The 2023 Relay For Life of Second Life season dates have officially been released for next year. The theme for 2023 is Hope Floats. Relay For Life is the “signature event of the American Cancer Society in Second Life and has been active, and continually growing in Second Life since 2005”.
Hypergrid Business published September 2022 statistics for the past month and there is positive signs of growth again. The OpenSim land area grew by 806 regions, active users added 2, 349 and OpenSim nearly saw 3, 000 new registered users. The OSgrid still remains the largest grid for total land area (37, 155 regions) and for the most total active users (4, 984). Kitely comes in 2nd place with 18, 631 regions and AviTron with 3, 584 active users in 2nd place. Guess there is some catching up to do to get ahead of the OSgrid which is growing on a monthly basis.
Second Life has 27, 373 regions as of 18th September 2022 which is 10, 000 regions less than what the OSgrid has currently. Second Life has more daily active users (up to 51, 000+) and probably thousands of daily new registered accounts every day.
Planning has already started for upcoming Halloween events that will take place on many OpenSim grids through October 2022. I would imagine next months statistics should be higher showing positive gains hopefully.
Here are some interesting statistics about the OpenSim land area and registered users now as of September 2022.
“OpenSim land area now stretches 116,084 regions in total, across a total of 1,779 grids tracked by Hypergrid Business. The metaverse is home to 468,245 registered users of which 41,443 were active this month. 95 percent of these are hypergrid users and 99 percent of the land is hypergriddable”.
OpenSim land area per month, 2009-2022. (Hypergrid Business Data.)
Kitely Marketplace
The “Kitely Market is now the largest collection of legal content available in OpenSim”. There “are currently 19, 605 product listings in Kitely Market containing 38, 073 product variations, 33, 024 of which are exportable”.
“Kitely Market has delivered orders to 559 OpenSim grids to date. This includes both public grids listed here as well as private grids that are not accessible to the public, don’t report their stats, and don’t make it into our reports”.
Check out the Kitely Marketplace growth since January 2015 below.
“Nearly all the growth in Kitely Market has been in content that can be exported to other grids — that is the green area in the chart. The red area, of non-exportable content, has stayed level for the past seven years”.
This year’s 12th annual Second Life Christmas Expo for 2022 will be starting on Friday 2nd December through until Sunday 11th December. The theme for the 2022 SL Christmas Expo is The Magic Of Holiday Stories.
The SL Christmas Expo is a mega annual event that raises funds for the American Cancer Society and the expo will be once again supporting the Childhood Cancer initiatives of The Society. All money proceeds of the SL Christmas Expo will be sent to the research, support programs etc to help children with cancer.
There will be the annual entertainment with live music and special events during the expo to enjoy like in previous years. The teleport links to the SL Christmas Expo will be published on 2nd December 2022.
More news will be announced in the coming months. Stay tuned for that.
On Wednesday 14th September Linden Lab announced that CasperTech is being acquired by Linden Research, Inc. This new acquisition will “ensure ensure that all of the existing CasperTech services in Second Life will continue to operate without interruption into the foreseeable future, but it also opens up brand new opportunities”.
This is interesting news and it makes me wonder how many more new acquisitions the lab will make in the years to come. From what I am hearing is that there are mixed responses already to this news and it’s raising concerns already across the grid. The lab says this acquisition will be a positive change for Second Life residents and CasperTech customers moving forward.
“CasperTech has provided various business related services within Second Life for 13 years. Over that time, CaperTech has proudly provided continuous service for tens of thousands of Second Life businesses, and it has remained steadfast in its commitment to the merchants who have depended on those services”.
“You can expect to see the same great services that you know and love continue on, with all of the same functionality you enjoy today, but with closer integration into the Second Life ecosystem – and as such, an even more reliable and convenient experience.”
There is active discussion going on in this forum thread on the Second Life Forums. Check out the Lab Gab episode (full video above) for more details about the acquisition featuring Patch Linden and Casper Warden.
Here is the full blog post…
Greetings Second Lifers!
Today is a really big day for all of us together and we are excited to share that the Second Life portion of CasperTech is being acquired by Linden Research, Inc.
CasperTech has provided various business related services within Second Life for 13 years. Over that time, CaperTech has proudly provided continuous service for tens of thousands of Second Life businesses, and it has remained steadfast in its commitment to the merchants who have depended on those services.
