Poll: Why has population been so stagnant?

What numbers are you using to identify "population" that would indicate that it's "booming"?

And what does the Environmental Protection Agency have to do with all this?

In my opinion this Poll is a bit flawed in the sense that buggy software, bad service , etc, are issues that are evident only after signup so they don't really effect new accounts, which are the numbers the Providers Ttumpet, so does it really affect new signups? Retention, definitely.

@ Brenda

The poll is about population growth (the logged in during past 2 months figure) which of course includes retention as a key factor.

LOL...that's funny. Do you think EPA only stands for Environmental Protection Agency? Ok, so my acronym might be wrong...but I promise you my information is accurate--perhaps in the last few months there is a lull, but this does not mean that since last May there hasn't been a boom. I got this information from a recent detailed study done on Second Life. I don't have the link or the hardcopy I printed available, so I'll have to get that for you all when I'm home...but they mentioned a boom also...perhaps they are considering this as a fiscal thing, and not a monthly thing.

The population in SL is only going to bloom. A lull in RL shopping does not mean that people are going to stop buying things does it? Perhaps it's seasonal...economical...who knows.

Anyhow. Cheers!

I'm in agreement with Cocoanut Koala.

I don't make a lot of money in RL; I have a rather esoteric educational job. I have to decide I really like a game before I can plunk down money for it, if ever.

When I came into SL, one of the first things I saw was malls, filled with neat stuff I couldn't buy. I spent my first days looking for ways to make money so I could simply TRY OUT SecondLife!

If I hadn't figured out the camping system as soon as I did, I'd have been gone permanently. And now, I'm hearing folks (mostly older players, I'm willing to bet, that have RL money) complaining about camping and wanting to ban it.

SL has no built in way to 'try out' the game and enjoy its benefits long enough to decide to stay. People have created the camping system, mostly to raise traffic, but it's the ONLY way folks can try things out without committing RL finances. The very attitude that so many have against this, the ONLY way to earn money for newbs in SL, is very telling to me.

I've started friends on SL, who are all intelligent, creative, artistic people. Many have begun creating in SL and have added a great deal to the environment. They have only been able to do this because I told them about camping from day one; otherwise they would not have been able to stay either, because the adage about poor artists is a true one.

Not only is this a matter of testability and morale for the new player, but it has overall economic effects upon SL. Perhaps camping isn't the answer, but there has to be ways for new people to earn a little cash to grease the wheels of commerce. Anyone that has studied Economics understands the drastic necessity of welfare to RL economies; even the very poor must feel like they have something to spend or it affects consumer behavior all the way to the top. It's such a basic known factor in economic theory, that it is likely to affect SL in similar ways even though SL is not, of course, the real world.

I think retention is a critical issue . . . more than sign up. The # of registrations keeps climbing, though some are undoubtedly alts. I think keeping folks here relies on all of the above . . . ease of use being critical. The learning curve here is huge and it takes lots of patience and persistence to learn enough to move relatively effortlessly through sl. Some may not have either the time or the patience to commit. That's why supporting newbies is critical for all of us . . . although, it's a huge investment of time, if the newbie bails after a few days or weeks, never to return.

But I think summer may also play a role. I've noticed even heavy users declining in the amount of time they spend here of late, and the ones I know attribute it to rl summer activities.

Just a thought to add to all the others.

I'm not questioning the accuracy of your information, I don't have any evidence to do that. I am curious as to what EPA stands for in the context you used it though......

SpankMe, thank you for your clarification.

4 of the choices are not valid. The population is a count of how many signed up on the webpage. They don't even have to download the client to be counted. So issues of buggy software, compatibility issues, poor customer service and even steep learning curve have no effect on population.
I do know the everytime a SL story hits a magazine or tv news there is a surge in population. From the data around 50% never make if off Orientation Island. But they are still counted in the population.

Let us forget about total population for a minute. Let us discuss daily activity. I remember not too long ago when there were only 15K on at one time...and in a pretty short period, it's more than doubled...on peek times I see 40K on at a time. That in itself shows the population has increased dramatically.

And it is very cynical to even suggest that the majority of that growth is from alts. You're trying to tell me that the population has been creeping slowly, and that the majority of the growth we see today is due to incest?

