Where have all the players gone?

After the Business Week article came out many real business people joined SL. One was Tiger Clinton, she was very active in this forum from 4/28/06 to 5/2/06 and had one post on 5/6/06. From the looks of things she viewed the SL economy as too unstable to invest in and left. How many other new players have done the same thing?

Under Economic Statistics you find this:
Population
Logged-in Users
Residents Logged-In During Last 60 Days 110,936

Just what does this really mean?

I watch the number of SL residents on the SL home page rise by almost 1000 new players daily. That number currently stands at 222,091. I also track the number of residents online now on an hourly basis when I can. I have 1 weeks worth of hourly data when the number of total residents grew by over 6000. Where are all these players? My hourly data shows the maximun number of residents occuring between 7 PM and 9 PM SL time but generally aroung 7:30 I think because I don't record data on the half hour. That number is very close to 6600 residents maximum day in and day out. The highest number occured on 5/16/06 between 7 PM and 8 PM at just over 6900 residents.

The SL economy is fuelled by growth but if the growth is some phantom figure that bares no relation to real new residents who contribute to the economy we have a huge problem.

So my question is where have all the players gone?

I see the 222,091 figure as "number of accounts ever created".

That is not the same as number of people who have ever logged on to SL, because of alt accounts. Also I think most of that figure would be people having a look for a week and not continuing. So besides Linden's marketing purposes pretty useless.

The 60 days fiqure is not all that helpful to me because I dont really know how they arrive at it and whether there is any fiddle.

The "Online Now" figure is probably a heck of a lot more useful. These are people currently playing and if they are so inclined, could buy my product now.

According to Robin, the front-page number is the number of accounts that have ever been created. From the economic data Vasudha posted last month, I calculated the number of true, honest-to-goodness, active users to be in the range of 25,000-35,000. Assuming a peak concurrency of ~20% (on the high side, but within industry norms), that number is consistent with the stats you have calculated.

Yeap around 30k feels about right.

It's a free signup so a lot of people probably sign up, see SL is not for them, and never return.

How many are Alt Accounts? How many haven't logged in for over 90 days?

Tracking the total number of accounts ever created is one thing.
But counting active accounts within the last 90 days is something else..
And I bet you that you'll see a 75% reduction in the "population" of
accounts if you count active user accounts..

Taking Ricky's numbers, you quickly realize that a L$671,000,000
currency float for 35,000 active users is a "Flood"....

Just the reason I've been saying, "LL shouldn't base money supply
expansion on population, but GDP"... If all those new members
don't produce anything, then expanding the currency float on
their behalf is foolish...

Yet LL continues to count them so they can harp on TV Shows,
Newspapers, Magazines, about how many users they have...
Enough though, the active user base is 80% less than which
LL is trying to sell... LL needs to stop putting lipstick on pigs..

I seem to agree with RBD on this point.

When you look at:

the total $Linden
number of active accounts
average $Linden in an account

That seems to mean somebodies are sitting on heaps of $Linden, without heaps of corresponding things to buy with the $Linden.

That in turn suggests it will end up churning through Lindex somehow.

Just as an update, today there are 223,265 SL residents and that is a change from yeserday of 222,091 SL residents or 1174 new residents added yesterday. Ok I caught yesterdays peak of residents logged in between 7 and 8 PM SL time and that number was 6663. Wednesdays peak should have been about 6600 but I missed it exactly but Tuesdays peak was just over 6900. Of the 1174 new accounts registered yesterday how many actually logged in as new players and why didn't they if they registered? My RL daughter who is an occasional SL player is waiting for a friend who has never left welcome island and she thinks those players are not counted in the logged ingame count since she can't locate him in Find.