I’ll See Your Million… and Raise You a Million
Thursday, December 14th, 2006 at 6:56 PM by: Jeff LindenSecond Life now has more than Two Million Residents, as evidenced by the “Total Residents” statistic on the front page. You know what they say, “the first million is the hardest.” We hit 1 million somewhere in Oct, and just two months later, here we are looking at 2. The pace sure is picking up!
Congratulations to the Second Life community and also the rest of the Lab too! 
Previously, we’ve been updating that number once a day, but in the interest of 2 million, I took a look at the way the statistic was being generated, and found a couple optimizations. As a result, starting tomorrow that number should start updating more frequently- I’m initially aiming for an hour, but we’ll see if something unexpected comes up.
I’ve also noticed that some of you have been curious about how we measure that number, so I’m going to endeavor to clear some questions up:
The number is measured by querying against our database for the number of accounts in “normal” status.
This does not include:
- Folks who start the signup process but never complete it.
- Folks who are currently being suspended/held for CSR purposes.
- Folks who cancel or have been cancelled for various reasons.
This does include Linden and testing accounts made by the Lab, but the number is statistically insignificant- .05 of a percent and shrinking rapidly, as we do not regularly create accounts.
Anyone want to take a guess at when we’ll hit 3?
December 14th, 2006 at 6:58 PM
Congrats LL, does this mean you get 20 scoops of ice cream?
-Alpha
December 14th, 2006 at 6:59 PM
Cool, more frequently updated stats + optimizations on things that hit the database = Good Times.
I wonder how RegApi is impacting this number…
December 14th, 2006 at 7:02 PM
I would like to know how many of those 2 million residents are unique accounts. A rough estimate would do.
December 14th, 2006 at 7:02 PM
Ask me a hard one. Assuming flat growth, 3 million in 55 days. 8 February GMT.
December 14th, 2006 at 7:02 PM
Congrats!
December 14th, 2006 at 7:04 PM
Seven: I think we would all like to know. I nominate that you start e-mailing all two million accounts asking if they are a real person, and if they can provide a social security number to link to their account.
December 14th, 2006 at 7:04 PM
So why are you taking comments on this post, yet you have disabled comments on the post about Search being turned off, yet again?
You want the praise yet can’t handle the criticism.
So yay for LL for being able to spin the media. 2 million accounts, less than 1% on at any given time, gotta love that retention rate.
Well I’m at least glad to hear that cancelled accounts do not count towards the total and continue my happy wait to drop your numbers by 1.
December 14th, 2006 at 7:04 PM
Im sorry LL it’s not how many ppl have accounts but how many have played in the last 60 days
December 14th, 2006 at 7:05 PM
Is there something to be happy about since the search is off again, shop is empty, traffic is dropping as sales are and the only reachable places are, again, the typical pop 25? C’mon, you better apologize to people that spent years building up this place instead of celebrating the millions of people you collected as users.
December 14th, 2006 at 7:06 PM
Congrats Lindens, that’s amazing. Many more mill to come !
December 14th, 2006 at 7:07 PM
Snoring, evidence suggests that the last-60-days figure is quite possibly junk. It may well be understated (it certainly gives that appearance in conjunction with other figures) or it just plain doesn’t mean what everyone thinks it means. It’s certainly not been working at all well lately.
December 14th, 2006 at 7:09 PM
Congrats. Probably in another few months SecondLife’s population will double again.
Link(TG residents only): http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?p=1360171
December 14th, 2006 at 7:13 PM
Well Done!
Jolly Good!
December 14th, 2006 at 7:14 PM
Only major problem I see with these numbers the the overly gross use of alt accounts. By the time you take away all the alt accounts I am willing to bet that the actual number of residents is drastically less than LL is praising themselves for. I personally know people who have created as many as 8-11 alts in just a ouple months time. Now that it is so much easier to create multiple alt accounts, how can you even consider that the 2 million residents count is anywhere near accurate? Simple logic should tell anyone who reads this post that there is no possible way for that number to even be close to accurate. Give us a break we are not that gullible.
December 14th, 2006 at 7:16 PM
And how many of those 2 million accounts are paying the bills?
December 14th, 2006 at 7:18 PM
I’m guessing it’ll be 3 million by 3rd Jan…
December 14th, 2006 at 7:21 PM
how many of these are dupe accounts that LL makes to inflate the numbers?
oh boy, congrats! so you have 2 million, yet search is broken! good job on hosing your customers!
LL is the enron of online gaming.
December 14th, 2006 at 7:21 PM
I’ll see your Horrible Lag… and Double That!
