At the last Content/Mesh User Group Charlar Linden provided some interesting statistics on mesh in Second Life.

55%

55% of users logging in are running mesh capable viewers. This number is probably mostly the pre-Phoenix mesh release stat. Talking with Jessica, of the Firestorm-Phoenix team, she believes the change to the newest Phoenix viewer will up that percentage to 80%

Mesh Sales

In the past week the sale of mesh objects has doubled (Gross Revenue).

Regions

18% of the regions in Second Life now have mesh objects rezzed in them.

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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.

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:

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 15^th, 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.

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