SL hit 1,000,000 registered accounts.. but how many unique users are there?

Ok, so SL hit 1 million sign-ups today... but is there an approximation of unique users? Like actually different individuals that have signed up for SL?

I'm sorry to say, I'm not sure why humans love to celebrate when something hits one-million. I mean, if a good majority of the users in SL create another account on a daily basis with the flick of a wrist, of course 1,000,000 will be reached...

It's like saying people are running a marathon, but instead of each person completing the length of the marathon, each person in the race only has to run a leg of it, and when the distance of the marathon has been reached, everyone has run the marathon.

To me, attaching a 1 million achievement to something that can just be whipped together, isn't much of an achievement. Why did no one consider it an achievement when the 1,000,000th prim was rezzed?
I mean, the USA's census just reached 500,000million people. ...One person doesn't get tallied more than once and is then considered another "resident." I don't know why LL considers this as "reaching 1,000,000 residents" or "reaching 1,000,000 users" ... yes there are 1,000,000 accounts created. yes, there are 1,000,000 avatars created.

I just don't get the point, but if someone wants to help me understand, I'd love to understand

Reproducing the same comment:

Either way, considering most people have a laptop next to their desktop, I'd venture to say quite a few were double logged in, where they couldn't before. Perhaps to camp?

If I took all my resources right now, I could log on 13 accounts. 6 computers and they are all capable of running 2 copies, and then another capable of running 1.

8

409,000 unique users logged in during the past 60 days

I think it's somewhere in between 8 amd 470,000 ... probably on the lower end

9?

I'd be interested to know how many accounts haven't logged in or even attempted to renew their passwords since the Great Password Reset. All of those should be subtracted from the count since they can't really be considered active accounts.

Or even 3 months from today, once the Yahoo hype dies off.

What I saw yesterday was a dismal unpreparedness for a sudden influx, of lost clueless newbies really not knowing what to do or how to do anything. There should be more support for these situations, and most importantly, full operational forums so that people CAN ask questions of other residents.

I am here because I stuck with it, made the effort, persevered, and figured out what to do and how things work. Most of yesterday's signups won't do the same.

Lewis

Read that as 409,000 accounts - not as 409,000 unique people at the keyboard loging in. I know plenty of people who have between three and 10 accounts each, and who I know have logged on with all of those accounts at least once in the last 60 days. If you took a fairly conservative estimate and said 4 alts per person, bearing in mind that many of the newbies have but one account, while many griefers may have dozens, if not hundreds of them, that would translate to maybe 100,000 real, actual people playing the game.

Another way to look at it is to consider how many log in at any given time.

Right now there are about 12,000 users logged on. Let's say no one logs on with multiple accounts at the same time (False, as I know people who do it regularly, but a safe assumption for most). Let's further assume a given Player plays for one hour, then either logs off or logs on as a different account. (Very conservative, considering how addictive it can be to play SL, but also takes into account the "5 min and out of there" crowd).

12,000 x 24 hours = 288,000 accounts who might be logging on in a single day. But again, this does not consider alts, so the number of individuals is likely far less. It also does not consider that at some times of the day the concurrent logins value is far less, because many people are either at work or not awake at that particular hour, worldwide.

Personally, my guess is that we have maybe 50,000 to 100,000 actual people who play SL. Certainly no where close to the one million mark, which AFIK includes every griefer ever banned for life, and which absolutely includes every person who ever left the game voluntarily, because their computer wasn't capable of performing well enough to run SL, or they got tired of lag or being griefed, or they just decided, for whatever reason, that SL was not for them.

We can do better than that.

Look at the economic stats page and examine the "unique logins over the past N days" numbers. If you plot these numbers, you'll find that (as of yesterday) they fit a curve:
# of unique logins in past X days = 58266 * X^0.4652

This curve fits the actual data to better than 99%. If we substitute X=1 day, then we find roughly 58,266 unique accounts logged in yesterday. Now, of those, 20,500 were brand new accounts, and 37,700 were existing users.

The standard MMORPG rule-of-thumb is that approximately half of all commited users will log in every day, with most logging in over the course of a week. If 37,700 existing users log in each day, we can double that to get a userbase of roughly 75,400. This is consistent with the number we get by ignoring new registrations and checking how many existing users have logged in over the past week (roughly 78,000).

The argument has been made that SL has a "long tail" of more infrequent users, making the MMORPG user counting rules inapplicable, but looking at the stats, I just don't see it. I concur with your estimate that SL probably has between 50,000 and 100,000 users at this point.

I have to agree with Lewis on this one. I was locked out of my sim when LL decided to re-direct new 'births' to info-hubs. This, of course, was a bad decision. Casinos don't cause this much chaos. And the Greeter team was not even informed about this happening. Who is making these bizarro decisions? A magic eightball or a monkey with a crayon? LL knew there would be a huge influx because of this article and all of the other coverage and they just sat back and watched the carnage. Adding new Help Islands late in the day did'nt seem to be a answer. There were still more people being born in Bear sim that were in these new areas. Many complaining there was nothing to do and this was all pointless. Throwing landmarks at them hardly helped because they had no idea what to do with them. A "CLICK HERE FOR FUN PLACES TO GO" Kiosk in the birthing areas could have helped a bit. Or even if LL organized the Greeters and Mentors and assigned them posts PRIOR to the article's release. These groups seem to be wasted resources.

Reaching 1 million for one day and then quickly falling below that because of un-prepardness is not smart business.

Not counting the numbers of us that can't log back in because of the updates etc.

I am unique! So there's at LEAST 10.

There are 43 unique users, and 27 of those are Internet enabled toasters. While we are on the subject of toasted goods, anyone wanna nice, warm toaster pastry?

Yes very true, I know at least 3 person that have 8 clients online all the time sitting money chairs around.

Is still money chairs worth that much only to be at the top popular listing?

409,000 unique avatars, Hok. That's quite a difference. I for one have only 3 and check on each of them daily, but I know of people who have 12 virtual alter egos. If SL would have 409,000 residents it wouldn't be listed in MMORPG statistics only under "others", while the games on place 2 and 3 range from a mere 250,000 to 350,000 users (following Blizzard's baby with 6 millions).

Those 1 million means: all the people who signed up for SL during the past years and gave up on it when they couldn't find their way around, plus all the accounts of users who left SL over time (since even cancelled accounts don't get deleted) plus all the alts...

The 400k during the past 2 months can be used as a base for a more realistic user number estimation. Everyone who didn't log in for 2 months has surely left SL, and of the remaining population at least 2/3 will be alts (just my guess, from what I know of the people around me). Leaves roughly 130,000 residents, a number that still looks way too high considering that max. 12,000 of them are online at once at any given time.

Let's make another estimation... 12k users online during US evening hours. At least half of the SL residents are from the US, but not everyone will log on every evening. Let's just assume that max. residents count is only 1/5 of the total residents number, and we end up with a total of 60,000 users. 60k - 100k looks quite realistic to me and matches SL's place in the MMORPG statistics.




Imagine the marketing department of McDonald's, considering product placement in computer games such as WoW and other new media environments... a user number of 1 million might justify the money and effort, but certainly nothing below that.

That's my point.... It is a completely misleading hype to claim "1,000,000 registered users".... It's a promotional ploy... They are trying to make it seem like 1,000,000 people are using SL. All LL has to say is "1,000,000 registrations" or "1,000,000 accounts created" ....

Speaking of MickeyDs:
McDonalds says "Over 500 billion Served" which is in fact true....
McDonalds does not say "Over 500 billion different people served"