HOW many residents???!

According to the latest economic statistics, the 'Total Residents' figure is now 11,043,466 (see http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php 22 November 2007 Population).

We know about all the avatars hanging out at the bottom of lakes - where the hell are the rest hiding???

There are only 12 originals in SL. The rest are alts and alts of alts.

Around 90% of all accounts that are registered Either can not play SL or Leave SL.

Its one of the dirty little semi-secrets around here.

That figure is basically everyone that ever registered on the web site, or some similar figure that doesn't have much bearing on how many folks are currently active in SL.

It appears that most folks that try SL don't like it and don't hang around long at all, so that accounts for the high ratio of registrants to active users.

SL has also been around long enough for people to try it, like it, and get tired of it.

For it to be a life long thing, for most folks, who aren't builders or texturers or scripters, but just users, it probably needs to be useful and allow connection to the rest of one's online social life.

I dont think there are 11 million of us - that kinda size would make sl horribly crowded coz arent we the size of Manhattan Island? At least someone said that to me at a party.
I bet we are realistically about 250,000 actual users on a month by month log-in basis with about 60 thousand daily users.

There's another thing, though. People try it and may leave if their hardware isn't sufficiently robust, they get bored, or have more important things to do. However, they know the way back and some do return. I expect a group will form over time of intermittent SL users who pop in when they feel like it, to no set schedule. In the future the computers considered usual will have better ability to run SL, and people - not just the hardcore, but all kinds of people - will use SL for their own ends, to their own time schedule (or lack of one).

The resident count is supposed to be people who registered and logged on at least once.

We gained 828,853 new residents in the past 30 days and 1,034,447 residents logged on in the past 30 days so we'd have about 205,594 regular residents, including alts.

How are the goals of building a platform that keeps "pushing the envelope" as many have used to explained things like Windlight, etc ..

And SL working on more people's computers ..

compatible?

The cycle will just repeat wont it?

Unless LL lets people catch up to the technology in SL .. then people will still have computers that cant run it.

Some current players say they cant run Windlight now.

Unless something else comes along that raises the average computer users hardware in the direction of "current" like an improvement in the economy or something.

Or some change is made in the range of computers and settings the SL veiwers support.

It's grown a bit since that size was quoted..

I think the math is the number of sims * 65536 / 1000 = the number of square kilometers. With 11,163 sims in SL right now, that makes it.. uh.. bigger than Texas and about twice the size of Germany.

Linden Labs bloats its numbers up to a flamboyant 11,043,466, on the next Geraldo at Large.

I would love to know how many truly new residents have joined in the last month and how many of those are staying. I'm guessing it's not a lot.

I think you're right - I suspect many are like two good friends of mine, who both downloaded the client but then found it all too time-consuming to really 'get into' SL. I know they can't be bothered to log in again, despite the fact that I've begged them to log in at least once more, just to dispose of their avatars! If I could, I'd do it for them - it would be a mercy killing

Yup, I agree with you in principle - it would seem that the onward march of technology in SL is not compatible with keeping residents in.

But, that said, there are usually 40,000 to 50,000 people online at any time right now (up from about 8000 when I joined), and the vast majority of those people have clearly got comparatively large disposal incomes, enough to buy a PC that is less than a year old, to upgrade RAM and buy the latest graphics cards.

The "market" that SL is aimed at is basically cash rich, potentially free-spending. and also quite demanding in terms of quality of experience. But most importantly, SL is only slowly becoming scaleable - so, if you made the performance requirements lower on client side, then the servers would crumble under 200,000 people online at the same time, and those people with money to spend would fall away.

If there is one thing LL does particularly well, it is to make a shed load of money (and they deserve it, because they HAVE created something pretty remarkable).

The limit to SL will eventually become the availability of bandwidth on the wider world communications network (already stretched by the millions of people downloading videos and live graphics streams, etc.). In a few years time, the social inequity will increase, as only those with seriously expensive (non polling) premium broadband connections will have a chance of even logging in....

I think you are out by a large factor... it's 1,000,000 sq.m to a sq.km.
I make it about 730sq.km, as big as West Somerset, or half the size of Greater London. For a USAnian perspective, a little smaller than New York City, or 12 times the size of Manhattan.

I really don't care about how many registered users are there - I care about the number of people being online. When I came to SL a year ago we freaked out when at peak times 15,000 users were online - nothing worked anymore, you could just forget everything other than sitting in your home and talking.

Now we have more than 50,000, heck almost 60,000 online at peak times, and most of the times stuff still works. 3-4 times active users - nice jump within 12 months.

A positive perspective regarding SL? Is that allowed? How refreshing.

Yeah.... that!

So, you go through orientation and it dumps you into a welcome center or info hub, where the atmosphere is that of kids hanging out at the mall, without security to moderate their rudeness. This is the introduction people have to SL. Is it a wonder retention is so low?

