Today Marks My 15th Rezday In Second Life

Today marks my 15th rezday in Second Life. Woooot!!!! 🙂

The journey since 31st October 2006 has been incredible with load’s of happy memories along the way. I have met many amazing people over the years and enjoyed attending the big events in Second Life. In mid December 2007 I started my blog and now it’s received more over 810, 000 hits. My blog has been featured across the metaverse many times over the years for the reporting I have done. Thanks for much for everyone’s support over the years. I truly appreciate it.

For me reaching my 15th rezday is a massive milestone in Second Life and I hope to be around for many decades to come. I have seen Second Life change a lot during the past 15 years from the changing of CEOs, the launch of Viewer 2.0, the merge of the teen grid with the main grid, the introduction of windlight/mesh/bento, Bay City launching, the development of Linden Homes, Second Life moving into the cloud and much more.

I love attending the annual Second Life birthday events, BURN2 annual events, Relay for Life events, volunteering around the grid, exploring new places and blogging about what’s happening. The expansion of the Bellisseria continent has been very exciting to document on new developments. Over the years I have logged into OpenSim grids to see what is it like there and it’s been alright I guess.

There have been bad times for Second Life from the sharp downsizing of the lab back in 2010, the change from Burning Life to Burn2, the shut down of Woodbury University, OpenSpace price changes, last names removal, the blocking of the Emerald viewer, Redzone, cancellation of educational and non profit discounts, ending the mentor program and the list goes on.

The passing of Ebbe Altberg was a really sad moment earlier this year and he will never be forgotten. Ebbe made a positive difference to Second Life, Linden Lab and Sansar in recent years. Linden Lab is under new management as of the start of 2021 so it’s going to be interesting to see what will happen during the next few years or so. I will do my best to cover the big news stories and events that I am sure will happen for sure.

I still think Second Life is the best virtual world out there today and as the lab has said many times Second Life is here to stay for many more years to come. Yay! 🙂

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Second Life Trends On Twitter After Meta Announcement

Second Life at #9 on Twitter

Probably for the first time Second Life is actually trending on Twitter after the big Facebook announcement about the name change to Meta. Many are talking about Second Life making comparisons already. The focus is moving away from social media to the metaverse.

Mark Zuckerberg plans to build a “metaverse” – an online world where people can game, work and communicate in a virtual environment using VR headsets. Mark hopes it will be a metaverse company moving forward now. Will Meta be a success or a failure ?

Second Life has now been around for over 18 years and still going strong with a active userbase. There has been positive net growth during 2021 and the lab have improved the platform over the years. Second Life is going to be around for many more years to come.

It’s still very early days yet for Meta and no one really knows how successful it may turn out to be. I don’t think it will be better than Second Life anytime soon. It needs to be more realistic and offer more to win people over.

In the mean time I think while Second Life is trending on Twitter there may be more new residents registering for Second Life in the days/weeks ahead which is always a good thing.

Avi Arrow Has Sadly Passed Away

Ivory Tower Library of Primitives Sandbox, Natoma

Avi Arrow known in Second Life sadly passed away at her home on Saturday 23rd October 2021 surrounded by her family. This is very sad news and she will be deeply be missed.

Avi Arrow was the administrator of the Ivory Tower in Natoma. Avi primarily managed the property and the Ivory Tower of Prims group. Avi Arrow was my friend in Second Life who has been a resident for over 15 years now. Avi was talented, generous and very clever I think. Avi helped so many people over the years on how to build in Second Life and much more.

My condolences to goes to her family and friends.

RIP Avi Arrow.

Linden Lab Officially Confirms Pause In SL Mobile App

On Tuesday 26th October 2021 Linden Lab officially confirmed to my private message on Twitter that they have definitely paused the development for iOS and Android apps for Second Life. The team are actively working on a new direction and some news on that will be announced in the near future. The lab mentioned that they don’t have anything to share right now.

Thanks to Linden Lab for the fast response. Here is the official confirmation they sent to me via Twitter PM.

@danielvoyager Greetings! We have pause development on just that branch, but the team is actively working on a new direction to take from here. We don’t have anything to share right now, but we should have some news on that soon.”