December 14th, 2006 at 7:22 PM
why not disable huge chunks of land that are anshe chung land? better yet, kill off all that land and return to residents, would be fun to see the land market crash and burn!
December 14th, 2006 at 7:32 PM
Maybe we could get a counter on the login page that lists how many times we see “we apologize for the inconvenience” on the blog…
December 14th, 2006 at 7:34 PM
Now if only the grid could handle all the additional load well enough to keep ’search places’ and other vital features active for longer than 2 days at a time, there would be reason to celebrate!
December 14th, 2006 at 7:37 PM
I’m sure that number also includes the many free accounts. You know, the ones that grief and cause more lag and spend zero dollars…yeah those.
December 14th, 2006 at 7:43 PM
well done on your great news, but only 17000 max on at one time, and like they all they onlly 670,000 in the last 60 days, so not realy great. and by the looks of yhings u cant cope with it, the search is always offline and the game cant get much more laggy lol still a great GAME love it
December 14th, 2006 at 7:44 PM
What’s really a riot is not only they shut down comments for the post about search being shut down but it appears that Live Help is out as well , here’s what greets me …
19:42] Daved Calderwood: Anyone home ?
[19:42] Second Life: You are the only participant in this IM session. Your message is not being retransmitted or stored.
Wonderful Customer Support
December 14th, 2006 at 7:47 PM
With search system crashed, lots of lag, inventory lost and that kind of issues you probably will see that number going down!!!
December 14th, 2006 at 7:52 PM
ok, great, i dont usualy complain, i REALLY like this game/sim/virtual world thing but DEAR GOD….in the name of all that is HOLY, PLEASE do not
EVER let all 3 million residents ever decide to log on
December 14th, 2006 at 7:57 PM
Fast pace indeed!
But eh? ‘0.05 of a percent’?
Is this 0.05 of one percent of 2 million? = 1,000
Or is this 0.05 percent of 2 million? = 100,000
?
December 14th, 2006 at 7:59 PM
sorry - my bad - both 1000. but why not just say the number? seeing as we’re all into stats now
December 14th, 2006 at 8:08 PM
so LL how about as a good gesture doubling our accts with lindens for a day as a good gesture , or give 200 to each active accts as a bounse
December 14th, 2006 at 8:11 PM
/me throws a dart at her calendar. I say 3 Million on January 22, 2007 @ 3:17pm.
December 14th, 2006 at 8:13 PM
Kudos on 2 million. Wow! Now how many players have alternate accounts? How many are inactive account? Well, good statistics and let’s work on purging those inactive accounts like the ones that have not been use in three months or longer. I have a ton of those on my friends list. Is there anyone else?
December 14th, 2006 at 8:14 PM
What is next? No signup page? Just pick a avie name and join? Looks like we are at that stage in the future.
December 14th, 2006 at 8:14 PM
I’ll know when u hit 3 million because not only will search/places be offline permantly but there will be 25000 naked avartars walking around because you have disabled all clothing due to heavy database load.
December 14th, 2006 at 8:27 PM
That’s great for you guys - really - wonderful! Excellent! Congrats! Pop the champagne cork and all! Awesome.
So when will I get my inventory items back? It seems that I logged on today and almost all my landmarks are gone, and Search Places doesn’t work. So I can’t go anywhere I like to go.
But really. I am so happy that there are 2 million people in second life. That is really great. Wow. Excellent for you guys.
Me - I will just hang out in the last place I teleported to. Maybe one of those 2 million people will wander buy. Maybe they will have some landmarks of cool places to visit. Because, well, I don’t have any myself anymore.
December 14th, 2006 at 8:28 PM
[...] As announced on the Official Linden Blog, there have now been 2 million registered avatars. [...]
December 14th, 2006 at 8:30 PM
I could not resist replying to this. Logged on tonight to handle some leftover business (I took the red pill about a month ago) and found yet another blog with LL patting themselves on the back for sheer numbers. YAY! YAHOO! YIPPEE!
Is Snoring is the only person able to read figures and draw conclusions?
These “numbers” have been discussed before… at elfclan.net, on the forums and at SL Town Hall meetings. I’m looking at the sign-on page right now. I don’t mean to burst the bubble people, but of that supposed 2 mil, only 800,000 have logged on in the last 60 days. And if one visits https://secondlife.com/currency/economy.php... he/she will find that during the last 7 days, only some 222,518 have logged in. One has to ask: how many of those are paying members? How many are alts? How many are bogus camping chair avs that do nothing but take up space and inflate traffic figures? Or to put it simply, how many of that supposed 222,518 are legitimate, unique, active, paying users?
