SL recap of April 2010

Here is a recap of links of sl news coverage during April 2010 in Second Life. I post recap posts on my blog at the end of every month because its something I like sharing with everyone on the months highlights. It’s been a rather busy month with loads of cool events, big talking points, Q1 SL Metrics and lots more. We are now into Q2 of 2010!

• Cool Demo of Havok 7 in Second Life – 3rd
• SL Forum Archives Beginning To Reappear – 7th
• 2010 Second Life Community Convention will be hosted in Boston MA – 9th
• YadNi s junkyard may soon disappear from Second Life – 11th
• 100th episode of Metanomics – 14th
• SLUniverse Forums passed the 900,000 posts mark – 18th
• SL Fantasy Faire – 19th
• Linden Lab holds grands plans for Second Life – 20th
• M Linden on The 1st Question Quiz Show – 20th
• Users Raising Class Action Against LL Over Virtual Property – 21st
• Linden Lab has decided to no longer support Woodbury University – 26th
• Second Life Economy Hits New All-Time High in Q1 2010 – 28th
• SL Logins temporarily disabled for over 6 hours – 29th
• T Linden Meeting Transcript on art & viewer 2 – 29th

Big RL news/events/holidays this month

• Easter Time
• Dr Who Series 5 started
• Leaders Debates 2010 (UK Elections)
• Iceland Volcano erupts
• Happy 20th Anniversary Hubble Space Telescope
• Space Shuttle Discovery STS-131 launches

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Top 4 Pandora AVATAR places in SL

Here are my recommendations for top popular Pandora AVATAR places to check out in SL during 2010.

Pandora Navi Avatar Roleplay

Military Pandora Navi Na’vi Avatar RDA Scifi Sci-fi Deutsch Rollenspiel Roleplay Osiris DCS CCS Fantasy Ripped Harbinger Clothes Weapons Tribal Soul  Elfenground RP Human Ikran Turok Viperwolf Outworld Industries AMP Weapons Free Avatar blue Skin Cameron

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Pandora%20Magic/116/125/20

AvATaR NaVaTaRi Shopping Forrest Pandora Navi

Meeting Point – Shopping  , Best of Navi Designer’s  in one place , Avatars , Skins ,Weapons , Hair, Clothes , Omaticaya , Rentals , Navi , Sim inspired by Oscar winner ” James Cameron Film avatar na’vi

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Beech%20Cove/192/58/23

Omaticaya Na”vi Forest

Pandora Navi Na’vi Avatar RDA Clothing Hair Gor Medival Osiris DCS CCS Fantasy Clothes Jake Netyri RP Human Ikran zyngo Viperwolf Hammerhead Hells Gate Tsu´tey Hometree soultree Eywa Unobt Direhorse outfits male female boots clothing  NA’vi~WildCat AO

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Faladria/88/66/24

Pandora – Navi ‘ Planet Avatar

Roleplay DCS2 Na’vi sim inspired by James Cameron movie’ ” Avatar ” Pandora Navi’ Planet . Enjoy your roleplay. Become member , feel free to join the group and Contact Sullivan Infinity for all question ( sim and group owner )

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Pegase/169/150/3948

Click the green SLurl links above to teleport and have fun!

SL Economy, Q1 Metrics 2010

Linden Lab have officially published Q1 SL Metrics for 2010 on the Second Life Blog. Q1 shows alot of new growth in all areas for the Second Life economy. Visit my SL Metrics page for all recent SL Economy blog posts, statistics and more. Linden Lab have set up a discussion thread for your questions & answers. Feel free to comment here to on my blog too!

Q1 2010 Highlights

• User-to-User Transactions totaled US$160 million, a 30% increase year-to-year and an all-time high
• Total Sales on Xstreet reached US$2.3 million, an 82% increase year-to-year and a 24% increase over the previous quarter
• Total L$ exchanged on the LindeX totaled US$31 million, a 9% increase year-to-year
• Residents active in the Economy reached 517,349 in March, a 2010 high
• Monthly Unique Users with Repeat Logins peaked in March at 826,214, a 13% increase year-to-year and an all-time high
• Land Metrics Total World Size Expands to 2,073 Square Kilometers
• Monthly Unique Users with Repeat Logins Reaches 826,214 in March
• User Hours Reached 116 Million in Q1 2010
• Peak Concurrent Users Hit 81,156 in Q1 2010
• Total minutes of use the Second Life voice network reached  about 3.2 billion in Q1 2010
• At the end of Q1 2010, nearly L$7 billion were held in Resident Accounts

Viewer 2 Impact

The introduction of Viewer 2 in public beta did not have a meaningful impact on the Second Life economy in Q1 2010, though we will drill down on the impact of Viewer 2 and the investments in the New User Experience in the Q2 2010 economy post.

Over the course of Q2, we will be closely monitoring the behavior of Viewer 2 adopters to understand if their economic activity is different from what we’ve seen before.

What to expect in Q2 of 2010

As we look ahead to Q2, we anticipate that continued stability in the Second Life economy, bolstered by Linden Lab’s promotional efforts and experience investments, will result in continued expansion of the Second Life economy. Over the course of Q2, we will be closely monitoring the behavior of Viewer 2 adopters to understand if their economic activity is different from what we’ve seen before. We do anticipate that the changes in Xstreet will have some effect on our overall numbers, as certain transactions that were previously classified as Resident activity will now be counted as Linden activity, and therefore removed from the overall numbers. You can also expect to hear more soon about the new products and developments we have in store for the rest of the quarter, as we work to give you information you can use to help keep your business stable as our experience evolves.

