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Will SL really continue after the new platform?


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You're backtracking, and this is boring.

"its still a fact."

Again, you've presented no facts, just anecdotal evidence. Hitchen's Law makes classification of your point easy.

"I refer to peak time audience as the most avatars online, generally, in a given day. It used to be 80-90K"

So our definitions match and your numbers come out different to mine. Your assumption that they 'used to be 80-90k' ignores the conditions of that environment and allows you to be swayed by false impressions. You're wrong to do this. As stated in my previous reply, only 8 datapoints (of >1000 datapoints since 1st January 2010) show values above 80,000 users - this is not an average by any definition.

"(backed up by a previous post author)" 

You're basing your numbers on hearsay, which is obviously disproved by the data I've presented, collected by a reputable SL statistician. I therefore determine that your numbers are wrong.

"You don't believe old data counts for much. Then this is simply a matter of disagreeing on this" 

Wrong again. Data that's been affected by business decisions and hype curves is not balanced, representative data of Second Life's audience. It has no value to use this data because Second Life can never rebuild the links it severed with the Educational community, and will never enter into a secondary hype cycle. This is not disagreement, you are trying to use bad data and are coming to bad conclusions. The age of the data is mostly irrelevant, the data that I've seen has no way to adjust for the inflation of Second Life's userbase by its hype cycle.

I'm not here to teach you statistics, and your last point reads like a strawman (again) and has been discarded. My time set aside to deal with your misunderstanding has come to a close, but I sincerely hope that others reading my posts get a better grasp of my point.

Good luck to you.

To summarise:-

  • There has not been a decline of more than 14% of the maximum daily concurrency since 2011.
  • Based on my experience, this is the steady linear decline of a product that is post-saturation.
  • There is no systemic cause behind the 14% decline in daily concurrency. The numbers are far too low for this.
  • 80,000 users is not a typical measurement for maximum daily concurrency in any dataset that I can find, from 1st January 2010.
  • Second Life has - until recently, 2013 - always had a wide variation in concurrency, the minimum (excepting Christmas Slumps) has stayed relatively steady at ~45,000 in the data that's been provided. This trend continues to today.
  • There has almost certainly never been a point where maximum daily concurrency was consistantly 35% higher than the year(s) that proceeded it.
  • Second Life has experienced great positive population growth during its hype phase. It has never experienced great negative growth - and there is nothing to cause this negative growth.
  • All data in my posts has been collected from Tyche Shepard's GridSurvey. It is available for download and analysis.
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Freya Mokusei wrote:

You're backtracking, and this is boring.

"its still a fact."

Again, you've presented no facts, just anecdotal evidence.
makes classification of your point easy.

"I refer to peak time audience as the most avatars online, generally, in a given day. It used to be 80-90K"

So our definitions match and your numbers come out different to mine. Your assumption that they 'used to be 80-90k' ignores the conditions of that environment and allows you to be swayed by false impressions. You're wrong to do this. As stated in my previous reply, only 8 datapoints (of >1000 datapoints since 1st January 2010) show values above 80,000 users - this is not an average by any definition.

"(backed up by a previous post author)"
 

You're basing your numbers on hearsay, which is obviously disproved by the data I've presented, collected by a reputable SL statistician. I therefore determine that your numbers are wrong.

"You don't believe old data counts for much. Then this is simply a matter of disagreeing on this"
 

Wrong again. Data that's been affected by business decisions and hype curves is not balanced, representative data of Second Life's audience. It has no value to use this data because Second Life can never rebuild the links it severed with the Educational community, and will never enter into a secondary hype cycle. This is not disagreement, you are trying to use bad data 
and are coming to bad conclusions. The age of the data is mostly irrelevant, the data that I've seen has no way to adjust for the inflation of Second Life's userbase by its hype cycle.

I'm not here to teach you statistics, and your last point reads like a strawman (again) and has been discarded. My time set aside to deal with your misunderstanding has come to a close, but I sincerely hope that others reading my posts get a better grasp of my point.

Good luck to you.

