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It appears I am the first to comment, that on it's own is worrying. Somehow the blogs and forums do not attract the crowds it used to attract. But back to the data presented.

The new method of registration works. The step in the graph is clear and is related to the new method. Compliments.
Websales appears to be flattening.

Now the rest, erm, well, erm, it's sort of, dunno how to bring this kindly, the people come, but they don't stay.
Why? is the question we ask about every quarter since the last few years.

We all know once we can keep someone in for a month or so they are addicted for ever. So, what is wrong with that first month?

Sure it's not flat like Ze Webz. It's not type and click. But yet SL has been able to bring in and keep them in the past but not any more. The outflow is in balance with the stayers. And the stayers appear to stay less time on-line, next to that the stayers appear not to have the same need for land as us oldies. Why?

I think there is a shift in users. Less creators and merchants, more chatters and socialisers.

To start creating appears to be a big step, with Mesh the step is becoming even bigger. To start a new store in a world that is already swamped with stores is also a big step to take. Perhaps not a practical step but a psychological step like in: Why bother? (graphs on this?)

The chatters and socialisers spend L$. But how many jeans would someone buy? After a few they stop buying jeans and the jeans market crashes unless new residents come in.

Why can't we keep the visitors and turn them into clients?

Make it easier? It's almost impossible to make it more easy (unclutter options). Or perhaps, make it harder?? (you have completed the challenging task of mastering the SL Viewer, took you a month and now you can't leave)
Give more help? Provide more things to do?

One thing I do know. The world appears empty for new residents. Look at 9/10 atmospheric images of SL, barren and lonely.

Help new residents to find meeting places!

Help them as best as you can since that is the way to keep them that critical month.

 

oh, and get people onto the blogs and forums again. Bribe us, there must be some land left over looking at the graphs...(buy this posting for 16 sqm! Cheep! )

oh, and mesh won't keep the visitors. Sorry I am the one that told you. (Web brings them is, point made, Second Life must keep them, with or without Mesh)

user hours is down, its not ok

There is no leadership in SecondLife now.  There was a leader, long time ago.  I believe Phillip was his name. :-) Then he left and we got a new leader for a while.  Then he left and Phillip HAD TO come back for a while and point the ship in the right direction.  Then Phillip left again -- he's totally bored with SecondLife and want to do other fun things now -- and we got another new guy as the leader.  What's his name?  Do we ever hear a single word from the "leader" of Second Life?  No blog, no nothing.  What's he do all day at Linden Labs?

The only thing going on in Second Life now is the viewer wars.  Old viewer, viewer 2, Phoenix, etc.  Now when someone asks me for help in SL that's the first question I ask -- what viewer are you using.  If you say the one I'm using, I can help -- otherwise you get no help from me.  Sad, but I can't tell you what to click on if I don't use it every day. 

No leadership, no sense of direction, no unified viewer experience for all users. That's my big three reasons for no growth in SecondLife.

My goodness, comments on blogs;-) All in all, not bad. Viewer Wars continue. It is indeed hard to help new residents. Two controls for audio are needed. Blaring volume 11 music is not conducive to talking someone through any Viewer. Make master default 3/4 up not max, please. Please offer an eye-friendly silver skin option. We are more than willing to help new folks but give us a chance .. what with chat being toasts, audio blaring and eyes getting strained it is a wonder any newb stays at all.

If you care to look at Gridsurvey, our concurrency is now dipping down below 50,000 and is touching 48,000.  People are leaving or not hanging around as much.  And in both cases, the argument for keeping 300$ a month islands gets mighty weak.

You sold us ownership of virtual land.  We have receipts and years of ads to prove it.  That's what we want, just what you promised and sold to us.  Give us the ownership we paid for, and leave us the **** alone to enjoy our property however the **** we want to enjoy it (barring RL laws).  If you don't want to make land possession "Ownership" but instead a lease, then you are going to have to cut the price by half to get land moving once more.  Would you pay the same amount to lease a car that the next guy over is paying to own that car?  No, you wouldn't.  So why are you expecting us, your customers, to do that?

