Well, it’s that time again. The metrics have been published for Second Life’s second quarter this year.
If you want the short version, the figures published by the Lab show little or no actual growth for the quarter. That isn’t, in and of itself, necessarily a bad thing, but there are some mildly troubling inferences to be drawn from some of the figures.
Let’s look at those.
First up, the largest gain was in signups (also known as ‘completed registrations’). In April, various changes were made to the signup process, and completed registrations jumped an average of ~28% per-day over the previous quarter. That’s a huge jump in signups, and would ordinarily be a reason to smile.
However, here’s the catch.
- Average monthly logged-in-users only increased 2.8%
- User-hours declined by ~1%
- Economic participation declined by ~0.43%
Conclusion: More users are completing signups, but the percentage of those users actually retained is very low, and seems to just be roughly covering normal attrition. New Second Life users are not ‘getting it’ in the main or are not finding Second Life to be an attractive or an adhesive proposition.
What I would really be interested in seeing is the percentage difference in signups-commenced and signups-completed. I’m certain there would be some interesting data to be examined there.
However, while user-hours declined by about a million hours during the quarter (down to 103 million user-hours), the amount of time spent in Second Life per-user, according to ratings-organisation Nielsen, remains higher than the per-user average time for even the most popular PC games titles.
That’s a heck of a result right there.
For other metrics:
- The money-supply grew 2.2%, but the L$ exchange-rate improved by just 0.4%. It looks like the money-supply is fairly close to it’s optimal figure. The exchange-rate is flattening out as a result. If the money-supply is kept from exceeding the economic optimum this quarter, we won’t see a slide in the exchange-rate for Q3.
- The LindeX trading volume declined 2.7% to US$30.6 million, and this does appear to be largely a seasonal fluctuation. Second Life doesn’t have many purely seasonal fluctuations, but this seems to be one of them.
- SL Marketplace (or ‘Web Merchandise’) sales grew 4.9%. It will take another quarter to be certain, but my gut-feeling is that SL Marketplace sales are nearing saturation, and may do so by the end of this year.
- The total number of Second Life regions declined by 0.48%. There were a few higher-profile region closures in Q2, and a few in the current quarter as well.
The Second Life economy is by no means unhealthy, but at present it shows no real signs that any obstacles to participation were overcome during Q2; at least, not based on the figures that Linden Lab has chosen to make public.
I hang out a lot at NCI-Kuula, one of the long-established user-provided help places around the Grid, so I get to see the new residents.
I don’t think the need to switch from Basic mode to Advanced is helping anyone. Basic mode is too limited, and i get the impression that the Lindens don’t explain it very well. Here we are, half-way through the third quarter, and new users are still saying they can’t do anything. And there seems to be a surge in arrivals, pushing the sim limits, every Saturday.
Maybe I obsess about it a bit, but the Lindens aren’t good at explaining things. They can be quite good at creating ingenious technical solutions for social problems which might have been fixed by better communication.
Thank you Tateru. You’ve just given me the germ for my next post.
Glad to help!
Two reasonable suggestion for “overcome the obstacles” of retaining log-ins:
Regain control over the info hubs (now griefer central), staff these by an adequate number of semi-employees with admin powers and let newcomers contact real persons with a real opinion and real background knowledge. The V2 destination guide is obviously overrated, just as all the off-world, web browser (and web browser like) linking is. People don´t initially log into SL to be presented with a web browser or some links to “places” (which they can explore later, anyway). And it makes no sense to send them to stores, showcase places which require high end graphics or places of not much interest. Probably TP´s to categorised info hubs (like for architecture, arts, education, roleplay, land, creation, freebie portal, sexual encounters (hehe, however the workaround name for that infohub might be) and so on would make a big, positive difference.
Second: LL must get rid of the terrible V2 interface. The much I like the idea of a simplified newbie viewer and modular extensions, the much I doubt that the V2 basical interface is of any use.
[...] new Second Life Economic Metrics for second quarter have been released. Thanks to a blog post from Tateru Nino (who opens the door to lots of the best info on SL around the ‘net) I see some things that [...]
My biggest concern is to see the userbase becoming younger.
Young people have a very different (a) expectations and (b) behaviours.
A: they want quick and easy “the action”, be it roleplay, like-minded chat partners or what ever – they want it quick.
B: if they don’t get A within 30 minutes, they’ll abandon SL with no return.
Historically, entering SL was like a filter process. The ‘clicky’ registration, the never ending torch&parrot turtoial…it required endurance and patience, like the whole following SL-life does.