I blogged about the first reports about the development pause on 23rd October but there was no confirmation at the time from the lab until now. The lab sent out emails during the past few weeks to the test group announcing the development pause/closure of the mobile test regions etc.

I think many will be wondering now what will Linden Lab go next with any future development of the iOS/Android Second Life apps. I would imagine we may hear something during 2022 or perhaps in 2023.

Second Life Grid Statistics – October 2021 Update

This is the October 2021 Update on the latest Second Life Grid Statistics including region stats, daily concurrency stats and Second Life website traffic. It’s hard to believe there are just a few months left of 2021. My next grid statistics blog post will be published end of December 2021.

Second Life Regions

Since the end of September 2021 Second Life has continued to show positive net growth from 27, 220 on 26th September 2021 to 27, 284 as of 24th October 2021. Private Estate growth has slowly slightly while there is a big increase in Linden Owned regions in recent weeks. Linden owned regions count was 8, 867 on 26th September and now it’s gone up to 8, 934 as of 24th October 2021.

At the end of 2020 there was 25, 614 regions in total in Second Life. Since then the grid has showed positive net growth for Private Estates and Linden Owned regions. There has been more interest this year it appears which is very good news for the lab.

Ownership	Total	General	Moderate	Adult	Offline	Total Area (km�)
Total	27284	2619	16987	7667	11	1788.08
Linden Owned	8934	1577	6949	407	1	585.50
Private Estates	18350	1042	10038	7260	10	1202.59

Main Grid Size as of 24th October 2021

The growth of Linden owned regions is mainly due to the expansion of the Bellisseria continent from the east side of the chalet sub continent and west/north side of the new fantasy sub continent. This is set to rise further in the next 6 to 12 months as more Linden home themes are being either worked on now or being planned soon.

The next Linden home theme will probably be announced at the 2021 SL Christmas Expo happening from 3rd to 14th December 2021.

Second Life Daily Concurrency

The daily Second Life user concurrency is staying stable at the moment with no major maximum peaks during the past month or so. The daily user concurrency seems to be averaging between 30, 000 at non-peak to 54, 000 at peak. At the start of 2021 the daily peak levels were slightly higher with 57, 000 (average) inworld and as the year has gone on it’s dropped down.

I would expect the Second Life daily user concurrency to rise again slightly during the winter (2021) and into early spring 2022 as everyone normally stays inside. Something between 34, 000 to 58, 000 I predict in the winter months.

Daily User Concurrency Levels – October 2021

• Maximum Daily Concurrency: 48, 000 to 54, 000 (average)
• Median Daily Concurrency: 38, 000 to 42, 000 (average)
• Minimum Daily Concurrency: 30, 000 to 32, 000 (average)

Second Life Website Traffic

Here are the latest Second Life website traffic stats below for September 2021. These are numbers are reported on similarweb which tracks secondlife.com traffic.

• 11 million visits – (global rank 3, 605)
• Average visit duration – 10mins / 59seconds
• Pages per visit – 13.12
• United States 45.89% + United Kingdom 6.13% (most website traffic)
• 95.51% organic searches / 4.49% paid searches to secondlife.com

> Second Life registered accounts data is no longer available anymore.

Firestorm Gacha Sale Fund Raiser

Jessica Lyon who is the Project Manager of The Phoenix Firestorm Project, Inc is asking the Second Life community to help with keeping the lights on. Jessica mentions in the blog post that the Firestorm Project incurs significant expenses with server hosting, in world costs, licensing fees, website ads, region tier costs and paying for performers at events and more.

The Firestorm average yearly operating costs are around $7000 and this latest fund raiser will hopefully keep things running smoothly for the next 3 years. Jessica says that a Gacha sale “feels like the best way to ask for help since it is more of a trade where you get something you like immediately in return for your support!”.

The main SLURL is here.

NOT TRINKETS! Everything you can imagine from furniture to pets, to vehicles to art to mesh avatars. I think I even saw a lighthouse and a ferry boat. WHAT?? I didn’t even know that could be a gacha. For some reason I imagine trinkets when I hear gacha but looking around at what we have out, that couldn’t be more wrong. Really nice, useful content!

