 | Philip Rosedale at Picnic 06September 28th, 2006 |
Wonderland has Alice’s usual stellar liveblog job, this time of Wonderland: Philip Rosedale at Picnic 06. He says a lot of stuff that people following Second Life already know, but here’s some stats he shared:
- Today in Second Life people are spending close to 7m dollars in mostly digital goods and services per month
- 19,000 landowners
- 80 sq miles, about as big as Amsterdam
- 20 million objects
- 20 terabytes of user created content
- 13 teraflops of simulation
- 3500 server machines
- median age is over 30
- about half is international and half is USA
- Recently the international figure has been accelerating rapidly
- almost gender balanced, early adopters but not necessarily a programmer or technologists
- 36% of signups are women
- women use Second Life so much more than men do, to the degree that 44% of the usage hours are by women
- The majority of people doesn’t get through the first 4 hour learning curve; but once they’re through, they basically never leave
I was amused that Philip also said something that I have said a lot, but put a different twist and emphasis on it:
In a lot of ways, Second Life works a lot like the internet of 1995. The internet was a place where everyone was free to make their own stuff.
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SL isn’t very satisfying for the killer or achiever in me but the socializer is happy and the explorer has a lot of places left to visit.
I miss fencing.
[...] Comments [...]
[...] Only 19,000 Landowners Inadvertently or not, in the middle of a big hype package at Picnic 06, this, from El Chefe, amidst many breathless and mindblowing figures: o 19,000 landowners. Uh-oh. Not good. Not good at all. Finally, a figure that is REALLY telling us the story. Back in about June 05 (wish I could find the exact information, perhaps someone can help), when the Lindens were claiming "40,000 members" (a figure we now know means registrations, and not log-ons within the last 60 days), they said there were "9,000 premiums" and of these "6,000 owned land" — they had opted to get the 512 for free, or more. That means landowners, which I view as the hope of stabilization and civilization, constituted just 15 percent of the population. Not really spectacular, frankly, given that $9.95 with 512 m2 for free and $2000 at that time was a really great deal. Still…respectable. Today, if there are 19,000 "landowners," by which clearly Philip means not island deed buyers or renters, but those owning island or whole mainland sims or mainland parcels, that means out of 798,853 registrations, or 338,896 log-ons on the last 60 days, there is, respectively, either 2 percent landowners or premiums, or 5 percent landowners in Second Life — people with stake, commitment, tier-payment. I find that troubling — less actual stake in the world than a year ago, despite the huge bubble of growth. No wonder there is so much griefing! It’s my belief that land and homes are a significant brake on griefing and crime, just as in RL. Now, we could have an interesting debate — perhaps it would only be fair to claim all the island renters (or deed buyers, if you will) to be owners. That might really indeed be fair — I’m willing to be persuaded as such. Soembody plunking down $80,000 LL for a part of an island sim and paying loads of tier on it has just as much stake in SL as I do, if I buy that same thing on the mainland — paying that tier to Hiro or Anshe makes him just as committed as he would be to LL. Yet…not QUITE as much, perhaps. Or? What do you think? Perhaps if we start to add together some of the island deed owners, we could plump up these numbers. Dreamland has some 700 now; I see this one and that one has 40, 60, 160. While there are more island sims than mainland sims, I’m not sure if the number of island renters has surpassed the number of mainland renters and owners of parcels. I think not. Still…even if we added on to the 19,000, let’s say another 4,000-6,000 island renters, we’d still not be making any spectacular statement. We still wouldn’t have the 15 percent of premiums we had a year ago. Now…other factors to look at. People who bought the premiums just for the cash stipend — that was 3,000 who didn’t even bother with the land in 2005 — now have no reason to keep paying $9.95 or even $6.25 annualized per month, because the cost of the Lindens has just gone down on the LindEx. They may not wish to risk an annual subscription they can’t refund; but even with a 90-day sub they can buy Lindens for less. And why own land? You can rent. There are LOTS of renters as we know! And Philip can’t perhaps reliably gather those statistics. It is always fascinating to me that there are at least some domains that we do own, in the social sphere. To gather those statistics, he can’t just use crude server scraping. He’s have to know the names of the rental companies, have to understand how the group rentals work to some extent — not all have the name "rentals" in them. They might call themselves merely "Paradise" or something and have 50 tenants within them. There are LOTS of places like that all over SL. Still…I’m just not impressed, and even worried. It means people aren’t buying land even though there seems to be this huge growth in land buying when you eyeball the map. And it means thousands of people logging on just fly around and never light. Last edited by Prokofy Neva : Today at 03:45 PM. [...]