To summarise:-
  • There has
    not been a decline of more than 14%
    of the maximum daily concurrency since 2011.
  • Based on my experience, this is the steady linear decline of a product that is post-saturation.
  • There is no systemic cause behind the 14% decline in daily concurrency. The numbers are far too low for this.
  • 80,000 users is not a typical measurement
    for maximum daily concurrency in any dataset that I can find, from 1st January 2010.
  • Second Life has - until recently, 2013 - always had a wide variation in concurrency, the minimum (excepting Christmas Slumps) has stayed relatively steady at ~45,000 in the data that's been provided. This trend continues to today.
  • There has almost certainly never been a point where maximum daily concurrency was consistantly 35%
    higher
    than the year(s) that proceeded it.
  • Second Life has experienced great positive population growth during its hype phase. It has never experienced great negative growth - and there is nothing to cause this negative growth.
  • All data in my posts has been collected from Tyche Shepard's
    . It is available for download and analysis.

You were done commenting but then came back to summerize. I see.

- I never said there has been a decline over 14 since 2011. I did, however state that that 14% decline was a portion of the 35% decline I was initially referring to. You may believe older data does not accurately reflect the state of the grid, but if you do not want me to distort your statistics, please do not try to distort facts that I am presenting. I saw the with my own two eyes and did not need pie charts, graphs and statistical spin to interpret anything.

- Steady linear decline? Ask Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook if declining traffic after just a few years in the market is a typical occurance that is to be expected.

- The numbers are too low to indicate a reason, so therefore there isn't one. Got ya.

-  Until recently. Exactly.

- Max concurrency peaked at  80s, even touching 90K, in 2008. This is not hearsay, this is what I have seen on the login screen. I don't have graphs. You can choose not to believe me. Its fine. I don't need to show off graphs or statistical know-how to know what I saw. If that isn't 35% percent or more greater than 50K. Let me know. I need a new calculator. Thanks.

- Again... So if this steady, very slow decline continues until nobody is online, all is ok with the state of Second Life? I never said the problem was quick decline. I said the problem is that since 2008, there has been nothing but decline and the number, as it relates to the maximum audience the grid is reaching, has now surpassed 35%.

-  Everything in my posts has been seen by my own two eyes and that is good enough for me. If not you... oh well. Its a comment forum. I'm making comments.

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I don't think the exact statistics are terribly important. The growth of a business depends on its ability to grow revenues. That usually means growing the customer population, sales per customer or both. We don't know LL revenues, so we can't compare those. But customer count is available, as people have been arguing (discussing?) here.

From my days in the angel capital community (which may be the only investment community LL might reasonably attempt to tap if they need more money than they earn), I can say that detailed statistical analysis is beyond both the capability and interest of the average investor. They want to see a good growth story. They have no patience whatsoever for decline, either in revenue or customer base. This is particularly true in the tech sector, where we're accustomed to growth stories like Google, Facebook, and recently GoPro. We're also accustomed to the bloodbaths that follow reports of deceleration or, horror of horrors, decline.

I've quickly overlaid the SL concurrency graph from Tateru Nino's website with those of Facebook's growth over the same period of time. Facebook is the blue line with red dots, SL is in lavender. They're aligned approximately in time, but are not to scale. They needn't be to see the difference in trajectory. There's been a lot of discussion about how Facebook will grow now that they've saturated many markets. You can see the tempering at the end of the chart.

SL vs Facebook.jpg

This comparison might be unfair, but is the kind of napkin analysis the investment community makes when vetting opportunities. And this explains why Ebbe and the Lindens are hard at work on something that'll produce a better looking graph. I could argue that if the concurrency chart had wild gyrations in it, there might be reason to believe that turning some knob could make it swing up. But the stability of the chart for the last five years would reasonably lead a casual observer to think that there's not much that can be done to turn the graph. It looks like a death march.

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This is a good post, Madeline. As usual, a softer angle than mine. :P

In my research I found the following image, showing 'active subscriptions' (not daily concurrency, this is a different metric) by MMO/VW between 1997 and 2008. How this was measured in SL I am uncertain, but it's useful to see how it matches with yours from Taturo (again in trajectory more than figures).

It seems clear to me that whatever the metric below is being measured in Second Life, it probably didn't get too much higher (2008 contains the peak in your chart) before it started the slow decline we experience today.