If we own the land, the price can be argued as the investment cost to gain ownership.  Without ownership, there IS no argument to be made in defense of the high price.  Either you half both purchase and tier prices, or you give us back our legal ownership as sold to us way back when.  Nothing else will do.  Fail to do either, and the world will continue to shrink and the userbase will continue to shrink with it.  And at some threshold, SL will appear to be so abandoned that those left will give up their sims and walk away to do something else.  When you sink to that depth, not even free houses and free land will keep people inworld any longer.

I'm pleased to see the new CEO understands that we are in SL because here we can be anything we want to be.  But I'm not pleased that everyone is repainting the deck of the ship back to its festive colors, all while ignoring the gaping hole in the hull.  The ship is sinking and has been for 2 years (Thanks M!!)  If Second Life land is owned, give us ownership.  If not, price it accordingly as a game rental.  Or continue to ignore the fiscal reality that nobody with a lick of sense will pay what you demand for something they won't own and can lose at the merest whim of someone in LL; and keep watching the waterline rise higher and higher until the entire thing is lost forever.

I have to agree with what  Shockwave Yareach said above. We are on a slow sinking ship, and I hope that hole gets fixed soon. Second Life is not the only grid out there in the web universe any more like it used to be, granted it has the better user base (for now) but as many mentioned above, that is shrinking. I am a content creator and still enjoy heving an inworld store, but I will be honest that I am getting closer and closer to the why bother phase. People use marketplace for 80%+ of their purchases making it a waste of my time and money to have, pay and maintain an inworld location. As for the cost of owning land, in my honest opinion, the pricing of land is plain stupid. Yes I know it costs money to own and run the hardware that makes the SL world possible, but if more and more people come in, then leave and take a few of the long timers with them, there will be less and less and less things to do in SL. I have vast ideas to make interesting locations and places to visit in SL, but with the state of the econnomy in the states and in many instances world wide, the money to put into a game is not justified. To me, and I may be wrong, but would it not be better to have much lower prices to own(or lease) land/sims from LL and have a much larger and more diverse world to explore than to over charge the ones that are trying to make it and in most cases failing to do so? I know this is not a simple thing to do, but perhaps make an incentive that to get the low prices that the land/sim owner has to keep their properties interesting (not flat and barren to just divide to rent out and make a quick buck) and to maintain them as not to get stagnent. I don't know....I just hate the thought of no more SL.

It's eye opening clear: 

What increased ? -> new registrations and marketplace ( = off-world things). What decreased ? -> Nearly ALL in-world stats.

(My) conlusion: what we see is a chain reaction caused by the marketplace. What keeps people "in" secondlife ? Playgrounds, roleplay areas, sports places or just visible attractions...and to keep these running it needs 300+ USD a month. Not many can be on welfare, they have to compensate these 300$. The usual way is to set a mini-mall in a corner of the sim. But these malls are shrinking (until they collapse), because merchants and customers are lured to the marketplace.

When the malls die, sim owners start loosing money - and have only the option to close their 'important' sims (sooner or later). And without interesting sims...you know the rest: inworld activity decreases. 

 And the worst of all: no "new user experience", no mesh content an no "new UI with better game elements" will be ableto stop this trend...it's all useless without interesting places to use these features. 

 (( It's not meant as rant, or black painting...it's just my sorrow.))

2006: "Your World, Your Imagination" (rapid growth)

2007: "Your World, Our Imagination" (slowing growth)

2008: "Our World, Our Imagination" (stagnation)

2009: "Our Disneyland, No Imagination" (stagnation)

2010: "Our Facebook, No Imagination" (stagnation)

2011: "Our Mess, Hire Someone with Imagination" (stagnation)

2012: "Your World, Your Imagination." (renewed growth)

Five wasted years. Sigh. We live in hope.

Web Market Sales have really put a huge dent in my in world mall sales

I have been in Sl almost 7 years. The shift of this economy is worrysom. Promotes lack of market confidence.