Bottom line, the stats indicate that 90% of that 2 million are not active users. Of the number of “log ins”, some question that even 50% of those are legitimate visitors (ie, not the same person logging in as an alt, not camping chairs). And I’m sorry, the statement about the “last 60 days figure being wrong” just doesn’t wash. That means one of two things: either that statement is yet more propaganda nonsense from a LL suckup… or someone at LL doesn’t have the wherewithall to program a simple statistical registry routine.
I’m not busting LL chops. I’m just tired of people being so flipping ready to swallow whatever line is handed them. The stats are there to read and I think that sometime in our schooling, we all were taught how to add and subtract. This is totally aside from the bottom line that adding new “members” to a system that is already failing to keep up with the data demands isn’t necessarily the best way to do business.
Apologies if this offends anyone. But the emperor has no clothes. Have fun all. Me… enjoying RL immensely.
December 14th, 2006 at 8:31 PM
WOW can you imagen 3 million and all the problems we are having now? if you thought losing your GENSEX bed is bad enough. Wait until you loss all your data!
December 14th, 2006 at 8:36 PM
WW, Its all inthe way LLabs is now business. The time where the users were given repect is nolonger the case. Numbers are always fudged and misfigured. mediaoutlets are now the way to spread the madness. Why?because more times then less its free.
December 14th, 2006 at 8:40 PM
@Wayfinder: I’m surprised you’re “enjoying RL immensely (sic)” as you’re still posting here… ???
December 14th, 2006 at 8:41 PM
I would really like to see a counter of how many were on in the last 14 days. The ‘last 60 days’ statistic is becoming increasingly meaningless as the population grows so quickly. If we really do get a million more within the next 60 days… you can see how its value deflates.
Even better: how many were on 2 weeks ago, and are still on today.
Lies, damn lies, and statistics. Can we have some that are more meaningful please? What’s the point in deluding ourselves with numbers like 2 million and 700 thousand? Is it just for PR? Good PR is nice, I won’t argue that, but being up front is worth something too.
December 14th, 2006 at 8:44 PM
Congratulations
I think it’s great. I wish there weren’t so many problems that go along with that number but I’m so proud to have been in before the first million. Hopefully the first few thousand are still around too…and still having fun.
However, I do hope there can be some real discussion at the upcoming Town Hall on how LL can scale to meet user demand.
Best to all of you Lindens. And Good luck to the rest of us
December 14th, 2006 at 8:45 PM
It’s hard to deny that the 800,000+ residents currently logged in is several multiples of the *entire* SL population just a few months ago.
December 14th, 2006 at 8:46 PM
[followup] I didn’t know the last 14 days stat was available on the economics page, that’s good to see.
December 14th, 2006 at 8:46 PM
Sorry I meant “logged in in the past 60 days” obviously
December 14th, 2006 at 8:53 PM
Mojavewolfpup>> Then leave. Nothing is stopping you.
December 14th, 2006 at 9:00 PM
Considering that Philip himself stated that the retention rate of new residents is only 10% after three months, congrats on all of 100,000 “new” residents.
Meanwhile it seems our dear Zee Linden told Reuters that LL considers user hours and the number of premium accounts to be the base for growth internally.
December 14th, 2006 at 9:11 PM
Well, if you keep putting up those naked pictures of a female on the side lines here, you’d reach 3 million by Xmas. That’d bring’em in. lol
December 14th, 2006 at 9:12 PM
I’m guessing January 27th. But unless fixes are made (see every other whiner) things may get painful quite quickly this Christmas. It’s going to be a long, cold winter in SL.
December 14th, 2006 at 9:13 PM
Did everyone go out and get an alt for Christmas?
December 14th, 2006 at 9:15 PM
the obsession with numbers and the utter and complete disregard for quality is pathetic
December 14th, 2006 at 9:23 PM
Yay. 2 million users. 16k login and the grid is crap. Lets all push for 3 million …. not ..
December 14th, 2006 at 9:23 PM
Fudging the numbers are going to win Cory that bet yet!
No matter what the numbers, I do know SL has over three times the online residents at any time then when six months ago. If nothing else we’ve got lots more campers and some contributing residents.
December 14th, 2006 at 9:27 PM
Wow so many people talk bad about LL yet they still play SL. Of coarse its messed up but dont cry so much or dont play.