MMOChart.jpg

Note that Second Life is not the line marked 'SI', but instead the small green one (just starting up) in the bottom right.

I like this image because you can see the difference in slopes between differently-performing MMO/VW's over their product lifecycle.

Some points of note:-

  • Everquest experiences a sudden and violent decline in subscriptions in 2005, when Everquest 2 reached its own point of saturation. Prior to satuation, Evertquest 1 had periods of mixed gradients of decline.
  • Most first generation MMO/VW's 'peak' on this chart fairly early, after a quick climb.
  • Early MMO/VW's experience a slower initial climb than later ones. Second Life appears to be an exception to this rule.
  • Once MMO/VW's begin to experience a loss of growth, that initial growth rate is never re-established.
  • Most plateau, and then decline very slowly and steadily.
  • Very few close suddenly, even when they deline to well-below their peak level.

Hope this adds some additional clarity to your own chart, which is far too optimistic for my tastes! Too much 'up'!

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Concurrency isn't really the most important statistic related to SL continuing. What matters more is profitablility for LL. Pay attention to the economic metrics and you'll see where SL is headed. The reason for this is because having an additional 30K concurrency spending $0 USD doesn't improve LL's bottom line, stresses the servers and provides no incentive for longevity.

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SLAddict Allen wrote:

You wanted evidence, I said I would find it.


So the evidence you have to back up your statement that concurrency was in the 80,000's,, passing 90 thousand at times, is a statement that the actual cuncurrency peak was just over 70,000? Looks like you've found evidence all right - it just proves you were wrong.

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Freya, I'd love to see that chart up to the present. It ends in 2008, before mobile devices and services really started competing for customer attention. I don't think there is as large a market for high attention bandwidth games like SL now. This, more than anything, may affect LL's thinking about what SL2 should be. If SL2 isn't mobile friendly, or perhaps even centric, I wonder how successful it can be.

Facebook's acquisition of Oculus throws a wrench in my thinking however, as I don't see the headset as being mobile friendly. Perhaps there is a large market for chair bound virtual world surfers in the age of "sitting is the new smoking", but that just seems counterintuitive to me.

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Theresa Tennyson wrote:


SLAddict Allen wrote:

You wanted evidence, I said I would find it.


So the evidence you have to back up your statement that concurrency was in the 80,000's,, passing 90 thousand at times, is a statement that the actual cuncurrency peak was just over 70,000? Looks like you've found evidence all right - it just proves you were wrong.

That article announced it had hit 70K. Nothing in that article stated it stopped there. It was the highest number I could back up at the time. But I have more now.

Second Life User Concurrency Peaks

  • 88, 220 – 29th March 2009 at 1:28pm SLT
  • 86, 584 – 15th March 2009 at 3:57pm SLT
  • 81, 913 – 28th February 2009 at 2:50pm SLT
  • 80,000 – 12th January 2009
  • 80, 528 – 11th January 2009 at 2:46pm SLT
  • 80, 195 – 11th January 2009
  • 74, 990 – 21 December 2008 at 2:04pm SLT
  • 71, 232 – 28th September 2008
  • 70, 821 – 21st September 2008 at 1:58pm SLT
  • 69, 574 – 14th September 2008
  • 66, 429 – 30th March 2008
  • 60, 000 – 14th January 2008 at 1:45pm SLT
  • 58, 738 – 6th January 2008 at 1:40pm SLT
  • 56,967- 5th November 2007 at 1:50pm SLT
  • 51, 914 – 2nd November 2007 at 2:25pm SLT
  • 50, 872 – (min 27,105) – 31st October 2007 at 3:30pm SLT
  • 50, 000 – 4th September 2007
  • 42, 285 – 6th May 2007
  • 39, 001 – (min 20,074) – 1st May 2007 at 1:31pm SLT
  • 31, 000 – 2nd February 2007
  • 20, 015 – Mid December 2006
  • 18, 000 – Early December 2006
  • 14, 000 then by end 16,000 – November 2006
  • 11, 000 – 1st October 2006
  • 10, 000 – 27th August 2006
  • 9, 613 – 30th July 2006
  • 7. 005 – 6th June 2006
  • 6,000 – March 2006
  • 2. 127 – June 2005
  • 1, 466 – 13th May 2005
  • 666 – 18th March 2005

Source: http://danielvoyager.wordpress.com/sl-metrics/

I was what?

