of last names to give your avatar (even if you don’t already have one) that are updated on a regular basis. We will continue to make updates to the available last name pool, so if these options aren’t for you, stay tuned for future updates. You can also suggest your favorite name on our suggestion form, new names are chosen from there!

Will be interesting to compare/contrast the results with our resent survey on Premium+ upgrades.

SLer Survey: Will You Upgrade Your Account to Premium Plus?

Note: For best results, take survey on a laptop/desktop!

Now that we've had a week to digest the new Premium Plus offering (details infograpic-ed below), here's a survey for the money question: Will you as an SL user actually upgrade?

Surprising SL Economy Survey: While Most Creators Get a Better Revenue Split Than Competing Platforms, Most Pay Linden Lab a Lot

Of all the metaverse platforms active on the Internet today, Second Life by far offers the best overall revenue share to user creators on the platform. As a whole, the creator community makes about as much revenue from Second Life as the company itself, and 1,600 user creators earn over $10,000 a year -- a higher number than ROBLOX, even though ROBLOX has vastly more users.

Speaking of which, ROBLOX takes an eye-punching 70% cut of revenue from its creators, while recent entry Core boasted that its cut is only... 50%. By contrast, an SL creator could sell goods and services in the virtual world, and only pay the 5% fee for cashing out Linden Dollars into US dollars.

But the story of Second Life's economy is more complicated than that.

To get a clearer picture, I recently surveyed SL content creators on two questions: How much of their revenue is absorbed by Linden Lab through additional costs, for listing products on the web-based Marketplace, for renting virtual storefront land from Linden Lab, and so on -- and how that translated into real dollars.

Here's the results:

SL Content Creators: Last Chance to Take My Survey on Your Revenue Share With Linden Lab!

Click here to take by tomorrow Noon PT. (Use a laptop/desktop for best results.) Details published and discussed soon after!

SL Content Creators: How much of your income does Linden Lab take?

With so much online conversation over hat's a fair revenue split between a metaverse platform and content creators on it -- thanks to Meta and its just-announced 47.5% cut for Horizon -- I'm curious what the share is for Second Life. It can be as little as the L$ cash-out processing fee, or as much as monthly tier to rent a whole private island (or several).

Two survey questions below. (Use a desktop/laptop for best performance.)
 

Survey Results: With Philip Rosedale's Return, New World Notes Readers Overwhelmingly Optimistic on Future of Second Life & the Metaverse

Here's the results of our survey from last week, asking readers how the news of Philip Rosedale's return to Second Life has changed their outlook on the future of Second Life and other metaverse-type platforms. Respondents are Optimistic by an overwhelming 60%, with the remaining 40% in the skeptical/nervous/unsure/neutral category. Here's some reader comments:

Survey: How Does Philip Rosedale's Return to Second Life Change Your Outlook on the Future of the Platform -- And The Metaverse in General?

Note: Take this survey on laptop/desktop for best results!

Now that everyone has had time over the long weekend to process the news of Philip Rosedale's return to Second Life, here's a survey to express your sense of how that will shape the future of Second Life -- and other metaverse-type platforms. If history is a guide, Philip's return to active virtual world/metaverse development will make him a leading voice in the industry, while his last startup High Fidelity has technology being licensed to other metaverse platforms.

 So what's your high level sense on this move?  

Blind Survey Asks "Are You Buying Land in the Metaverse?" Here's How 1400 Staffers at Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft & Others Answered

The team at Blind, the anonymous social messaging app for tech employees, just passed along the results of a user-driven survey, asking the somewhat ambiguous question, "Are you buying land in the metaverse?"

Since it was posted December 17, 1400+ users have responded, with the most responses coming from employees with Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft/LinkedIn -- answers above. Only 13% have answered that question Yes, with 87% choosing No or How?

So this survey suggests that tech employees are overwhelmingly disinterested or confused by the concept of the Metaverse -- but also, that a substantial minority (over 1 in 10) are already personally investing in it. Personally I think the latter takeaway is more notable.

Here's some user comments from users at various tech companies, including some from firms directly involved in Metaverse development at some level (Unity, Amazon, Google, and Intel) :

Survey: Facebook Staffers Strongly Support Meta Name Change, Metaverse Goals -- Pros With Other Metaverse-Related Companies Skeptical

Here's some very interesting survey data from developers at Blind, the anonymous community app for employees, asking users in the high tech sector their opinion of Facebook's shift to Meta and Mark Zuckerberg's plan to make a Metaverse capable of holding over a billion users.  Taken between October 28 and November 1 by 11,673 verified tech professionals, including 1,120 Facebook staffers, the results are striking -- especially when you compare the broader industry perspective with Facebook’s own internal opinion.

First, to the statement, “I believe Facebook’s rebranding as Meta is a good business decision”:

An overwhelming 84% of Facebook company staffers support this move.

But do Facebookers believe they'll be successful at actually making the Metaverse?

Over 3 in 4 believe Facebook will succeed at making.

However, there was a slightly less optimism opinion that the 1 billion user target can be reached by 2030:

67% answering Yes to 1 billion by 2030 still suggests high internal confidence for such an ambitious goal.

Now compare and contrast these Facebook answers to the roughly 10,000 workers across the tech sector who took this survey: