Second Life Week 32

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WoW Losing Subscribers

For years I have heard how Second Life is losing subscribers. It is true, but the new users and returning users keep the number of people in SL about the same. SL has gone from 1 million plus to about 900,000 from 2007 to 2015.

Blizzcon – Official World of Warcraft Art // Illidan Stormrage
Blizzcon – Official World of Warcraft Art // Illidan Stormrage

Let’s try to put some perspective on that. Take a look at World of Warcraft’s numbers. In Q4-2014 there were 10 million subscribers. By the end of Q1-2015 it was down to 7.1 and now at the end of Q2-2015 it is 5.6. That is almost half the users in 6 months. (Reference – nice graph) In December 2005, 15 months after starting WoW, they passed 5.6 million. In October 2010 they were at 12.0 million, the peak I think. 

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Cool VL Viewer Updates Week 32

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August 1st Henri updated the Cool Vl Viewer. It now handles:

  • Provides full Experiences and Experience Tools support !
  • Provides Avatar Hover Height support !
  • Provides Marketplace Listings support !
  • Provides global clothing layers limit (60 in total instead of 5 for each of the 12 types) support !
  • Provides CEF3 media plugin support ! (this is still work in progress, available only in the experimental release)

CoolVLViewer-1.26.14.2 is the current version. It comes in Linux and Windows flavors. Download

Facebook & Names

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Jo Yardley had an article up a day or two ago about the fight between Facebook and Germany. It seems Germany has some law that prevents Facebook from requiring identification as it violates German privacy laws.

Germany fights Facebook thus perhaps paving the way for using pseudonyms

Mezzaluna
Mezzaluna

Today we hear Facebook has decided to allow German users to use anonymous names/pseudonyms  . But, only Germans and ONLY residents of Hamburg.  It is no surprise to me Facebook complied but only allow pseudonyms in this very limited area.

German privacy laws put Facebook in a bind. They either complied or kicked out their Hamburg Germany users.  There are 80± million Germans and something less than 2 million live in Hamburg, so while that is a lot of advertizing eyes it isn’t much of Facebook’s user base.

See: Germans allowed to use Fake Names on Facebook, while everyone else CANNOT.

Expect Facebook to come up with some way to limit new signups from Germany that cannot provide RL ID. While Facebook can’t kick someone out for using a pseudonym there is nothing that says they have to let someone in that uses a pseudonym. So, expect a change in Facebook’s signup process.

Ebbe Interview August 2015

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Ebbe Altberg, the Linden Lab CEO, has given another interview. Jo Yardley’s article Upload VR interviews Ebbe Altberg about SL and Sansar in a rather lovely setting is where I first saw mention of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mQj7TpE-Wc

Jo thinks liking the setting of the interview is on the ‘shallow’ side… the woman actually has some depth, so I suspect by her standards it might seem that way.

The video is 29 minutes. Sound is weak. The YouTube transcript is weak too. As Jo says there is not much to learn that we don’t already know.

Ebbe describes SL as the leader in user created virtual experiences.

He describes Sansar as a parallel universe to Second Life.

He says they are a couple of weeks away from letting in a few test users in to create content. Then add a few users under NDA and grow that to a hundred or so over the rest of 2015. May be have a 1.0 out by the end of 2016.

Update – PS: Be sure to check out Ciaran’s article on the interview: Project Sansar Buzz Appears To Be Launching The Second Life Of Second Life.

Second Life Week 32

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PaleoQuest – Second Life’s Dinosaur Adventure

See: Brave Dinosaurs & Win Prizes in PaleoQuest!

VMM Surprise…

Well… if you read this blog or any of several others, even if you read only the Linden Blog, the arrival of VMM and the Merchant Outbox ceasing to work is no surprise. But, the forum is full of people that are shocked and outraged that the Lab would make such a change without telling them. And there is a flock of mental midgets that can’t imagine why the change was made…

Send such people this link: Linden Lab Official:Viewer-Managed Marketplace FAQ.

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