Ewww...that's sick. Ok, but seriously...we have daily online activities that certainly show a continually steady climb in population.

/me still wants to know what EPA stands for

It's been steady at 40k for some time as well.
We "boomed" from 10k to ~30 t 35k and have been slowly climbing since then, but overall population (not total, I mean people who stick around) has slowed dramaticaly.

Edit:
How about an article of my own?

http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/2007/07/10/second-life-population-slumps-in-june/

A couple months ago there was a thread pretaining to this "growth".

/327/44/187026/1.html

The statement I made in that thread still stands........the concurrent online users is flat. And has been that way for almost two months. I have yet to see 50,000. But it was 46,000 at the time of the posting of the thread. You can't tell me that we are having "steady growth"........it's stagnant.

And even with this "breather" for LL the game is still prone to sim crashes, log in issues, lost inventory, failed teleports and many more issues that were directly contributed to rapid growth of the population. LL was whinning constantly about scaling the platform. They got their "break"...........why have they not gotten closer to fixing the thing? I have my opinions.......won't bore you with them.

But SL is stagnant right now. And much of the reasons are bugginess, and a near total lack of customer service. The steep learning curve I don't think has much to do with it.......it was the same steep learning curve 6 months ago. Even a year and a half ago when I joined.

Dearly Darlings,

I don't see anything different from my breeding and judging dogs. When 101 Dalmations is in the theaters Dalmations are popular...after they rip up the house I rescue them from terrrible pet owners. And when I see dogs in the ring from beginner breeders they are usually very poor in quality (think customer service). SL is kind of the same way. When the site gets good press, people come exploring. After a bit, the ones that SL does not apeal to leave. And some complain. But there are a few magical few that really take this place to heart and give it a good honest go. I for one am having a wonderful time and have brought several of my RL family into the virtual fold. I think M. Bigwig is right with his last post on this thread.

You all have a lovely evening!

Ever Yours,

Mrs. Showdog Tiger

I went with "Other"

Second Life was created to be for, and has always been more-suited to, the first group (artistic-social), and is not really being tuned up by LL as a gaming-compatible platform (though there have been some excellent grassroots efforts to build LSL-based real-time gaming environments).

I believe the questions to answer are these:

1)How many of each 1000 new arrivals, suggested by Doc Moseley (post#5), were folks who understood what Second Life is NOT, up front, before creating an account?

2)And how many are actually hardcore RT/MMO gamers expecting the "next level in MMO gaming", a chance to stay at home and get paid to 'game'?

3)Has that number-per-thousand changed since 2006?

4)Are sales also flat (or as I suspect, actually going down!)? (NOTE: measured in Lindens taken in by private businesses such as yourself per 1000 accounts logged in within last 60 days, not in LindEx activities)

I think there are tons of folks here who still expect to make SL work (and expecting LL to shift gears to accomodate them), as "a game". 'Game-ness', as SL exists now...well, SL will never achieve true real time game-status (in terms of content, "playability", or platform dynamic performance) in its present form, I am both confident and so sorry to say (would that it weren't so, we wouldn't be having this conversation)...

So...how many of every new 1000 come expecting a newer, better "game," only to leave very soon after they figure out the reality of what Second Life "is"??? My guess? Around 750-800 of every 1000 who've been here since late 2006, which only leaves 200-250 of every 1000 to filter down thru Doc's analysis...leaving not very many veterans (40 or 50 of every 1000) to decide whether the potential outweighs the cost and the hassles, right?

I wonder if MY 750-800 may be even more, now that the tarnish has begun to show through the PR polishing...and RL commercial interests realize that the PR machine has been promising "The Matrix" too far ahead of its time...

SpankMe, I fear that others, who might not have left otherwise, have run away once they start to wonder if they've been "sold a bill of goods" by the advertising, too, before they DO get in so deeply (financially and otherwise) as some of the rest of us??? I also fear that there is a much sharper decline in the sales of aesthetic/quality-of-life themed objects, such as houses, landscaping products, and scripted venue products, than is being seen in costumes, weapons and other role-playing related product lines.

