Since my last winter update back in early December 2012 I can share the user concurrency stats for the first 3 months of 2013 which seems to be still very flat and still it’s slow declining. Data below is from the resident run SL Grid Survey and Dwell On It stats page.
Here is the Second Life statistics 2013 spring update 2013.
Total Regions
Total main grids have been dropping since early December 2012 which is still cause for concern I think. Since the start of 2013 the net number of private regions lost now stands at 510 (2.4% in 13 weeks) according to Tyche Shepherd. Apparently the last time the grid saw growth in private estates was back on 24th June 2012.
Late last month the grid saw some small growth in private regions which is positive but i’m wondering if that trend will continue for the rest of 2013 or not. There needs to be growth in private regions and main grid regions this year. That’s what everyone is hoping for but it needs changes from Linden Lab to start the recovery again.
Region counts on 5th December 2012
- Total Main Grid regions: 28, 290
- Total Area (km²): 1854.01
- Private Estates: 21, 200
- Linden Owned: 7, 090
Region counts on 2nd April 2013
- Total Main Grid regions: 27, 570
- Total Area (km²): 1806.83
- Private Estates: 20, 482
- Linden owned: 7, 088
Main grid total regions still continues to drop
Main grid private estate regions still continues to drop
During 2013 or early next year in 2014 it’s predicted OpenSim total regions will overtake Second Life total main grid regions. We will have to watch the trends in the coming months.
SL daily concurrency levels
- Maximum Daily Concurrency seems to be reaching 57, 000 to 61, 000 at peak times during the last 3 months.
- Minimum Daily Concurrency seems to have dropped abit down to 28, 000 to 31, 000 during low peak hours during the last 3 months
- Median Daily Concurrency seems to be around 45, 000 to 49, 000 during the last 3 months
SL signups
Total signups (residents) now stands at 33,326,134 for Second Life and as many know there is far less than that inworld at any one time. Since December 2012 the daily Second Life sign ups are around 12, 000 – 16, 000 per day.
My next post will be posted in July 2013 for the summer update on the SL economy.
Daniel Voyager 
“There needs to be growth in private regions and main grid regions this year. That’s what everyone is hoping for but it needs changes from Linden Lab to start the recovery again.”
Why exactly would anyone be expecting — or even hoping — for more mainland regions? LL has been consistently destroying the value of mainland:
The “region rating” “Zindra” debacle, where owners of mainland space who wished to not be censored were subjected to a mass exodus to a new “planned” mainland continent (with a ridiculous road system deliberately built on region boundaries, exactly where you *don’t* want to operate a vehicle).
This left huge abandoned holes throughout the existing mainland continents, causing an already sparsely populated space to become even more so. Too much of Mainland now seems to consist largely of a mix of truly abandoned land and land owned by oldbies who have long ago lost interest, but see no reason to clean up or build on their free land.
Buying out SLExchange (*after* forcing them to eat the cost of renaming to XStreet), pushing web-based merchants through a bug-filled and laggy “Marketplace” conversion, then promoting buying on the web at the expense of in-world shopping, which had been a major activity for residents (and indirect revenue generator for the Lab).
LL needs a strategy for spatially compressing mainland, *_reducing_ the number of mainland regions* so the amount of genuine revenue per region increases, instead of the empty, unprofitable froth they have today. How that can do that fairly while preserving the “location, location, location” characteristics of existing properties, I have no idea.
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Interesting, thanks for sharing that with me, maggieleber. 🙂
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I have, Make the company believe again in the product!
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I agree and LL are not really believing in SL at the moment because of other non-SL products. .
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Concurrency numbers using amount to 5-8 percent of the active registered users, if you look at virtual worlds in totality since their inception in 1994. Yeah …. I’m a oldie in VW’s, so this does come from .. too much experience? LOL. If we are to use that as a gauge, noting that the average peak times there is still 40-60K users and none peak times its around 20-35K, then that would seem to suggestion, based on historical demographics of VW’s that SL still has a active user base of about 500-750K as an estimate. No bad for a dinosaur by software standards. And supports the numbers of private islands invested, though its a bit skewed, due to the land baron investments. I think the numbers of individually “owned” private sims is probably closer to 10,000 or less, as historically 1-2% of active user base usually forks over the monthly car note sized investment into private sims- this number is after the land baron counts.
SL won’t go poof anytime soon, as long as the bills get paid. It covers the cost for LL to develop new products, but it would bode well for them to make some changes to garner new users and keep their existing ones, but seems they either aren’t really interested in doing more than maintaining, or they just have no vision for this type software in the future. The solutions are hard ones. If they cut their prices in half they will immediately see a 50% cut in revenues and still be overpriced compared to OpenSim. Cloud Party and other VW’s out there. It could generate a migration back to them from other platforms, due to inventories – those things are nasty little addictive pills for most! LOL But, that’s not going to pay the bills in the long run.
I wonder what answered they’d get if they gathered some of the more ancient and still active users and vendors what they thought the solution(s) were? Might be worth taking a poll at this point. Their suggestions wouldn’t imply LL would have to act on them, but I’m sure there’s some pretty experienced and brilliant users out there who have pondered the SL dilemma and come up with some innovative ideas. Wouldn’t it be nice if LL was actually listening?
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