Brands like KittyCats, DRD, loads of Maitreya, MadPea. Concept, Lonic Darn and just SOOOO much more. Far too much to list and prices ranging from $L10 for bargains to $L100-$L300 for rare items. We use no vendors so you know exactly what you are getting.

If cool content isn’t your thing but you still want to help support us, we do have a few tip birds around the place too.

Our region is full… with very little prim allocation left for anything else but we still have WAY more to rez out. So as things get sold we will be adding more. Check back frequently as this gacha sale will be ongoing for a while.

Please spread the word about this Firestorm Gacha sale fund raiser and keep the Firestorm lights on. Every donation makes a huge difference.

Linden Lab Pauses Development On Second Life Mobile App

On Thursday 21st October New World Notes reported that Second Life official mobile viewer development has been paused according to a “veteran Second Life insider”. The member is apparently from the SL Mobile Viewer test group and shared this news below.

From looking at this generally it does appear to be written from Linden Lab and many will be most likely be disappointed by this development pause. It does appear the team is actively working on a new direction from here. I would imagine we will hear from the lab shortly about this latest development and hopefully what they plan on doing next.

From source insider…

After reviewing the current state of the SL Mobile Viewer and the helpful feedback from residents, we have decided to pause development on this branch. The team is actively working on a new direction to take from here. We should have some news on that soon.

We’d like to thank you all for your time and feedback. It was very valuable to us! We will be closing TestFlight and the mobile regions on October 29th, 2021. Again, thank you for participation! Linden Lab

At the bottom of the message sent to NWN the lab are closing down TestFlight and the mobile regions on Friday 29th October 2021. The source said that development has been “stagnant for months” and says the following…

“Didn’t have push notifications, and until a recent update would only work when you had the app open on your screen,“

“You logged into a special mobile users only region and would remain there while the app was running, you couldn’t be teleported, seen on the map, had no attachments etc. IM messages worked well .. and that was all we ever got.“

I think Lumiya and SpeedLight Viewer is the benchmark for any Second Life mobile app they have to aim for. I accept development takes time and issues can happen along the way.

I would imagine any launch now of any SL Mobile app won’t happen until later in 2022 or 2023 at the earliest. At the monthly web user office hours in recent months there has not been any major announcements or really much to be excited about it seems.

There is a thread about this on the Second Life Forums for the latest discussions.

More updates soon.

OpenSim News Roundup – October 2021

Hypergrid Business is the best source for all things OpenSim from monthly grid statistics, conferences, surveys, events, hunts and more. Many OpenSim grids are now planning for the Halloween season with events lined up. Check out the schedule here.

OpenSim is most certainly active right now for anyone that thinks nothing is really happening. There are a lot of things happening in the short term and long term. Many grids offer contests, hunts, freebies and more.

Wyldwood Bayou Grid Celebrates First Anniversary – LINK

The Wyldwood Bayou grid will be celebrating it’s first anniversary from Friday 29th October through until Monday 1st November. The grid will be hosting it’s second annual Halloween Bash on Sunday 31st October 2021.

OpenSim Stats Are Up This Month – LINK

During the past month all OpenSim stats were up from OpenSim active users (+107), land area increases (+673) and registered new users (+875). There are now 96, 872 hypergrid-enabled OpenSim regions. OSgrid is leading for the most regions (32, 547) and most active users (4, 445).

AvaCon Announces Ninth Annual OpenSimulator Community Conference 2021 – LINK

The ninth annual OpenSimulator Community Conference 2021 will be taking place on 11th to 12th December 2021 on the OpenSimulator Conference grid. Call for proposals are open.

Important Dates & Deadlines

• September 27, 2021 – Announcement of the Call for Proposals!
• November 1, 2021 – Proposals are due by 11:59 PM PST (Pacific Standard Time).
• November 8, 2021 – Proposal acceptance emails and with conference information.
• November 13, 2021 – Accepted speakers must register for the conference to create an entry in the conference schedule and the program.
• November 13 & 20, 2021 – Speaker Orientation & Training sessions and Presenter Booth Setup to prepare speakers for the conference.
• November 29, 2021 – Deadline for stage props and audio-visuals (beyond textures) for the conference program.
• December 11-12, 2021 – OSCC20 Conference dates!