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Daniel Voyager is an entertaining blogger, but he's young and not trained in reading statistics.

According to your figures, Second Life had a concurrency of >80,000 on 5 days (out of 365,  ~1%) during 2009. This was early in the plateau phase of Second Life's product cycle, where random highs were typical. My own data had 8 days during 2010 which had a concurrency of >80,000, but it's a long, long, long way from being representative.

You're still wrong to average out the peak concurrency at "80-90K" during any sampled year of Second Life's operation. I'd skip this line of reasoning and try another. the usefulness of this metric is limited anyway (as has been explained to you), and pride isn't so big of a deal.

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:

Freya, I'd love to see that chart up to the present. It ends in 2008, before mobile devices and services really started competing for customer attention. I don't think there is as large a market for high attention bandwidth games like SL now. This, more than anything, may affect LL's thinking about what SL2 should be. If SL2 isn't mobile friendly, or perhaps even centric, I wonder how successful it can be.

I think you'd be surprised! MMO's continue strongly to this day, my guess would be that - as a market - they have a similar 'attention share' percentage-wise to what they held in 2008. Most of the service providers have shifted east geopraphically and they tend to serve the still-emerging eastern online markets - though still somewhat popular in the west as well.

Mobile's an important area, but my knowledge of that market suggests that most communicating via mobiles is association/geography-based. I don't understand at all why Second Life (or PC-based MMO's) would compete in this arena, but I accept it would suffer loss of eye focus as more eyes shift to smaller form factors.

The problem is that the primary growth market for VW's and Online Chat has almost always been teens aged 11-20, and these users are invisible (or non-existant) in Second Life. It's interesting but not surprising that no-one's suggested marketing Third Life to this demographic.


Madelaine McMasters wrote:

Facebook's acquisition of Oculus throws a wrench in my thinking however, as I don't see the headset as being mobile friendly. Perhaps there is a large market for chair bound virtual world surfers in the age of "sitting is the new smoking", but that just seems counterintuitive to me.

I've not been following development, SilVal whimsy typically registers below my interest. You're correct that no-one will want to be seen in public with a brick strapped to their face. I can't imagine Facebook having any kind of product to use Oculus with, they're not capable of evolutionary R&D.

Oculus won't be a game-changer for Second Life, though it might encourage a couple of interesting applications. Second Life's market is too resistant, non-technical and non-immersive for it to even register. See also: Space Navigator, LCD Notifications.

I assume Zuck bought Oculus just to make

happen.

I would, if I was a billionaire.

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Freya Mokusei wrote:

 

The problem is that the primary growth market for VW's and Online Chat has
almost always
been teens aged 11-20, and these users are invisible (or non-existant) in Second Life. 
It's interesting but not surprising that no-one's suggested marketing Third Life to this demographic.

 

I have seen a rumour that SL2 will be Sanitised Life, a family-friendly upgrade of SL with Club Penguin overtones.

Father "In fact, I started that rumour" Jim

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Freya Mokusei wrote:

Daniel Voyager is an entertaining blogger, but he's young and not trained in reading statistics.

According to your figures,
Second Life had a concurrency of >80,000 on 5 days (out of 365,  ~1%) during 2009
. This was early in the plateau phase of Second Life's product cycle, where random highs were typical. My own data had
8 days
during 2010 which had a concurrency of >80,000, but it's a long, long, long way from being representative.

You're still wrong to average out the peak concurrency at "80-90K" during any sampled year of Second Life's operation. 
I'd skip this line of reasoning and try another. the usefulness of this metric is limited anyway (as has been explained to you), and pride isn't so big of a deal.

Those were peaks... They do not show that on days previous and after, peak hours had similar numbers. Oh wait, I forgot. If you can't see it in charts and graphs, its not possible.

I was there. 