December 14th, 2006 at 9:28 PM
Well, the 800,000 (last 60 days, i.e. active accounts)… I’m in there with 3 accounts only, but I know of roleplayers who have 15 and campers who keep 6 avatars on money chairs 24/7, running SL on 3 computers with 2 clients each. Guess that explains the heavy database load as well.
December 14th, 2006 at 9:39 PM
@neal holyhell and others…..
to call the grid crap and pathetic is just truly silly….. don’t like it? code your own.
the fact is that they start 2006 with approximately ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND users and now have 2 million means they have grown by a factor of 20!
and the fact that the grid has not TOTALLY blown up or melted is proof to the fact that it is NOT crap or pathetic.
and a fair amount of the problems are linked to the fact that the problems now encountered with database are due to problems with mySQL and pushing it to the limits.
but the choice is for open source in order to try and bring the code base out to the masses someday which is probably what is needed in order to maintain the exponential growth.
again, if you don’t like it….go to There or IMVU or Active Worlds or WOW…. I’m sure they’d be glad to have you.
Oh yeah….and congrats to linden labs on 2 million!!! looking forward to 16 million end of 2007….whoooooo hoooooooo!!!!
December 14th, 2006 at 9:46 PM
Maybe.. if we disable stats logs and other blatantly pointless (given real values) functions, we’ll get our inventory, clothing, and places search back? Or maybe if the LL staff dedicated to “crunching numbers” worked on something PRODUCTIVE… Congrats LL, you’ve got 2 million residents - about 75% of which aren’t paying, and another 95% of which are either inactive or alts. You want a cookie? I’d give you one, but I can’t do a Places search for “cookie”…
December 14th, 2006 at 9:47 PM
I want ice cream.
December 14th, 2006 at 9:53 PM
Brent Linden Says:
December 14th, 2006 at 9:47 PM PST
I want ice cream.
Don’t we all?
December 14th, 2006 at 10:00 PM
Regardless of what the ‘real’ numbers are of active members: ever since Yahoo ran that frontpage article link a month or two ago, visitors to my ranch have more than doubled. Used to be 7,000 visits/week, afterward 20,000/week. So face it folks, yes SL has grown so fast it’s groaning. I like it in spite of the growing pains because I like people. Speaking of which, I’m not sure why some commenters here are so obsessed with whether people are paying members or not. Nonpaying members exert many significant effects on SL, economically, socially, etc. etc. So they’re not irrelevant… Just my 2c
December 14th, 2006 at 10:05 PM
Please bring Live Help back online!
Grats on the 2, and the 3….I’d like to see a breakdown of account type, free, basic, premium, whatever, and how long active, etc.
December 14th, 2006 at 10:13 PM
http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy-graphs.php has a graph of premium resident subscribers and growth %…
December 14th, 2006 at 10:30 PM
Spin Martin & Second Life just showed up on the 5PM KTVU Channel 2 evening news in the Bay Area tonight.
Last night when I had checked the resident numbers, we were about 20-30,000 short of 2 million.
Anyone have a youtube of the video? I didn’t catch it with my DVR unfortunately.
Ice Cream? How about major news coverage? I wanna see Linden Labs make this as planet-encompassing as The Street. Still quite a few more millions to go before we can make that.
December 14th, 2006 at 10:32 PM
it matters little whether the 2 million are unique or not. look at it. 800000 have logged in in the last 60 days. that means 1.2 million have NOT logged in in the past 60 days. that means most of the 2 million accounts are relatively inactive.
what i wonder about is the effective turnover rate: how many people come in world, try it out for a bit, then decide, for one reason or another, to essentially never return. why should they go to the trouble of deleting their account? i mean, after all, if they leave it there, it should earn Lindens for them.
December 14th, 2006 at 10:33 PM
Found it!
http://www.ktvu.com/video/10541946/index.html
Seems to be windows media format.
December 14th, 2006 at 10:39 PM
I think 3 million mark might be reached either in 2nd half of february, or first half of march.
Anybody taking bets
[I do wonder how many of those accounts are going to be alts]
December 14th, 2006 at 10:39 PM
“the fact is that they start 2006 with approximately ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND users and now have 2 million means they have grown by a factor of 20!”
No, that means they have had a lot of “tourists” come through. It’s like a city, say San Francisco, counting tourists in their population numbers. LL is just pushing the numbers because they are trying to make some noise, get some attention, and try and save their asses. LL needs cash, its quite obvious, their infrastructure cannot handle the load of 17k users, they can’t update their engine, and their own workers do as they please according to Mr. Glittercrotch. So rather than be honest, upfront and say ask its own community who had been with them from the start for help they decided instead to hire a good PR firm. So now you get spin, slanted numbers, and glimpses of the truth.