This acquisition will ensure that all of the existing CasperTech services in Second Life will continue to operate without interruption into the foreseeable future, but it also opens up brand new opportunities to vastly improve the experience for our users as our next step in the CasperTech and Second Life journey.
You can expect to see the same great services that you know and love continue on, with all of the same functionality you enjoy today, but with closer integration into the Second Life ecosystem – and as such, an even more reliable and convenient experience.
We wouldn’t have gone forward with this move if we weren’t absolutely confident that it will be a positive change for all Residents and CasperTech customers.
We hope that you are as excited about this change as we are, and we thank you for your continued support as we all step boldly into the future together!
We have started a forum discussion here for anyone interested in participating with questions. You can also watch Casper and I on a special pre-recorded Lab Gab today at 10:30am SLT!
What do you think of this acquisition announcement from the lab ?
I reported back in July 2022 on my blog that the Second Life grid been growing steadily since the start of 2022 and that at least 300 new regions were added this year. It seems the positive 2022 growth for Second Life has briefly ended by this week’s grid numbers. Hopefully this will be just a blip moment and the rebound growth will come back again soon.
Since the end of July 2022 it appears the Main Grid has lost roughly 200 regions and if another 100+ regions go offline before the end of September 2022 then the grid will end up being what it was at the start of 2022 roughly. The loss came mainly from Private Estates it appears and from the loss of SSP development regions in early August 2022.
Second Life Main Grid size as of 11 Sep 2022
Ownership
Total
General
Moderate
Adult
Offline
Total Area (km�)
Total
27374
2580
17000
7786
8
1793.98
Linden Owned
9210
1568
7235
407
0
603.59
Private Estates
18164
1012
9765
7379
8
1190.40
Second Life Grid Survey Data
There is no need to panic yet unless the it goes under the 27, 000 mark for the total number of main grid regions in Second Life or it goes under the 18, 000 mark for Private Estates. Even then Second Life continues as normal and remains pretty healthy in the economy.
Inflation is a big worry going forward over the next 3-6 months+ and I hope this is not the start of a huge decline for Second Life again after positive net growth in recent years or so. Challenging times ahead maybe.
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Region Stats From 2020, 2021 and 2022
Here are the region statistics as of 24th July 2022…
Total: 27, 575
Private Estates: 18, 326
Linden Owned: 9, 249
Here are the region statistics from 2nd January 2022…
Total: 27, 231
Private Estates: 18, 332
Linden Owned: 8, 909
Here are the region statistics from 3rd January 2021…
Total: 25, 555
Private Estates: 17, 024
Linden Owned: 8, 531
Here are the region statistics from 20th January 2020
For the past few months the Moles have been working hard over at the new houseboats extension north of the Newbrooke sub continent just west of the Satori continent in Second Life. Hundreds of new houseboats are have already been placed there and more are on the way on the north/east side areas soon.
The new formed water channel from the south (SSPSloop John B) to the north (SSPTiedown Inlet) looks good which actually flows into the new connection regions SSPSteady On and SSPDeep Anchor linking it to the Satori continent. Many have used the new airstrip (two new runways) in the SSPShell Yeah region flying all over the Bellisseria continent. It’s unclear what will fill the huge blue void will be used for in the far south.
New batch of 15 SSP regions arrived on the east coast of the log homes continent earlier in September 2022 starting with the SSPOrillas Nuevas region highlighted in yellow. More Stilt Linden homes have been added in these regions.
New SSP regions arrive on the grid
Good progress is still being made and more new development is in the works until the end of 2022. Yay! 🙂
Linden Lab is expected to launch a new Land Portal within the next few weeks according to the this week’s web user group meeting in Second Life. This will provide access to land.secondlife.com and will offer a preview of what the new land journey will take. When the new Land Portal launches the lab will be apparently be monitoring it closely.
More details about the new Land Portal will be announced before the end of the month it is believed. The date of launch is unknown at this time.
The “land journey” work is in the first phrase and all of the secondlife.com web pages/portals are set for revamp soon. The aim of the this is to offer a new modern feel and look to the Second Life web presence.
It’s been such sad news this week to hear about Queen Elizabeth II death aged 96. This week the Second Life community has come together to pay their respects in London City in Second Life and in other places across the grid.
Daniel Voyager 