AviTron Testing Out Crytocurrency For IN-WORLD PAYMENTS – LINK

AviTron is now testing cryptocurrency for in-world payment method. The grid will be accepting Dogecoin and Bitcoin for in-world purchases and land rentals. The operating costs may be lowered and that means lower land prices soon.

Twelfth Annual OpenSim Grid Survey Results – LINK

This year there was more than 300 responses for the twelfth annual OpenSim Grid survey. The survey scores a variety of areas from technology, content, support, community and overall.

• OSgrid was the grid that had the most respondents followed by AviTron and DigiWorldz. 74% of the survey readers had been to the OSgrid
• Kitely came out on top for technology followed by Wyldwood Bayou and Enchanted Grid
• Wyldwood Bayou came out on top for support followed by Utopia Skye and Dorena’s World
• Wyldwood Bayou came out on top for community followed by Enchanted Grid and AviTron
• Utopia Skye, Tangle Grid and Dorena’s World came out on top for content

There are many reviews of each of the OpenSim grids on the blog post link above for this survey. There is definitely a range of mixed responses from user experiences, communities, entertainment and more.

What OpenSim grids do you think is doing well at the moment ?

Linden Lab Announces Haunted Halloween Events 2021

On Monday 18th October Linden Lab blogged about some of the spooktacular events planned this Halloween season. There are many exciting events to look forward to from the Halloween Haunted Tour, Halloween Shop & Hop and the Halloween Haunted Neighborhood. The Great Trick or Treat Event, Bellisseria is now officially live and this includes winning prizes, eating candy and more.

Linden Lab are planning for a Halloween Contest and more details will be announced very soon. There are more than 100 haunted destinations listed on the Second Life Destination Guide full of scary surprises.

Here are some of the events from the blog post below…

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It’s The Great Trick-or-Treat Event, Bellisseria!

Creep or crawl over to Bellisseria this Halloween season to snag some candy and win prizes! This is an interactive event open to *everyone* where Residents living in Bellisseria can host Candy Buckets on their parcels. You don’t want to miss the paranormal partygoers and creative costumes throughout Bellisseria during this virtual Trick-or-Treat.

Plus, there are prizes to be won for all who participate! Read Patch Linden’s forum post for all the spooky details and teleport over to one of the following locations to pick up the HUD and start trick-or-treating now!

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Millbank/205/38/23
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Campwich%20Forest/118/101/24
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Randelsham%20Forest/150/112/70
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Muehlenbach/158/120/37

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Halloween Haunted Neighborhood

Once again, the Millbank region has undergone a spooky overhaul, with numerous Linden Homes getting a haunted horror theme. Visit the Halloween Haunted Neighborhood, grab a red balloon, and explore the many haunted houses and see the scary sights! 

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Halloween Haunted Tour

Our classic Halloween Haunted Tour is back again for a limited time. Are you brave enough to enter? Hop in a coffin and enjoy the wild ride through the twisted mind of madness!

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Halloween Shop & Hop 2021

The annual Halloween-themed multi-region shopping event continues until October 31st. If you haven’t had a chance to pick up free gifts from over 280 participating merchants, head over now to complete your spookiest look yet! Check the 2021 Halloween Shop & Hop guide for a list of all merchants with direct slurls.

Please spread the word 🙂

New West Fantasy Batch Of Regions Arrive

In the past week or so a new batch of Fantasy SSPE regions have been added down the western side of the Fantasy sub continent in Second Life. They appear dark on the world map (see below) from SSPE2736 to SSPE2721. The Moles are working on these new SSPE regions now adding hundreds of more Fantasy Linden Homes which will be available in the weeks ahead.

Further batches of new SSPE regions are set to arrive in the weeks ahead around the coastal areas of the Fantasy and Chalet sub continents. When those developments happen I will blog about it for sure. Stay tuned for that.

West side new regions added recently

SSPE2730

Keep a look out for new SSPE regions soon. It’s likely we will hear about the next Linden Home theme later this year and that will probably happen at the SL Christmas Expo 2021. At least another two LH themes during 2022 and maybe into 2023.