“again, if you don’t like it….go to There or IMVU or Active Worlds or WOW…. I’m sure they’d be glad to have you.”
Hey I cancelled my account, I’m just hanging out watching the train wreck. You have no idea how refreshing it is to cancel your account. Once your on the outside its hard to look in and miss it, and its quite fun to watch “The Future of the Internet” crash and burn with only 1% of its total users logged in.
Oh and Brent, Mr. Linden. Your “I want ice cream.” comment is typical of what I have come to expect from LL. People are voicing their complaints because, drumroll, they aren’t happy with the service. You work for a service oriented company, that flippant remark you made is the equivilant of me calling customer support, which this blog is to a degree, about a problem with a product and having them blow me off. I am amazed that people continue to put up with LLs crap.
So cancel those accounts, pull up a chair with those of us on the outside, and watch the beast eat itself, its quite fun.
December 14th, 2006 at 10:48 PM
So with “no inventory” already covered in this thread its no longer off topic. Why should the “paying your bills” type residents let you take any more real cash out of thier account? Obviosly your customers are not getting what they pay for. And you guys are just Robbing people of thier hard earned cash. I can almost see people putting on thier lawsuits. Yeah I put in a Resume` but you can toss it for all I care now I`m not gonna work for a company boun to fail…..ro0kies!
December 14th, 2006 at 11:02 PM
“One has to ask: how many of those are paying members?”
Um…Wayfinder…what is your point? I happen to be one of those non-paying members (although I have pay info on my account). Are you saying that if we spend several hours a day in SL but don’t pay LL, then we don’t count? If I rent a house, build, create items, buy items, lose money at a casino, dance for hours and make lots of friends in SL…I should not count? I don’t get it. If you were working for LL and were upset that I’m not paying YOU for enjoying SL, then I can see your being upset. But otherwise, what is it exactly that makes me a second-class SL citizen?
…thanks for offending me and probably several thousand others like me.
December 14th, 2006 at 11:04 PM
When…. are… you… going… to… delete… accounts that has NOT been accessed for more than 90 days? Seriously…. WHEN?
WoW game is going to laugh hard at SL for having that such number while you only have about 16,000 people online at the time.
Come on, I really don’t think this is funny. Start reaping the dead, Lindens.
But on the other hands ….woot!
December 14th, 2006 at 11:07 PM
[...] The number is noteworthy in at least a symbolic fashion. The reality is that a busy ‘day’ in SL at present is 16000 people, but the huge number of registrations in the past month alone has to bode well for the future. Assuming the infrastructure catches p to the growth of course… [...]
December 14th, 2006 at 11:26 PM
I’m not going to bother reading the previous posts, but at the risk of being repetitive about this, the only reason why there are two million residents in SL is because it’s too simple and FREE to create accounts. I don’t know anyone who has at least ONE alternate account they use, if not more.
If you remove the alternate accounts, and ignore the dead accounts that haven’t been used in three months, I’m sure that number dwindles to about 20,000 perhaps even less. Heck the login screen has never shown more than 20,000 users online anyway. But that’s when usually when simulators start to fall off the gird so it’s damn near impossible to see that number any higher.
December 14th, 2006 at 11:41 PM
Does that figure also include accounts who try it once and never again? Does it include alts at all?
December 14th, 2006 at 11:47 PM
I gotta say I love the amount of griping people do at LL.
This is probably going to get me shredded but in a computer based game there are GOING to be issues regardless. Even some of your top game producers have issues.
Your playing it so Shush already and be glad they took the time to put anything out.
The bugs will get fixed in time.
Gratz LL on the 2 million Resident mark!
December 14th, 2006 at 11:50 PM
Ya, great, considering you can’t even handle HALF the problems you have going on now..
December 15th, 2006 at 12:00 AM
And you think this is something to be happy about? I say, celebrate it by not allowing anymore free accounts from now on. Just for a while. Untill you can handle the load.
Give the residents of SL a gift, the gift of being able to play.
LL why does it have to be about quantity and not quality?
December 15th, 2006 at 12:01 AM
Wow. Another million naked avatars with free genetalia semi-attached to their right nipple. Another million causing lag. Another million barging into me while I’m in a conversation.
Look at these comments, Lindens. You have deviated from the path of win. Welcome to fail.
December 15th, 2006 at 12:02 AM
Wonder.. a million new accounts with no payment info on file from underage kids and alts. Disable them all to reduce starin on the grid and tell us how many are left. No.. not UNPAID.. just “No payment info on file”. Free demo since June is enough. You PAYING customers are the ones paying the price.