Serious question, and not a "nitpick" by any means (unless you join me in my critique of LL for advocating, and marketing based upon, fuzzy statistics in the first place)...and I hope what I am thinking about comes out right here...

If the same 10,000 people are running more and more alts for more and more specific purposes (or simply to sustain their own market), wouldn't it be likely that you WOULD see an increase in daily accounts activity, since more and more task-specific accounts have to be logged on and off to accomplish the same number of specialized tasks? And as you have more and more of your 10,000 theoretical-actual account-holders doing this, then a higher concurrent account login level would be an obvious consequence?

Looks like this number is, like all of the other SL metrics being used, too easily-manipulated (without any real appropriate means to link account owner to account) to be used as a stand-alone indicator of anything more than "feel-good" statistics...or for us to rely on in setting our own futures.

I think those first 2 are the answers.

I'd say the majority sign up for SL, expecting "Warcraft" and getting paid for it.

I also take into account that its summertime in the Northern Hemisphere. Who, besides SL Residents, spends nice warm sunny days in front of a computer? Wait till Winter rolls around again, see if sales pick up.

Actually, this is a point where things get _very_ difficult.

The problem basically is that Second Life is not _supposed_ to be free. Camping wasn't a designed-in part of SL and it's something that the Lindens and many older users want to eliminate (_not_ because it provides new users with an income stream, but because it creates lag and ruins the traffic figures).

So if any newbies are leaving SL because they can't earn money, then I do have a lot of sympathy for them, but at the same time - the reality is that they are leaving, not because of a "bad newbie experience", but because Second Life just isn't the online world that they're looking for. And that's fine - the Lindens, plus the residents as a whole who've built Second Life, have taken it in particular directions where it can't easily come back from.

But the point is that when a newbie is obviously disappointed at learning they can only camp for small amounts of money (which won't increment, as they do in more traditional games), and can't build or make clothes or script without real skills, and as a result, they quit then.. well, those are just the realities of SL. And I start to object when someone rounds on the Mentors and newbie helpers and says it's their fault for offering a "bad newbie experience".

Yes, we can and do point them to freebies, but they get tired of them quickly. Yes, we can encourage them to learn the skills, and give them classes (no classes in SL? Funny, the NCI class schedule is full to bursting, and they do pay instructors), but many aren't interested, or lack confidence, or have just been conditioned by living in modern RL society which strongly discourages reskilling (especially into creative arts). But if they want World of Warcraft.. we can't make SL into that. If they want to be a famous top model and a landowner by tomorrow, without paying in any money, we can't do that. If they want to be a king - not just look like a king, but be one, with subjects - we can't do that.

It doesn't help that SL, precisely because it lacks levelling up, lets people evaluate the social situation much faster. You can camp for a few lindens today and.. a few lindens in a year. You can't spend time to become a Mega Camping Warrior who earns L$1000 a minute from the chairs. If you want to build, you can access all the tools you'll ever be able to access right now. You don't have to spend months mining prims to unlock the Torus. But that also means that you can't hold onto the belief that you could build like Starax if only you had unlocked the Torus, so you had better keep playing for those months. Instead, you have an (fairly) accurate perception right away, and if that perception doesn't look good, you'll hit the red X and not come back.

So that's the option I think that's responsible for most newbies quitting. Not that they had a bad newbie experience of Second Life, but simply that Second Life wasn't offering what they wanted. And the reality is that in many cases, no virtual world with real people can offer what they want, it's just that the other ones do a better job of stringing out the amount of time such a person has to spend before they realise this. And without a radical overhaul of its economic system, it probably won't be able to.

But without Campers, who would I have to shoot at???

Actually, it's just as well if signups are falling off. Since the rotation of names was stopped at the beginning of the year, each of the currently available last names has about 10,000 uses each (max used to be a few hundred). If you register today you have to pick a first name with lots of numbers in it before you get something usable.