Another article I've found. http://alphavilleherald.com/2011/04/sl-population-crash-continues.html

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SLAddict Allen wrote:

Those were peaks... They do not show that on days previous and after, peak hours had similar numbers. Oh wait, I forgot. If you can't see it in charts and graphs, its not possible.


Obviously, because they didn't have similar numbers. Second Life has always had a consistant peak of traffic on Sundays (my data shows this, but I'll link a present-day chart that demonstrates this because I know you love them). On Monday, peak concurrency always drops significantly. I've not checked Daniel's numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised to find the few, scattered peaks of >80,000 occur over the high weekend period.

The present-day chart has a swing of ~5,000 users from Sunday to Monday. As I said originally, this swing has decreased in recent years - this would suggest that any peak of >80,000 on a weekend would not be maintained throughout the course of a week. It would be incorrect to assume that these singular high peaks could take place as part of a sustained period, as you suggest. Second Life did experience a few rare and unpredictable high peaks, mostly between 2008-2010 - but this fact doesn't swing the typical concurrency of that period as high as your memory seems to be telling you.

Your constant refusal to accept both weekly and annual seasonality in Second Life's concurrency undermines your position when you make claims like those above. High peaks on one day of a seven day week, do not make that week statistically significant.This is highschool maths, I'm not hiding anything by interpreting these numbers - it's not magic.


SLAddict Allen wrote:

Another article I've found. 


Lol. If you have to use the Alphaville Herald to find numbers that support your position, you're in trouble. They're basically the Second Life equivilent of The Onion (minus the humour), read some of their other stories. :P

Second Life has never experienced significant negative growth over a short timespan - no 'crash' (especially not during 2011). April marks the beginning of Second Life's annual Summer Slump as people spend more time at work, with family or just outdoors - poor statisticians and clickbait headlines may interpret this as a 'crash', but it's not true.

Second Life's concurrency decline has been incredibly steady, and typical of any 11 year-old MMO/VW. In three years, it has declined only 14%. Over five or six years, numbers so far haven't been made available to know.

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http://www.gridsurvey.com/charts/econ76.png

source: http://www.gridsurvey.com/economy.php

A slow, steady erosion of the the inworld population that continues. Granted yes, weekends were busier times and that was when you were likely to see those numbers. But times have changed in ways that skew that as well. Take wednesdays for example. SL was OFFLINE COMPLETELY during those days every week. Downtime was much more common during the week, which would help push busy hours towards the weekend.

And I don't have to use any data. I use experience. If you choose to dismiss it as a lack of memory, that's fine. I'm not armed with charts and graphs to show off my statistical muscle. This is just stuff i have googled because I remember seeing it all back then. But I am done. You asked me to provide evidence. I did. You didn't buy it. So further evidence gathering will be pointless. If its not from you its wrong, apparently.

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SL Addict...Freya

Please stop bickering about technicalities...it is ridiculous!  I was also in SL every day from May 2008 onwards (I still am) and weekend peak concurrency was frequently over 75000 in the UK evening...from about 6pm our time until after 11pm.

When Linden Lab removed the huge numbers of bots that inflated the online number and camping became less popular peak concurrency fell to well below 75K, and has slowly declined ever since until now...with the highest concurrency in winter months now being just over 60K on a Sunday (if it is raining).

So...SL is in slow decline but it has declined massively since 2008.  There ARE good reasons for that which do not directly involve SL dying, but it remains true that until recently and certainly while Mark Kingdon was "in charge", SL atrophied a great deal.

If there is one factor that can be said to have wounded SL most it is Mark's woeful time as CEO.  Thank goodness he is no longer CEO...Philip's brief return and Rod Humble did nothing really but at least stopped the rot, I can only hope that (from recent showings) with Ebbe as CEO, Oz and Pete will keep this MMORPG going until I no longer care.

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  • 3 weeks later...

i don't know if SL will continue and run alongside LL's new platty but i do know one thing.. i will be the last avatar in SL, standing alone in an empty sim; an empty world even.. bear hugging my packed inventory and awaiting my final moment. :o

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  • 6 months later...
  • 4 months later...

I guess it will continue for a year or two at least till the replacement is up and running and people have moved over by their own desire to do so, hopefully we can take our Avatar names and friens lists, maybe groups over if not our material stuff.

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