Oh.. and great job on the search being pulled down for the third week. Not hurting your paying customers businesses there. Well done!
Who needs to be able to buy presents for family when we have such a fabulously stable and thouroughly beta tested software patch system. Bravo. Drinks all around!
December 15th, 2006 at 12:34 AM
So, LL hit the 1 million target in October, that is around 60 days ago. Now we are at 2 million, and only 800,000 unique accounts have logged on in the last 60 days. That means that at least 200,000 accounts have been created and have never logged on at all, not even once. Obviously, some of the accounts in the first million will have logged on, so the actual number of accounts created and never used must be at the very least 250,000. How can accounts like this actually mean anything? Add to that , the number of accounts that try it once and don’t like it. What does 2,000,000 actually mean?
It obviously makes LL happy, so congratulations people, pats on backs all round.
I regard to the comments about free or unverified accounts not contributing, of course they do. They sit in their camp chairs earning their 10$ per hour. They buy stuff with the money they earn, increase demand for goods and land, thus forcing up prices in the free market economy, which means that the paying accounts have to pay more than before, so that is more money coming into SL.
Number of accounts has doubled in 60 days. Has Mainland area doubled over those 60 days?, has SL bandwidth doubled over the last 60 days? What about the mumber of transaction per hour thst the asset server can manage. Has that doubled over the same period?
I do know that LL people work hard, and hitting 2,000,000 is a great achievment, I just can’t find the enthusiasm to do my happy dance.
December 15th, 2006 at 12:43 AM
I have been very careful about CC usage on the web and its probably because there was an open policy that I am in (for nearly two months now). I do resent the fact that we might be considered second class citizen though (pun not intended). I work hard to be able to earn L$ so I can buy clothes, rent an apartement and in fact help to sustain the economy. If a customer decide to open his wallet because I made myself attractive, we all win.
Now to be on topic, this 2M number is just a PR stunt and might help LL in the media and maybe even economically, therefore again helping us in the process. But I do encourage LL to put customer support, scaling needs and real usage numbers to the fore front. Now the important thing is to make it work.
Some days ago I walked off an in-world business saying it was going down the drain because mgt did not care about customer and staff satisfaction, three hours later that business was no more and the land up for sale. I would hate to see SL and LL going the same way.
So Jeff, convey the message to your bosses, you have the numbers, now its time to work on delivering the goods. In the long run its quality and not quantity that will make it work, otherwise it is just a sophisticated pyramid scheme that will collapse on itself.
Oh, by the way, the ice-cream is on me,
Melissa
December 15th, 2006 at 12:43 AM
Alternate accounts would be very hard to measure. Our family all use the same billing information to charge, so a count that merely looked for shared identity stats based on billing data would count us as one, but we are in fact more than one person.
2 mil is a good number no matter how it is counted. The more ppl, the more chance that LL will have the resources to fix the things others complain about. I, for one, am happy for LL and the community. The more the merrier I say.
I must say, I am kind of curious as to how many are paying accounts, but given the increase in land prices, I guess that that number must be increasing solidly as well.
SL is in transition, and the idea that it might eventually become a widely adopted platform (rather than a plot-less game) is, in my humble opinion, exactly the right strategy. I fully support the grab for market share and am willing to ride out the growth pains. The sooner we get to 100million the better as far as I am concerned.
Think how well positioned everyone using the platform now will be when we get to that many users. Given what has been achieved so far, and the over-abundance of smarts in LL team - I trust that the scaling issues will gradually be addressed.
And before you all jump on me - yes my whole family are paying members, and as we own a lot more land than the 512 that comes with the basic fee, we probably pay more each month than many of those that complain incessantly.
Yes, it is a drag not having things like search places, etc - but it isn’t the end of the world, and do any of us really believe it will be gone forever? No, so cool it everyone. Try providing some usefull feedback on symptoms theoccur under load to help the debug team locate and track the issues rather than just whining.
If LL were making squillions in profit we might have a basis to complain, but they aren’t, so we don’t.
December 15th, 2006 at 1:27 AM
Hmm and 95% of them are griefers? XD
December 15th, 2006 at 1:41 AM
Please HALT all new registrations until the major problems (like Search being off, stability, majod bugs) are fixed!!!
The system cannot bear the load!
December 15th, 2006 at 1:42 AM
A little something to add to Sativa Prototype’s first comment:
I suppose it is one type of market strategy. Cell phone companies use it. Inflated accounts in advertisment that is.