New Policy on Third Party Viewers comes into effect from 30th April 2010

Linden Lab have just announced that the new Policy on Third Party Viewers will come into effect on Friday 30th April 2010. Third-party viewers must comply with the policy ASAP.

On Friday, we will begin enforcing the new Policy on Third Party Viewers. The steps we will take may include blocking viewers that do not comply with the new conditions for access to Second Life. We know that there are many compliant viewers in use — beyond the seven that are currently listed on the Third-Party Viewer Directory — and we will not interrupt their access to Second Life. The Third-Party Viewer Directory is the best place to find out whether the developer of the viewer that you are using has self-certified that the software complies with the new Policy.

MetaMeets 2010

MetaMeets 2010 is Europe’s Premiere 3D Internet Developer and Community Conference which will be held on 7th May 2010 till 8th May 2010 at Dublin. MetaMeets is a conference for developers and users of virtual environments like Second Life. There will be many discussions, presentations and interesting activities taking place with lots of interaction.

• Mark Kingdon will be speaking at MetaMeets 2010 and Philip Rosedale will be talking as-well along with many more speakers.
• If your interested in going in Real Life then Sign Up Here. If you cannot travel then visit the inworld location below:
• Been before? Feel free to comment on your experiences!

Dublin Virtually Live

M Linden on "The 1st Question" Quiz Show

Treet TV have uploaded the archived episode of “The 1st Question” game show which was filmed on 20th April 2010 in Second Life. WATCH HERE

The quiz show to the stars has a distinguished panel of quizees for this episode with hosts Pooky Amsterdam and Hydra Shaftoe. Watch to see who will get the most points: M Linden, Sydney Caramel, FutureGuru Haiku or Professor Springflower

The region had around 60-70 residents during the show with some crashing during the event etc. Feel free to watch it and spread the word!

Emerald Viewer Added To Third-Party Viewer Directory

Emerald is one of the most popular SL viewers used today and as of 22nd April 2010 Linden Lab have officially added Emerald to the Third-Party Viewer Directory.

Currently showing 7 third-party viewers in the Directory with more to be added soon

To be listed in the Viewer Directory, a software developer must self-certify that it complies with Linden Lab policies. Beware of third-party viewers that are not in the Viewer Directory – they have either declined to self-certify or been refused for noncompliance with our policies.

Visit the Homepage and click on the Apply Now button to be in the Directory

OSGrid Region Growth, 2009-2010

OSGrid is the largest running OpenSimulator grid, officially non-profit and it is completely free to connect your own regions to the grid. OSgrid has approx 37, 907 users and approx 4, 658 of them are active users on OSgrid.

• December 2009: 3,440
• January 2010: 4,029
• February 2010: 4,876
• March 2010: 5,485
• April 2010: 6,562 – 22nd April 2010

The growth continues to go up for OSGrid.

T Linden talks about 2010 plans for SL

T Linden recently was interviewed at Metanomics and today there is a post called Linden Lab holds to grand plans for Second Life which caught my eye when looking for the daily SL news. I love SL metrics/stats!

I’ll settle for a million active users by the end of the year, said Tom Hale, chief product officer for Linden Lab, which develops and operates Second Life. The service now has about 700,000 active users, who spend more than an hour per month logged in, up from 680,000 active users in February.

A million active users by the end of the year would be great I think, big milestone for LL.

Our mission is pretty clear, and it’s pretty broad. It’s to enhance and improve the human condition Hale said. I think that’s a pretty noble mission. If you think about what the experience, and the product, and the platform actually enable, they enable people to communicate, express themselves, and connect in a rich, immersive, shared context. That’s fundamentally what it’s about.

Interesting mission. 🙂

People talk about Second Life as a place where you go and look at things, but I think it’s actually more of a place where you go and communicate with people.

Both really I think

Viewer 2 was designed with new users in mind, making the client more simple and easy to use, and experienced users might very well be put off by some elements

Viewer 2 still has a very long way to go.  I’m switching backwards and forwards between viewer 1 and viewer 2 at the moment because of many things. Alot of feedback I’ve been hearing inworld suggests alot of dislikes in the new viewer and some have been saying its been great etc.

The viewer is a work-in-progress, with changes coming out on a quarterly basis, starting with Version 2.1 this summer.

Viewer 2 should of remained in beta for longer I think but now we know when the viewers will be released.

Now, the company plans to turn its attention to improving the experience for content creators, including support for mesh import, to allow people to use standard 3D authoring tools like Autodesk Maya or 3D Max, to create objects for Second Life.

Yay. Sounds awesome!

April 2010 Update on SL Stats

Second Life sign-ups have slowed down in the past few years and soon there will be 19 million signups to Second Life within the next month or so.  On 18th October 2006 Second Life reached the 1 million registered accounts milestone and since then its growth has been amazing to see over the years personally. The Second Life concurrency at the moment seems to be around 30, 000 to 76, 000 logged into SL at any given time. In December 2006 there was between 18, 000 to 20, 000 logged in SL users. By nice to see 100, 000 sl logged in users by the end of the year or even next year because that would be amazing.

Expect T Linden to publish 2010 Q1 SL Metrics on the SL Official Blog very soon. You can find a big list of SL stats/metrics on my blog page.

SLUniverse Forums passed the 900,000 posts mark

On 17th April 2010 SLUniverse Forums passed the 900,000 posts mark according to Cristiano.

The SLUniverse Forums passed the 900,000 posts mark yesterday, marking another milestone on the way to a million posts. Thank you for continuing to be a part of SLU and for posting so much.

Great stuff!

SLUniverse.com, the largest and longest running community site dedicated to the virtual world of Second Life

Check out the forums and join in with the discussion.