[...] Only 19,000 Landowners Inadvertently or not, in the middle of a big hype package at Picnic 06, this, from El Chefe, amidst many breathless and mindblowing figures: o 19,000 landowners. Uh-oh. Not good. Not good at all. Finally, a figure that is REALLY telling us the story. Back in about June 05 (wish I could find the exact information, perhaps someone can help), when the Lindens were claiming "40,000 members" (a figure we now know means registrations, and not log-ons within the last 60 days), they said there were "9,000 premiums" and of these "6,000 owned land" — they had opted to get the 512 for free, or more. That means landowners, which I view as the hope of stabilization and civilization, constituted just 15 percent of the population. Not really spectacular, frankly, given that $9.95 with 512 m2 for free and $2000 at that time was a really great deal. Still…respectable. Today, if there are 19,000 "landowners," by which clearly Philip means not island deed buyers or renters, but those owning island or whole mainland sims or mainland parcels, that means out of 798,853 registrations, or 338,896 log-ons on the last 60 days, there is, respectively, either 2 percent landowners or premiums, or 5 percent landowners in Second Life — people with stake, commitment, tier-payment. I find that troubling — less actual stake in the world than a year ago, despite the huge bubble of growth. No wonder there is so much griefing! It’s my belief that land and homes are a significant brake on griefing and crime, just as in RL. Now, we could have an interesting debate — perhaps it would only be fair to claim all the island renters (or deed buyers, if you will) to be owners. That might really indeed be fair — I’m willing to be persuaded as such. Soembody plunking down $80,000 LL for a part of an island sim and paying loads of tier on it has just as much stake in SL as I do, if I buy that same thing on the mainland — paying that tier to Hiro or Anshe makes him just as committed as he would be to LL. Yet…not QUITE as much, perhaps. Or? What do you think? Perhaps if we start to add together some of the island deed owners, we could plump up these numbers. Dreamland has some 700 now; I see this one and that one has 40, 60, 160. While there are more island sims than mainland sims, I’m not sure if the number of island renters has surpassed the number of mainland renters and owners of parcels. I think not. Still…even if we added on to the 19,000, let’s say another 4,000-6,000 island renters, we’d still not be making any spectacular statement. We still wouldn’t have the 15 percent of premiums we had a year ago. Now…other factors to look at. People who bought the premiums just for the cash stipend — that was 3,000 who didn’t even bother with the land in 2005 — now have no reason to keep paying $9.95 or even $6.25 annualized per month, because the cost of the Lindens has just gone down on the LindEx. They may not wish to risk an annual subscription they can’t refund; but even with a 90-day sub they can buy Lindens for less. And why own land? You can rent. There are LOTS of renters as we know! And Philip can’t perhaps reliably gather those statistics. It is always fascinating to me that there are at least some domains that we do own, in the social sphere. To gather those statistics, he can’t just use crude server scraping. He’s have to know the names of the rental companies, have to understand how the group rentals work to some extent — not all have the name "rentals" in them. They might call themselves merely "Paradise" or something and have 50 tenants within them. There are LOTS of places like that all over SL. Still…I’m just not impressed, and even worried. It means people aren’t buying land even though there seems to be this huge growth in land buying when you eyeball the map. And it means thousands of people logging on just fly around and never light. Last edited by Prokofy Neva : Yesterday at 03:45 PM. [...]