But that has always been poorly used IMO.
No offence LL but we are not that stupid.
Common sense tells us whats going on. So why push potential customers away?
And about the closed posts: I think any anger people have from other blocked posts will redirected to open posts. A source of venting and having some say in matters. Rather than be presented with hype.
If people are angry. One solution could be finding out why. Maybe its miscommunication due to the fact we are ignored now. lol
What happened?
Hopefully your not taking advantage of the situation simply becuase there exist no other platform like SL. Yet.
Sure seems like it sometimes. That would be demoralizing to the people who pay you. :\
From an artists standpoint that quals much less effort.
That said, I still LOVE the product.
But getting an uneasy feelings about the future of SL.
And so are a lot of others. So it must be something other than my occasional arrogants.
Ah well. Hopefully the new hired hands will help out on that front.
~ Sean
December 15th, 2006 at 1:43 AM
I don’t see why some of you like to give LL such a hard time, if you feel that they aren’t giving it their all - stop ranting and write a letter. You wonder why comments are disabled on things like search being down… theres your answer. Does LL really need to spend their time reading about how you don’t like the current situation and how you’re not doing anything about it and how you’ve not a better idea? Please, they’ve better things to do. When i read about something like that, i want to read something productive and not have to dig through your garbage posts just to find an intellects post. So, THANK YOU. It’s your fault.
December 15th, 2006 at 1:47 AM
LOL
All i see here (for the most part) are people complaining about a online game which: 1)they continue to play/use none the less; 2)they have no intention of helping develop (by all means, if i’m wrong, bring out your C# manuals, Cisco routers, and immense collection of servers and prove me wrong)
Seriously people, LL has done something to an extent that no one else has. If you dont like it, leave. Thats all there is to it. I guarantee that no one will notice the absence of your avitar because as much as people like you complain about it, people like me praise it ten-fold.
Give credit where credit is due. Long live Linden Labs. Long live Second Life. And long live the online community that we loving residents admire so much.
As for the 2 Mil mark…congrats. I’ll do my part to make sure you see 3 Mil soon.
Dead Dark Angel,
Dante Solvang
December 15th, 2006 at 1:53 AM
@Dante Solvang:
I don’t suppose you pay your cell phone company or internet service provider AND then go and help them with free labour? I thought you live in capitalism in that side of the ocean
Many people WOULD leave, if there was any option where to go.. but SL has no competitor. Yet.
It’s like saying ‘if you don’t like Windows, leave’ in the early 90’s. Noone could leave, there was no real alternative to Windows.
December 15th, 2006 at 2:59 AM
Yay! More free accounts so you can justify even further price increases on your paying land owners in the near future.
December 15th, 2006 at 3:23 AM
Sure Brent. Heres your ic….(”Were sorry but due to a server database C++ error your icecream was unfortunately deleted. AmyLabs apologises for any inconvienences and hopes this will not put a damper on your playing experience”
2 Million..Big deal. SL cant support 10k online at once without crappng it’s pants.
December 15th, 2006 at 3:24 AM
@Dante ,
I help as much as possible and I complain about empty promises ,
*Word of a business * I take to the bank , but seems promises don’t mean anything and thats not ethically morally right.
Fair is Fair . Fact is Fact. A Promise is A promise .
Missing Image is fact bug promised to be fixed ages ago not fixed promise not kept yet.
@ SL
Congrats on the 2 mil.
@others
Lindens that are bought by whoever is being spent in world. thats the bottomline .
December 15th, 2006 at 3:25 AM
Is this some kind of joke? I run a website with only 13,000 members, for a tiny community which is the Australian trance scene. I am at least honest with them about the real numbers (using your rules, yes, it’s 13000, but using mine, its around 4000!) and certainly don’t gloat when my site is experiencing massive problems. I am beginning to wonder if many of you at LL log in at all and actually use Second Life. Update…..it has to go up! Or it’s not an update.
December 15th, 2006 at 3:37 AM
LL:
here’s to LL for a fine job! If you move a decimal point one place to the left, and carry the 3 , times that by your shoe size, remove the floating qoutient, and stick your thumb you know where, you might get the same result…but there’s only a fifty percent chance of that..Numbers don’t mean squat….this is one fun game. Congratulations LL!
December 15th, 2006 at 3:51 AM
Talk about fiddling while Rome burns!
