Every so often I see someone using statistics to back up a viewpoint they have. It is very common among Warmistas and Deniers. We also see politicians misusing statistics. The most common misuse of stats is to select the data segment and use it to PREDICT the future. If that worked, everyone would get rich playing the stock market.

So, recent articles on stats got me wondering what was up. I used to write an article each month on SL statistics. Unless stats are showing change, they get pretty boring. It’s been 16 weeks since I wrote about Second Life Statistics (Sept. 2011).

Sign Ups

Rod Humble, the Linden Lab CEO, seems to have been spinning a bit when he said, “…and over the holiday period we had over 20,000 new people sign up a day.” Well, take a look at the stats. I get the images from Tateru’s site, Dwell On It. I composite them in Photoshop to provide a longer period. You can click the image below to see a larger version.

Daily Signups

It looks like for the month of December the average could be over 20,000 per day. So, the spin, like all good spin, has truth in it. But, since then the sign ups have been in a steady decline.

Continue reading →

There are really no changes in the statistics this month. Trends are continuing. So, I’m not posting graphs or doing detailed analysis. I do have some comments.

I can see a slight consistent increase over the last 5 months in daily sign ups. It looks like that is trending upward and is pretty well established. So, I think the changes in the SL sign up process have made a significant difference. We can say that change is working.

On the other hand, concurrent logins are trending down or up depending on the data you consider. Metaverse Business stats were the best for seeing the detail of what was happening, having the max and min login with the average. But, their stats stopped when the SL Splash page changed. They have yet to fix the problem. If you are interested, send them an email.

Continue reading →

Second Life’s second quarter economic stats were released 2011-08-13. Since then several people have blogged their take on the numbers and what they may mean. Those that have heard the addresses and panel discussions at SLCC 2011 have probably noticed a disparity between what bloggers are saying and what Lindens are saying. I’ll take a look at both sides of the coin.

The Bloggers

Several bloggers posted their reviews of the economic stats before SLCC convened. Others posted after SLCC concluded. Some of those posting are:

Continue reading →

In April the signup process for Second Life changed. Since then we have seen a sustained increase in sign ups. Sign ups have gone from averaging about 10,000 per day to around 15,000 per day. It is a pretty good increase.

User Signups per Day

We don’t have any numbers on how many are staying after they signup. The empirical evidence I have says there are more new people in SL. Many places that I go now have new players. There seems to be many more new player questions in the forums. But, that is totally subjective and it does not give any idea of how long they may be staying.

Continue reading →

We have all seen the trend of decreasing concurrent users and poor player retention numbers. There seems to be a turn around. I think it is too early to actually say that with any certainly… or if I wanted to be a wiener, certitude.

Sign Up Rate

Tateru’s site has stats on Second Life. One of her graphs is displaying signup rates.

Signup Rates - from SL via Dwell On It

Since the SL Signup process changed we are seeing a climb in signups. On average the signup were about 10,000 per day for over a year. It looks like that has jumped to between 13,000 to 14,000 per day. It appears to be in an upward trend. It is early in the trend change, if it is a trend. We don’t know if this is a long term change or not. But the old trend has been broken.

Continue reading →