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.
I like impartial numbers. Their meaning is not always clear. But, they allow us to form our opinion on some unbiased information. It is up to us to be intellectually honest and consider all sides of our opinions. We hopefully get a rational perspective and keep our opinions within a real context. Is OpenSim replacing Second Life? Is Second Life doomed or about grow or just stagnate?
OpenSim
Yesterday, the 15th, Hypergrid Business published the article titled: OpenSim grids break records for regions; users. Sounds awesome. Of course it is a headline and I expect some hype. They published the following graph in the article to show the data they considered.
OpenSim Region Count - From Hypergrid Business - Enlarge
The total number of regions in all the grids is 16,959. This is about half the number of regions as Second Life, which is roughly 32,000. OSGrid is the largest single grid with 6,671. ScienceSim is next with 1,810. The stair-stepped saw tooth is from periodic data clean up. People add regions and eventually let them die. Every so often the grid owners clean up the data and registrations. The steps should be getting smaller as clean ups are becoming automated and more frequent.
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.
Well… everyone is talking about the decrease in the number of concurrent users. I have certainly noticed the currently online numbers displayed at login decreasing. In 2009 I was seeing 80,000 and climbing. Now it is rare to see 70,000 and common to see around 40,000 to 65,000 with the median generally reported to be about 52,000. So, is SL dying? Is the sky falling?
