Grid size

[ChinRey]

I just had a look at gridsurvey.com

 

110 new sims opened last 30 days, 253 old sims closed down.

If that trend goes on - and there's no reason why it won't - the number of sims will drop below 25 000 in September this year - for the first time since 2008.

[Freya Mokusei]

Not to worry you further, but my guess is you were looking at the total number of sims? Those numbers include the simulators that are a part of Mainland and other Linden-owned sims, and are therefore unlikely to experience economic-based shrink. The difficulty with these numbers is that it can make the Grid seem bigger and more successful than it really is, given that a lot of Mainland is covered in For Sale and Abandoned land.

Check out the numbers for Private Estates and get a slightly better - well, more accurate - picture of how things are going.

[ChinRey]

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Freya Mokusei wrote:

The difficulty with these numbers is that it can make the Grid seem bigger and more successful than it really is, given that a lot of Mainland is covered in For Sale and Abandoned land.

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Yes, I know. The number of Linden run sims is fairly stable, it's the privately owned ones that are vanishing.

Then again, SL is underpopulated so a reduction si size isn't necessarily a bad thing.

This is a bit more worrying though:

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

The official number of people logged on to SL is also slowly but surely dropping and has done so for six years. Again, the actual number is likely to be even worse. At the moment I write this, there are officially 27 969 people logged on to SL. It's low time of the day, low time of the week and at the start of low time of the year so that figure isn't as bad as it may seem. But how many of those are bots? Seems to me almost half the "people" you see these days are traffic bots. I can't remember it was that bad a year or so ago but maybe it's jsut that I didn't know how to spot them back then.

There's no reliable way to estimate the number of actual and unique people logged on to the grid of course but as a rough guesstimate, does 10 000 less than the official number sound about right?

[Freya Mokusei]

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ChinRey wrote:

This is a bit more worrying though:

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

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Well again, I'm not super-sure about worrying. This line is very gentle, has no rough spikes. Hype was a thing that affected participation curves both economically and time/effort-wise but it's not dropping as quickly as landmass. I know there's a post of mine from a few years back that talks about the maths in determining the rate of decline - it's something like 4% per year.

Online networks break down in a somewhat predictable way, and Second Life isn't likely to reach this point in the near to medium future.

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ChinRey wrote:

The official number of people logged on to SL is also slowly but surely dropping and has done so for six years. Again, the actual number is likely to be even worse. At the moment I write this, there are officially 27 969 people logged on to SL. It's low time of the day, low time of the week and at the start of low time of the year so that figure isn't as bad as it may seem. But how many of those are bots? Seems to me almost half the "people" you see these days are traffic bots. I can't remember it was that bad a year or so ago but maybe it's jsut that I didn't know how to spot them back then.

There's no reliable way to estimate the number of actual and unique people logged on to the grid of course but as a rough guesstimate, does 10 000 less than the official number sound about right?

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Yikes, no, there's no way that there's 10,000 bots online at all times - let alone half. Stacking bad numbers on top of bad numbers only leads you to more bad numbers.

Honestly measuring bots is like measuring AFKers; can't be done from outside and doesn't really affect the bottom line. Economic participation is a better measure (one that we don't really have, though). The easiest way to rationalise including bots is that bots are (mostly) operated by those with high participation within the system anyway.

Anyway, I'm not posting to downplay your findings - and GridSurvey is a wonderful resource. It IS sad that we're losing 200 sims from anywhere.

[MissTeriMahn]

WHat did you expect after a badly managed announcement of SL V2?

Teri

((Who would rationally want to invest in something whose planned obsolescence was accelerating?))

[Freya Mokusei]

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MissTeriMahn wrote:

((Who would rationally want to invest in something whose planned obsolescence was

accelerating

?))

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Bolding mine - just to make a quick observation and play a little Friday morning Devils Advocate.

Obsolescence might be accelerating as the rest of the WWW grows around (and on top of) SL, but neither concurrency or private estate holdings are showing any increased effect because of this news (or persistent fearmongering ). It'd be unusual if concurrency took a hit (since V2 isn't available to 'steal' time/interest), but since estate holdings are maintaining their slow rate of decline my summation is that resident-level investors & land barons aren't adjusting their holdings in preparation to move or shutter. Not unless sims are being pumped in from elsewhere.

 

[ChinRey]

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Freya Mokusei wrote:

Obsolescence might be accelerating as the rest of the WWW grows around (and on top of) SL, but neither concurrency or private estate holdings are showing any increased effect because of this news (or persistent fearmongering

). It'd be unusual if concurrency took a hit (since V2 isn't available to 'steal' time/interest), but since estate holdings are maintaining their slow rate of decline my summation is that resident-level investors & land barons aren't adjusting their holdings in preparation to move or shutter. Not unless sims are being pumped in from elsewhere.

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You are right of course. This trend has been going on since 2011 so it has nothing to do with the new grid project. The decrease has accelrated slightly recently (latest figure: 145 sims net loss last 30 days) but the change may be seasonal or it may be just coincidence - not enough data yet to say if it's a trend.

[JoeKingleigh]

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ChinRey wrote:

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Freya Mokusei wrote:

Obsolescence might be accelerating as the rest of the WWW grows around (and on top of) SL, but neither concurrency or private estate holdings are showing any increased effect because of this news (or persistent fearmongering

). It'd be unusual if concurrency took a hit (since V2 isn't available to 'steal' time/interest), but since estate holdings are maintaining their slow rate of decline my summation is that resident-level investors & land barons aren't adjusting their holdings in preparation to move or shutter. Not unless sims are being pumped in from elsewhere.

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You are right of course. This trend has been going on since 2011 so it has nothing to do with the new grid project. The decrease has accelrated slightly recently (latest figure: 145 sims net loss last 30 days) but the change may be seasonal or it may be just coincidence - not enough data yet to say if it's a trend.

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Y'all are sounding like that guy who jumped off the top of the Empire State Building, and was smiling and talking to himself all the way down.

Joe

/What was he saying?

//All right so far . . .

[ChinRey]

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JoeKingleigh wrote:

Y'all are sounding like that guy who jumped off the top of the Empire State Building, and was smiling and talking to himself all the way down.

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I'm certainly not, I'm seriously worried.

The grid has shrunk considerably faster than usual the last few weeks - nearly twice as fast as the 4% rate from Freya's earlier study. That's a bad sign, very bad. But a month's worth of statistics is still not enough to draw conclusions so unless somebody has data from a wider time span, we just have to wait and watch. By the end of September we should be fairly certain if this is a trend or just a fluke.

I just noticed another rather worrying sign though: right now there are more than 100 parcels for sale in Bay City. Obviously some wannabe sellers are gonna be really disappointed since they all seem to expect the traditional Bay City price level but more important, this looks almost like a mass evacuation of what always was one of the most stable parts of Mainland...