You've heard there's more to SL than rudeness, nakedness and griefing, so you fly or teleport around a bit. You find empty malls and clubs, and you also find busy malls and clubs where people aren't doing anything , but according to the text on their lap they're earning money. Why won't they chat with you?

And you find lots of signs. Glowing, spinning signs.

Okay, you've heard you can earn money here, so you ask people about it. And you ask. And ask. And ask. Most people don't respond. The ones you'd most like to respond are the ones with dollar figures in their laps, but they don't answer. Most others are rude to you. Eventually you find someone who does answer, but what does camping mean? Make stuff to sell? How do I do that?

Eventually, after having beed insulted, spammed, pushed, orbited, spammed, caged, crashed a few times, spammed, been locked in blue dialog hell, and seen lots of ugly crap, some kind soul gives you the honest truth: The best way to acquire money is to buy it with a credit card.

Having fun yet?

LL thinks this will turn into the next web. I wonder if the web would have turned into the web had the spammers arrived before the useful content. Or had visitors to web sites been able to harass, push, insult and orbit other visitors. Or had the first webizens been there wanting to sell something. Or had Joe Blow's spinning slutwear signs been visible from the nearby websites.

Some 3D world will become the next web, no doubt, but it won't be this one until LL recognizes the differences between the early nineties web and the current SL. Maybe I can simplify it for them...

First, make it a useful place for the masses.
Then, invite the masses.

Yes, the order of that is important. Yes, your residents will gladly help. Look for the things-to-do threads in this very forum to see what they think is useful. Note that there are few make-money-on-the-new-web-inspired things they find useful. Don't remember what the early web was like? A refresher course is right under your noses.

Sheep Labs will not make SL the next web. The Svargas and the Dublins and the Junkyard Blues and the International Space Flight Museums and the Sanctuary Rocks will. If you just introduce people to places like this instead of dumping them with the kids at the welcome center mall and hoping they'll find their way, and if you put the corporate buddy system to work supporting places like this rather than empty corporate brand spaces.

And, ferchrissake, clean up the spinning, glowing ugliness that cheapens this whole world.

In the past 2 months, about 1.5 million accounts logged in. Suppose alts and bots make up at least half of that number, conservatively. That makes about 750,000 in the last 2 months. With a retention rate of something under 10%, that would make 75,000 human beings actually interested in this platform enough to use it.

Not alts, not bots, just individual people.

Now try selling THAT number to advertisers rather then a fictional 11 million.

50,000-60,000 "active users" online at a time make ya happy? You haven't seen the threads about bot-farms and camping scams yet, have you?

As I celebrate my 1st BD, I remember similar figures to what Daniel said. A year ago today, there were less than one million registered accounts. Everyone was watching for the figure to jump to 1,000,000! Well, it went so fast that, we quickly lost track LOL!

Agree completely!

In the shorter term, the new user experience can often put people off. SL has a high enough learning curve without experiencing the not so nice aspects of the metaverse. I have had confused newbies ask me, "How do I play?", "What do I do now?" A formal buddy system would help quite a number of new residents IMO - but remembering the "mentor" I met as a noob, it would be hard to verify all buddies as bona fide, genuine, helpers.

One question - is the New Residents Started Kit available on the HELP Islands? It does direct new residents to newbie friendly areas - and has heaps of other helpful information.

And anyone want to take bets on 50% of those being bots that are just eating up system resources by continuously slamming the database with Search requests?

~Jessy

IF the retention rate is fairly constant,

the Users online number does not mean that SL is more compatible for people's computers, it simply means more people have been exposed to SL.

(If it was more computable the retention rate would increase some ... )

For example if you tell 100 people about SL and 10 actually are able and want to stay.

Its proportionally the same as if you tell 1000 People and 100 are able and want to stay.

Thus when we had a Million signups 100,000 had stuck around.

And 10 million signups, 1 million stuck around.


--------------------------------

Its definitely higher than Pie's 75,000 number since that would be the number if SL only had people who started SL less than 2 months ago.

The 75,000 might be the 2 month "grow by" number. Of course we dont know the number of those who are "retained" who end up leaving over that same period.

Its also definitely LOWER than 1.1 million (10% of 11,000,000) since that number doesnt include ALTs, nor does that number include those who stayed for a while (several months) and then quit.

----------------------------------------------

So really the number of total players is somewhere less than 1.1 million.

The Alt ratio before open registration was 1.4 Accounts per player so that would give us ..

786,000

The Alt ratio had probably increased significantly since open registration of course.

Also the 786,000 number would not include people who have left after being here long enough to count as "Retained"

Applauding Anya Ristow!

/me eeps and heads off to buy blonde hair and a remedial math book.