Makes you wonder how many residents are now planning their exit instead of their future

I love Sl. But saddened by the shift of things

It is a real pity....

On one hand we are managing to have new people in, but the numbers and the time they spend in-world reduces. It only makes sense if people is leaving at the same rate as they come in. After they changed the names of the avatars to the generic family "Resident" (argghhhh....  horrible decision), we see more and more newbies. And less and less of the  "old SL clans".

I am going to be 2 y.o in SL....  and I still remember my first experiences here. The first thing knobs look for is simple: money and cool looks. Where to get the money? No shops is no work; create something, and no place where to sell it; If you have no money, where can I build a little hut that I can call home? Because I want to do the same things I do also at home.... Ok... cool look then, market place looks a solution. But fomenting Marketplace is destroying the shops in-world. It cost less to the creators to place them in MP than in SL: no costs for models, cool attractive buildings, and rent/buy (rent at the end) a piece of land -that can be vandalized by a neighbor with poor taste at least.

So, less shops, less inversion in public places... and now that I have a kinda-cool-look... what to do? In that moment 2nd phase tigers: you learn about the viewers issues, the possibilities that Linden is on sale, that your hard earned $ (even in activities that you would even dare to dream to do in RL) are value zero (read TOSS), and that Linden at the end owns everything in SL... What the F I am doing here?

SL has grown out the wish of making money fast on it. We still remember the land sales boom and the 1st $L Millionaire (and the way used to do so). A big stunt... Still some people comes here for that gold rush...

What we miss?? Internal democracy: from the planning of the new land (anyone in SL has a clue on Geography?), give land to those who work it (town council structure may be?), clarity and assurance from LL on a minimal set of securities and personal data protection, job legislations (no more bot: put real avatars)...

At the end, leave SL for the inhabitants, act like a "federal government" and less like God (i.e.. grab taxes on incomes and not a flat tax on everybody) and push for a real world economy (market place reduced a mere billboard with freebies).

Less God more Governance...

P.S. Sorry for my extensive post

It appears that even when completed registrations improve by almost 28%, concurrency still declines. What does this say?

 

I came into SL in 2007, which was a bumper year for Second Life. I remember what an exciting place SL used to be. It no longer is an exciting place. What made it exciting? It matters little to LL, so why should I even bother to list them here.

I joined SL way back in 2006.

Then into the university, I did my dissertation in 2008 on brightening prospects of SL.

And now in 2011, I wonder why I wasted my 1 year on "brightening prospects of SL"

The only good times I can recall in SL is when Mr. Philip was the leader.

Seeing the downside SL is going, I am reminded of a phrase which one of my classmate said.

"There is not much of a difference between dog and the company.Without leader, the company is like dog without its tail. With a sound and sensible leader, the company always steer in right direction. Nothing can bring it down, like the tail of dog."

No offense to anyone.

 

There honestly needs to be better analysis tools here, because some of those do not accurately reflect the current state in SL.

 

yes there may be a spike in new registrations, and yes that spike may contribute greatly to the consistency of logged-in monthly users. but why not take into account as well how the ratio of new users versus deleted or inactive accounts ? and then compare those numbers and apply them to the rest of these graphs ?

 

i am sure there would be a different story. as everything, LL tries to paint a pretty picture, but to those of us who live in SL day in and day out, there is a much different and bleaker picture being seen. kind of makes me wonder about modern propaganda at times when i see this information. there is a lot here not being shared by LL, and it is obvious LL does not really care about those of us who pay $ to play. as long as there is money flowing to them, they are happy. i wonder what happens when this slows down and stops...is that when they will stand up and look around and actually realize that perhaps they should have catered to its resident more and their own pockets less ?

 

sorry if i sound bitter, i'm not holding back. i have not been around as long as many out there, but i do love SL, and i hate having to say goodbye to friends i have made in this world, because so many are leaving (various reasons), and LL does not seem to care at all....

 

wake up !!!!

 

...before it is too late.

