Second Life, Linden Lab & OpenSim News
Heard some great news today that BURN2 Spring Event for 2011 will start on Friday 25th March to Sunday 27th March 2011. It’s going to be a great spring party weekend and this year will be bigger than last year.
IM Doctor Gascoigne or Sporty Tone if you would like a slot for the BURN2 Spring Event 2011 in Second Life.
Yay.
During 2010 I published end monthly recap posts on the popular Second Life news and I will continue to do that during 2011. If you have missed any pieces of SL news then it makes it easier to catch up. This is the January 2011 edition…
It’s been a interesting month overall and next month should be exciting hopefully. What are you looking forward to most about February 2011 in Second Life? Feel free to share!
Check out the first preview build of the new Firestorm Viewer which uses the viewer 2 interface. The Firestorm team are currently working on it’s pre-alpha phrase with many changes and improvements still yet to be made. I think it’s a good video tutorial and it’s going to be interesting how the viewer will develop during the year. What do you think of the Firestorm Viewer Preview ?
The Preview build of Firestorm Viewer will be released sometime on Monday 31st January 2011.
Do understand! The Firestorm Preview build should be considered Pre Alpha! Not beta,, not Release Candidate.. it is pre alpha and as such it has a lot of bugs that still need to be worked out.
Equally important! we have a new Tutorial video online that shows you how to customize the Firestorm User Interface as well as other functionality.
Nelson Linden published the Second Life Economy in Q4 2010 metrics yesterday on the Official Second Life Blog. Here are the stats for Q4 2010 for Second Life:
- Repeat logins gained 1% this quarter. Average monthly repeat logins in 2010 rose 8% over the 2009 average.
- Money supply grew significantly in Q4 to US$28.4m worth of L$, 8% over Q3. The year end money supply in 2010 was 11.9% over 2009.
- Mirroring money supply growth, volume on the LindeX grew 8% in Q4, nearing the top end of the historical five-quarter range. Total LindeX volume in 2010 was nearly US$119m, 2.8% over 2009. This means that an additional US$4m traded hands on the LindeX in 2010
- Driven by greater merchant adoption and improved shopping features, web merchandise sales volume grew 5.8% in Q4. 2010 web sales volume was up 104% relative to 2009.
- World size remained flat in Q4; 2010 year end world size was up 5.8% relative to 2009. Today, Second Life’s virtual land mass would be roughly twice the size of Hong Kong.
- User hours were flat this quarter, appearing to stabilize after a gradual decline in the prior four quarters. Total user hours in 2010 fell 10% from 2009.
- Economic participants were flat in Q4, remaining in the historical five-quarter range. Year over year, the 2010 average of monthly economic participants was up 4% from 2009’s average.
- Increasing demand and falling supply on the LindeX caused a 3.7% appreciation in the value of the L$ in Q4.* The average L$ value in 2010 was within 1% of the average value in 2009.
When looking through the SL Blog post comments it looks like the introduction of Viewer 2 last February is to blame for the decline in user hours, economic participants and LindeX etc during 2010. Looking forward it’s going to be interesting to see what Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4 economy metrics will be like during 2011. Hopefully with the new Linden Lab CEO Rodvik Linden now in charge the economy will start picking up again and show more positive growth in all areas.
Check out my SL Metrics page for previous SL economy statistics and more.
Brooke Linden posted up a new thread on the SL Forums called Maturity Changes in the Marketplace, yesterday morning SLT. Check out the new maturity changes below. What are your views on this change?
Hi all,
As many of you know, the teen grid was shut down on Friday. This week, we will be rolling out some changes in Marketplace to ensure Residents under 18 will not be exposed to adult content. Here is a quick summary of what changes will be occurring.
Phase 1: 1/27 Release
On Thursday, the Marketplace will move to the General, Moderate, and Adult content levels already in use in the Viewer. Just prior to this release (starting on Wednesday), we will be running a process that will add a content level to existing items. Once the release has been completed, you will be able to review the ratings set on your Marketplace listings by viewing your inventory: there will be a new column “Maturity” showing what level the item falls into. Search will now support viewing general or moderate/adult content. Please view the updated listing guidelines (link points to the current guidelines) on Thursday for more details.
Note that, in addition to automated process to migrate listings, it will continue to be possible to flag listings. Please take some time after the new guidelines are posted to review your listings and make sure they comply. People will be able to start flagging listings based upon the new guidelines on Thursday (though I do not expect that we will see much of this right away), so the sooner you can do this, the better!
Phase 2: by 2/28/2011
Before the end of February, Marketplace will be updated to allow setting maturity level preferences at a more granular level than is currently supported, such as allowing Residents to view moderate content without adult content included.
Why was this done in 2 steps? Timing, pure and simple. We wanted to ensure we had the proper controls in place as soon as possible for the teens entering the main grid. Phase 2 will provide further refinement.