I have to tell you that SL is great and I tell everyone I know about it. Most of the people I talk to just don't get it. They believe it to be like a traditional game and really can't see the potential it offers for creating something completely of their own. It's hard for these people to see it as a different kind of game. Plus it's had a few negative reviews from sources with influence such as Time magazine who named it number 5 worse site on the net. I was very upset by this since they largely spoke about the game itself and not the site. People who I know who have tried it and like the concept say it's too slow for them and look at other places like Entropia. I don't know why, but in TV reports and documentaries we have seen, SL is sort of an after thought and Entropia gets all the glory and I must say, it does look faster bu I don't really know. And also I must admit, for the majority of people on older PC there just isn't enough RAM. I crash constantly. And the bandwidth just isn't there in some places of the world like Australia. I mean for what we pay here, I am not able to do much else except play the game. We download a fair bit here from overseas such as TV shows so SL is limited for me. Anyways, that's my two cents worth.

Have you been viewing the number say in the last 30 days? I believe we gained a large number of population. We are now over 8 million and around 30 day ago we were some where in the early 7 millions. Correct me if i am wrong.

Usagi

@ Usagi & Destiny, and others...

Again, the population figure that this poll is primarily focused on is logged in over past 60 days. This number has been about 1.7 million for half a year or so. The total population will always steadily go up, but to get registered on that figure people only have to download the software and create an account. Thus that figure means little, as retention would not be factored in. Logged in "now" can also be a useful figure but it is highly variable. Thus I went with the logged in over past 60 days figure as a rough estimate of sustained population growth. (Obviously alts can influence this figure, but steady increases in this figure likely means stable population growth.)

Good population growth is very valuable to business owners or others with financial investments in SL. It will also help the long-term profitability (and viability) of Linden Labs as a business model. My sales at my store increased steadily over 2006 but stayed steady or even declined a bit in 2007. I still make a lot of money, and I'm thankful for that and I've had fun doing it... however if the population were to double again I could probably retire on SL.

The whole idea of the poll was to see why people think we are having increased problems with retention. As the "created an account" number has been steadily climbing, but logged in over past 60 days has not, then clearly retention issues are occurring. I'm sure we are losing some veteran players do to poor customer service and the like as well, but I bet these figures are still relatively small. I'm not sure though.

No one has offered a guess as to when the logged in over past 60 days figure will hit 3 million.

There was a period of time a slowdown did occur, say 4 weeks ago. But i believe its the external portals new members that are now linking to LLABS is causing the slowdown in your asumption here. Asumption not in the terms of wrong way of thinking, but within reasoning. But that of the data slowly being gathered and "crunched" as western people say. remeber the growth betwenn June 6, 2006 and say Sept 7, 2006? The opening of the flood doors letting millions of alt accounts in? Until LLABs shut the door with the password breakin? The numbers boogles the brain a? Look at the way llabs has openen and then closed the routes of signups and how now on the website you need a a e-mail now to process the avie . Unlike a few months ago, where people just signedup without using a workable e-mail. Its A thought, But i would say the UI nightmare is also part the reason.


Example of how bad the Public relations of Second life is working......... Out here in Japan there is a Japanese computer shop that is PR Second life.........But you know how stupid the PR person here in Japan is? The Unknowning future users of Sl is lead to a DOWNLOAD PAGE..........Not of the Normal Viewer.( First Look IS in BETA, and should`nt be used as a hatching viewer for those newly signed up users ). Now ok you say FIRST LOOK client is stable. But those that are unknowing how system specs, and or Don`T want to use voice are lead to the FIRST LOOK client reguardless...... this alone shows how confused and unknowing LLABS`s PR agent / or user here in Japan. What that person show have done is "LINK" the GENERAL or Normal Viewer Client. AND NOT THE VOICE FIRST LOOK BETA CLIENT.........How unknowing or the lack of understanding of how the newly hatched users possible problems they might have during their begainning. Why even chance their they might giveup, when using a known unstable client during signup? Ok before you say years ago bla bla bla........we had things worse. Well your right! But the business of second life has changed, this is not 1.2 client etc..... or whatever! So SpankMe if i had another answer for you. i surly would say LLABS lack or KNOWING PR people and or totally lack of guidance with in the newbie portal system gices clues why the slowdown has been occuring................

I Hope this makes sence.........english is not my first language........

Usagi

Thanks for explaining why the Japanese users I was trying to help on HI last night ignored all chat.