Land is far too expensive in Second Life. I have money to spend but I just can't justify the cost. There seems to be no real ownership, as mentioned above, its just a really expensive lease. No thank you. Give me a reason to spend sever hundred dollars here and I will.

Land owners pay to keep a sim alive -> they get paid from creators who rent shops there -> creators get paid by customers for their products -> customers enjoy the sim with various activities -> we're back at the land owner :-)

An economic circle - if  any part it taken away, the WHOLE circle breaks.  Marketplace takes creators and customers out of this in-world economy...

At this point, I don't belive LL will make the huge step of bringing the economy back in-world.

@Marielle:  A simple solution to Marketplace is to limit the number of items in the store to 10 items + (number of m^2 the land which the magic box sits supports divided by 50.)  This gives a free start to anyone but ties the inworld store and the web store together.  Got a 512m parcel?  You can sell 10 + 10 items in marketplace.  Got a 4096m^2 1/16 sim store?  Your webstore can have 10 + 81 items in it. Have several stores but want one website?  Distribute the load across several boxes, one on each spot.  (Make sure the website doesn't allow more than one box per sim, too -- no cheating!)

Simple and effective, with nothing but change to the marketplace code and requirement to use the NEW magicboxes (which report land size back to the web server for count limits) to make it work.  You can even just give people a script to drop in their existing magicboxes which updates the current scripts without the seller having to do a lot of work building new boxes.

@Shockwave: Please don't try and confuse the Lindens with logic and common sense, some of them might actually be reading the responses here; but I doubt it.

@Shockwave: THIS is a nice idea :-). Especially since it's a compromis LL could maybe live with (instead my hammer-idea of shutting MP down).

Of course, we'll need ear-plugs because many people will only see themself as 'victims'..."LL is forcing us to own land just to sell on MP".

But better a crying crowd than an empty world :-). 

One of the things that should be taught to newbs coming into SL is their conduct.  

I don't mind helping any newbs who need guidance, but I don't know how many times I hear, or am subjected to some truly ignorant and rude interactions with newcomers who don't seem to have any common sense in their activities in world.

Examples: 

1. Newbs flying into your home or landing on your property and start either looking around or using your property.

2. Sending you friend requests when you've never met or spoken to them.

3. Asking residents for money/lindens.

4. Rudely stepping in and jumping on dances/poses when a partner of  a resident does it.

5. They need to read profiles and see the status of residents, rather than blindly propositioning them with inappropriate remarks.

6. They think that filthy nasty crude language is ok anywhere in a public club/location.

7. Greifing by accident or malicioulsy.

8. Teens showing up at adult dance clubs and not understanding how to conduct themselves.

Maybe if these problems were addressed in orientation, there wouldn't be as many problems and so many complaint reports filed.  Which Linden has seemed to fallen down on the job in following up on.  Personally I've been harassed by a couple of residents (which was unprovoked by me) and I filed a complaint twice.  Nothing was ever reported back to me on the outcome of this complaint, so I'm guessing that Linden has done nothing, since these people continue to harrass others.

 

Hey hey, come now! I won't hear a word said against the current leadership. Rod is probably the best thing to have happened to this place in years. At the risk of committing heresy, I might even be willing to say I prefer him to Philip, who always struck me, beyond a certain level of success, as a pretty disinterested figure. I reckon it is probably one of the fundamental problems of a medium like this one - finding a CEO that is capable of integrating their own creativity into a platform where the essential purpose is to allow other artists to create. Rod, however, I suspect is capable of this - certainly, his interests seem to me to go beyond just making a successful business.

SL generally, I still have a good deal of hope for. This sort of virtual world seems to me to remain extraordinarily pregnant in terms of what it can be as a creative medium, allowing the expression, as it does, of the users' nervous system - a more complex involvement of human faculties say than literature or even television. The amount it potentially allows for in terms of creating deep experience seems pretty vast. It's having a good few problems right now - a stupid viewer, the rightly cited MP and land issues etc., but there is some space for optimism too. In terms of retention, I reckon the abilities to control chat spamming and control visibility of other parcels etc are good moves. It will allow control over gaming spaces so that experiences can be more focused. Likewise, thinking about NPCs and combat without HUDs could be very useful in creating desirable environments. The more control we get over environments, the more likley it is we are able to create more rich and vibrant virtual experiences.