A quick update on Maturity is on the agenda for the Marketplace Office Hours on 1/26.
Regards,
Brooke
Tyche Shepherd does a amazing job each week gathering region statistics and sharing the statistics publicly on the New SL Sims in past week post on SLUniverse Forums. The New SL Sims post includes the latest sim arrivals, sim departures, returning sims and even SL quarterly economy metrics. Tyche Shepherd runs the region database at Second Life Grid Survey, which displays a number of interesting SL metrics on a daily basis too.
Tyche Shepherd started the service on 23rd March 2008 and back then there were 17, 709 publically visible Main Grid sims. Today’s number of Main Grid regions has increased to 31, 596, ( 24815 private estates & 6781 Linden owned), as of 4pm SLT. The Main Grid saw a new arrival of 215 Teen Grid regions (111 Private Estate and 104 Linden owned), coming online due to the merger on Friday 21st January 2011.
It’s really interesting statistics I think and I recommend you check out the links for the latest SL grid metrics to stay updated.
Here’s my follow up post about the history of the TSL Transition. You may find it interesting to read about previous milestones since the very beginning of the idea of merging the grids. Friday 21st January 2011 marks the end of an era for Teen Second Life, after running for almost 6 years, which is 2, 167 days in total.
Terrance Linden has put in a lot of hard work in the past 6 months to make the transition as smooth as possible. Let’s Make February “Teen Welcome Month” in Second Life. The transition of hundreds of teens will arrive on the Main Grid immediately and I wish the teens the best of luck in their new Main Grid adventures.
Timeline of TG Transition Events
========================================
RIP TSL
Check out the History of Teen Second Life and Second Life
14th February 2005 – 21st January 2011
After 1pm SLT today, Linden Lab started to transfer accounts and land held by 16-17 year olds from TSL to the Main Grid. Many residents started to teleport others over to the TSL regions which works successfully. It’s going to be good meeting up with old friends again after 2 years or so since I transferred to the Main Grid back in December 2008.
The process still may take some time yet to fully complete. Oskar Linden says that the “map server will fix itself after 2am tonight”, meaning that TSL regions will show visible to the rest of the MG then. Oskar Linden also said that Teens will be transferring alphabetically via script and Oskar said that “we’ve been testing the script all week”.
Oasis – Shopping Mail
Eros – The Showcase for Teen Talent
Bay City
Welcome Teens to the Main Grid. Good luck to all of you! 🙂
Art Maze 2011, has opened up to everyone today. on the adult continent of Zindra, to raise awareness, promote and help foster a healthy Zindra business in Second Life. The Art Maze 2011 will run through to Sunday 30th January 2011. The Art Maze take up 4 regions, including alot of things to do and see when exploring the maze. It’s AWESOME!
Tips
This maze is HUGE..lots to see and do! Secrets to find! Multiple trips through Art maze is HIGHLY recommended, and the exhibition will be up from JAN 21 through JAN 30 so you will have many opportunities!.
More details about the Art Maze
ART MAZE 2011
Collaboration Meets Creativity on Zexpo IslandOn January 21, Art Maze 2011 will debut as a new collaborative event featuring SL artists, builders and architects coming together to form a giant labyrinth, where visitors will explore unique creative environments in a truly immersive Second Life experience on the adult continent of Zindra.
AM2011 takes place on The Zexpo island (on the ‘adult continent’ of Zindra) as part of an initiative to raise awareness, promote and help foster a healthy Zindra business, community and outreach effort.
Being located on Zindra means that all participants must be verified adult to be involved. For detailed information on age verification, visit:
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:How_to_become_verified_as_an_adulttThis does not mean the maze will be all ‘adult content’, but it will allow for some such rated content if deemed acceptable by the curators.
This event will allow for content that may not be suitable for PG or Mature rated regions. Of course, all content must still adhere to the Second Life TOS and CS.Art Maze 2011 opens Friday, January 21, runs through the weekend of January 30th, and will feature a diverse group of Second Life creators and styles.
According to Blaze Borgin blog post the merge didn’t happen yesterday. Sad to say that Linden Lab have broke their promise and failed to deliver on time. It was due to take place in the early hours of Thursday morning but now it looks like it may happen this morning SLT (21st January 2011).
Whew it’s late. Anyways, not-so-surprising news from terrence…
[21:47] Terrence Linden: just telling everyone that I failed, but back on it tomorrow morning
I’ll be checking back tomorrow. *yawn* I need some sleep.
When more develops I will publish it. Good luck to everyone! 🙂
21st January 2011 Update Status
Still at this stage its still very unknown on when it will take place. My estimations for attempt 2 puts the merger sometime this afternoon/evening SLT, Attempt 3 during Saturday daytime or Attempt 4 during Sunday daytime. I guess there will be a formal announcement when it takes place very soon.
Daniel Voyager 