So, many young people gave up before they had started to life in SL – only the elders remained there due to their endurance and patience.
LL lowered the entrance hurdles for young hotheads, they’re quickly ‘in’ these days. Unfortunately the in-world life still requires the old, mature virtues of dealing patiently with little quirks, patiently searching the ‘right’ place etc.
So, the retention rate is obviously still very low.
LL knows all this. They’re trying to satisfy the youth’s need by bringing them quickly to places that might be interesting for them.
All in all, I see SL becoming less a ‘virual world’ where people live, rather it’s turning into a 3D-place, where people meet. A small difference on the short view, but in long term a fundamental change to SL (as we know it).
If this is wanted to become a 3D meeting place…well, we have enough of those. IMVU is the outstanding example. It needs less tech, less maintainance and less running costs, less graphic power and offers less quality, but therefore it´s an adequate, reliable 3D “meeting place”. SL actually depends on those who want more than just “meet” and i strongly doubt that it´s LL intentention to reduce it to this purpose. Even if it looks like that. The “younger” prefer to go to real places to meet flesh and blood people, anyway. And if they use virtual environments for entertainment or connecting, then pure gaming or simple facebooklike “social networks” and not something more or less abstract, resource and time eating and sophisticated like SL, not even IMVU and the like. Linden Lab strictly depends on middle class grown ups who have a surplus of time and money left to spend on fulfilling their virtual dreams in any possible way (All SL economy data point at this). The trouble with Second Life (for our beloved Linden Lab techies and accountants) is that grown up middle class dreams can include everything one possibly can imagine, and it´s pretty difficult to figure out which dreams sell the best.
Within a year, I think you’ll see another grid from the Lab to act as that simplified 3D meeting place.
Would not surprise me, Tateru. But it´s just a waste of investment to go for a market which is already occupied by tons of well working services and satisfied cutomers, imho.
That’s never stopped anyone before, and some have even succeeded at it. IBM, for example, used to be a second-rate, also-ran company in a market dominated by high-performing companies who were rolling in happy customers. Very few successful companies made their own industries – they instead took markets away from established competitors.
I’m not saying that this would or wouldn’t work. Just that I am always intrigued by possibilities.
@Vivienne – Agreed. Technologies such as Cisco’s Telepresence allow me to see the face of the person I’m talking with. Even GoToMeeting.com has added video with the online meeting product. Asking people to invest in a platform where costumes, characters and pseudonyms are the rule .. to conduct business meetings? It’s just wrong-headed thinking.
I would love to know how many of those Completed Signups were registered as bots.
[...] leggete anche qui per una benevole critica: http://dwellonit.taterunino.net/2011/08/13/second-life-q2-2011-metrics-and-economy-analysis/). Stanno leggermente aumentando il numero di utenti unici mensili (circa + 2.5%), e stanno [...]
Thanks Tat. Here is my conclusion. The new signups are younger and now able to get to walk and talk within SL very quickly. Before that they would just quit at signup, trying to figure out how to move, find a location etc.
Now they can do all those things but eventually they hit the wall of what basic mode has to offer so they stick using it for 3d chat. That means their session times are more in line with those lighter products (ie: much shorter).
Next up (obviously) is to follow the experience to the next level of depth and make that easier to understand , participating in the economy, creating stuff etc. My assumption is that we will see these new users then continue down the food chain as it were and spend more time on world, but we will see.
And finding some way to convince them to hang out with us crusty oldies, I imagine. I’ve often wondered if one of the barriers for many younger users is simply that they don’t really like to hang out in the same venues as folks that are their parents’ and grandparents’ ages.
Yes the wave of new people seem to be younger than the established sl user base. These younger people have short attention spans and general underdeveloped people skills. ( a common response to offer to help is ‘who are YOU ?’
The basic viewer default seems to worsen the already low retention ratio. Many new people believe the advanced viewer functions requires premium (paid) membership.
Those that make it out of the orientation area usually tp some place where there is no one to help, feel lost and quit. (in addition 16 & 17 yo’s cannot tp to many of teh locations in the destination guide due to ratings thought they do not understand why)
Lindens MUST abandon the basic viewer mode as a default. An short orientation video with some free clothes as a reward for watching might help.
I haven’t tried it myself, but a few people are using the Viewer v3 not-quite-beta, and I’ve seen reports of a button to switch between Basic and Advanced in the UI.
[...] Dwell On It – Second Life Q2 2011 metrics and economy analysis [...]