SL is struggling, but handled right, I still think it can stand as a supremely important art/expressive medium - it's a sort of writing and a sort of painting and it's value is in expanding the depth of this medium. As such, I never really got why anyone would want to push the social networking side of things.

I made this comment originally in another forum, but reading this post I thought it might be worth repeating here.

A link was posted there to a YouTube video called "How a Noob Sees Second Life" -- it's 8 excruciating minutes of why people do not stay in SL once they arrive.

It shows a Welcome HUB where there is a chaotic clamor of voice chat, gesture spams, script/particle lag, among other various assaults on the senses.

If you were new, how would you react to this? Would you assume that ALL of SL is like this? Would you persevere and press on and try to figure out how to get out of there, or would you give up after your computer comes to a virtual standstill from all the lag?

The thought occurred to me a couple of weeks ago when the new default avatars were introduced -- why not create accompanying thematic welcome areas, staffed by LL employees and or resident volunteers? Starting people out where they want to be might help new user retention rates.

If a new user wants to be a pirate, get a pirate avatar and go to the pirate Welcome HUB. If people want social media/chat/IRC, offer them the option to go to Welcome HUBs with a nightclub/themepark/beach theme. Vampires, furries, Medieval, Steampunk etc etc.

And perhaps from those thematic Welcome Areas, offer portals to related Destination Guide places, too. 

This is  predicated on having actual LL employees and volunteers "policing" (for lack of a better term) the HUBs and guiding new users in whatever direction they are curious about.

I know there used to be mentors and volunteers in SL, but some previous administration dumped that idea. I think that's about the time the new user retention started to decline.

It's time for LL to look to its veteran users for guidance -- the people who actually spend time here know what the problems are. Quit guessing and hear us out. There are a lot of good ideas out there, if you stopped to listen.

Be proactive LL, instead of constantly on the defensive.

@Astolat: We could say: If people land in an unpleasant HUB, they can simply walk a few steps to where it's more quiet (That's how I started :-) ). 

But I get you point. Something in this direction were the community gateways, I think. A pirate community has their own website with their own registration channel - and people who come this way login/rezz at the community-sim.

Did you the SLCC-videos ? Rod was asked if the community gateways could be reactivated. He was surprised that they were gone (before his time at LL) and pocketed the question-card...maybe (hopefully) a good sign. 

Web Merchandise sales...hmmm...How much of those sales are Freebie Sales I wonder?  The Marketplace is flooded with freebies , Mass produced templates, and cheapies to the extend that the Original real deal artists are getting buried in the searches.  Those same artists are having to close down their Sims due to the Sim costs and lack of being able to generate the income in game to support their Sims. If Designers and Creators are going to have to Depend on Marketplace for income then Linden Lab seriously needs to take a look at lowering Tier costs Or look into some way to Downsize the freebies and cheapies on Marketplace so Creators can get their stuff seen and purchased for ITS WORTH because of the hard work they put into their creations.  Too many people want something for nothing now a days due to the "Something for nothing" concept.

I have read this blog with interest and it has prompted me to make my first ever post. (so please be gentle with 1668 day old virgin).

I agree with many of the things said and confess to not fully understanding others but thought I would add my observations as to why so many 'come & go.'

Firstly I would mention that I tend to frequent the more 'seedy' side of SL so can only speak from that perspective but have tried to remember back to those days when I first landed in this new world. I was lucky as I had good friends from another chat program who steered me right with many things, but a lot don't have that advantage as they step into the new world.

So lets look at a typical noob. They land and after the intial, move here, look here at the rez point they want to look good and feel good and get used to their surroundings before very often seeking out the side of SL in which I live aka "bring on the naked people."

Like anywhere new they are bombarded with input and are not sure which way to turn.  They quickly realise  that although the basic skin and clothes are OK people still know them as a 'noob', when they see themselves walking like a duck and realise that's why.

Now we all know that there are some pretty good AOs out there.  Many, like me, have built their own but that takes time before you can understand how to do it.  Alternatively you buy off the shelf but you then have to make that decision in your head that says "I am prepared to invest my cash into this world."

So they seek out the freebie markets and then they are lost as potential customers forever.

First suggestion - Put a decent free AO into the starter pack/body shape

OK now they feel good it's time to 'party on' so it's off to a sim and start chatting to people. You can almost hear the words "Hey they are here for the same thing as me so this must be easy". They get rebuffed and their ego hits the ground.  You can almost hear the thought now "what's the point no-one likes me I might as well leave now".

Next relates to knowledge and like when we were at school knowledge was 'rammed down our throats" whether we liked it or not. Once we got the thirst for knowledge and understood the value of it we started to learn for ourselves. The forum and knowledge base is a classic example.  Many I talk to don't even know it exsists!

Now I know that many will think that it should be self evident but how many of us have had the univited IMs with suggestions phrased in a way that would make a docker blush.  Yes I have read the TOS but lets face put  yourself in their head on joining ....."it's a new world, lots of things to see and do and you want me to read lots of boring rules.........yeah right ...... bring on the naked people".

Second suggestion - Force people to join the forum/knowledge base on joining SL, put a big button on saying 'Noobs read this' and in there put 'How to conduct yourself in SL aka this is how you RP' and they can't get through until they have read it.

Now once people start to feel good when they stop the 'head bobbing, duck walking' style, learn a bit of class and start to enjoy whatever RP rocks their boat and decide to stay a little while. Relationships build, areas of interest develop and then they start to think "I want to look even better" and so the ecomony is stimulated at ground level as they buy clothes and errrrrrrrrrr other things.

Eventually they reach the point where they decide they want to put something back into the world, be it a sim for people to have fun or just buy a little place they can call 'home'.  Then they look at the cost and that feeling starts of your chest tightening and your breath getting short when you look at the price.  

The only way to make a sim viable is to overload with shops, charge rents that retailers can't really afford and take a huge risk as you set it up.  Trouble is you now have a laggy sim and can lose a lot of prim space that you would like to use for decoration. People land, die in the lag and eventually give up.

Third suggestion - Give a rebate on land costs,  if you want to stimulate an ecomony then you need businesses to invest, however this 'rebate' would only be for public access sims which had areas outside of pure shops.

So that's my post (rant) over and the virtuous circle closes as good looking 'noobs' with class flock to the sims with 'happening' things in them that have some shops and they buy things so making shop owners happy to pay the rent to the sim owners.

Or maybe on reading back...............I should stop dreaming.

My account is over 7 years old, my business over 5 years old so I have seen the highs and lows of SL.

 

The highs was when we had no recession and SL was new and shiny and people were not thinking about every single purchase they make or whether they can get it cheaper.

This has caused merchants from countries who have a better conversion rate (China Japan etc) be able to undercut prices of more western countries because $10.00 to someone in China is the same as $100.00 to someone in the USA (don't quote me I am guesstimating) 

There is no blame or single reason, the RL economy has had a major impact on countries, people, jobs and businesses but, and I hate too say it, "If it was me..." I would reduce the tier on land like NOW because SL "as a  game" is very expensive if you want to "play" it with all the bells and whistles, and that means owning an island or a decent piece of land.

SL and associated fees falls into the "desposable income bracket" and due to the awful RL economy people will drop that $300 a month luxury habit like a hot potatoe.

What alarms me more than anything and displays a "sign of the times" is the lack of response to this once very much anticipated report.

The lack of interest to me says people don't believe what is written or they no longer care.

Whilst previoulsy its true to say the majority of responses to blogs like these were anger and frustration, at least that was an indictor of someone who still cared enough to make comment.

When people stop bothering and caring, they stop trying and THAT is my biggest concern with this blog. Not whats detailed in the reports but the lack of response, period.