December 15th, 2006 at 3:55 AM
I think everyone with the surname “Linden” should be forced to log in as an alt for an hour each day, so they can really see just how bad things can get sometimes. I’m quite convinced that many of them never do actually log in and try to do even a fraction of the things that the average, real, contributory user does (such as build or texture something - yes the new bug bit me this morning half way through retexturing one side and everything changed) without their ‘God Mode’ tools, high spec PC’s and fibreoptic connection to the datacentre.
Broccoli
December 15th, 2006 at 4:11 AM
Why is everyone so NEGATIVE?
If you don’t like it, LEAVE. There is no one forcing you to belong to SL.
Personally, I would be interested to see a breakdown of membership numbers based on account type and gender.
December 15th, 2006 at 4:24 AM
well, it’s nice to show 2,000,000 accounts…
I quote:
“2 mil is a good number no matter how it is counted. The more ppl, the more chance that LL will have the resources to fix the things others complain about. I, for one, am happy for LL and the community. The more the merrier I say.”
Well, why bother counting accounts then, just put up a commercially good figure (3 mil. by xmas sure would attract resources huh…
I guess that every new account logs in (of course, why wouldn’t you?), so the 60-days amount of 800K+, uhh…. yeah right, no problem getting there.
As others suggest, break down those numbers, show us better stats and the we will applaud loudly on good results. Just assume that in every time region on the world ppl can enter SL, it would be somewhere around 80K per hour… so with 16K max logged in, not a whole bunch of the potential is on the grid (thank god…).
I would suggest to just have a look at removing dead accounts after a certain period, keep your statistics clean and neat and we all have a better view on how LL/SL is doing.
You know what they say about stats: they cover up more than the reality.
Well, just keep it up and running I’d say and have some ice cream on me
December 15th, 2006 at 4:27 AM
-”Talk about fiddling while Rome burns!” -
I come inworld very rarely these days. For me the SL “experience” has got so bad I just can’t be bothered with it as it is. It really doesn’t matter how many millions LL pretend to have if the servers/software can’t cope successfully with a few thousand concurrently online. It’s not “immersive” when textures never rez, items from inventory dissapear or don’t rez, teleport consistently fails, prims move around while you’re editing, scripts stop working for no apparent reason, items delivered via scripts fail to arrive at their destinations, movement is jerky or glue like … etc, etc… As someone who’s been around for a couple of years I would expect the SL experience by now to be better than when I started but frankly, it is not. I’m sure if I was just joining now I’d love it, at least for a while, just as I did back when I started, but after a while the bugs and problems start to get in the way of enjoyment. If all you need is to meet your friends and have a chat then SL is great just as it is and I’m sure LL will do fine without those of us who want to use it as a platform for development and experimentation. Seems to me LL is working toward getting more investment money and online numbers are some “magic” key to this end. However it’s pointless if the underlying sytems cannot cope. Comparisons to Nero are not that silly imho.
December 15th, 2006 at 4:36 AM
@Deltango Vale
1. When I joined almost 2 years ago I hardly ever lagged or crashed.
2. I have made alot of friends in SL and I have a partner. I would hate to lose that.
3. I’ve been building up my business in SL and it’s starting to become a success, it’s a great hobby of mine.
4. I have put ALOT of money into this game over the 2 years I have been playing.
5. I have put alot of TIME and efford into this game.
I absolutely love SL, I am addicted. Addicted to my friends, to being creative, to see my business grow.
What I don’t like is I’m paying for something I’m not getting, but since I’m already THAT much into it, getting up an leaving isn’t not just something you do.
I complain. And the reason I do, is because I want what I’m paying for, and I want the SL back I’m used to. I’m sick and tired of watching SL fall like this. It’s sad!
December 15th, 2006 at 4:38 AM
Excuse the typoes and such.
December 15th, 2006 at 4:42 AM
2 million accounts? I don’t want them all logged in at the same time. The lag seems to have grown since the last update even at places that weren’t laggy before.
BTW i am a free AND unverified in SL since i reside in europe and have no credit card. And i feel always offended. no matter what post i read, theres always ppl who cry “oh that free and unverifieds cause all the probs here” Remember that these unpaids BUY YOUR STUFF and spend their money IN YOUR CLUBS.
LL should double up the number of servers too to handle existing problems and those coming up with the third million.
December 15th, 2006 at 4:44 AM
@ Case Young
Get paypal.
Problem solved.
December 15th, 2006 at 4:44 AM
Case, you don’t necessarily need a credit card - if you have a cashpoint card (ATM) that debits your bank account - if it’s got a 16 digit number on it and the Visa symbol, you should find it works.
Mind does, anyway, and I’m in Europe too.
Broccoli
December 15th, 2006 at 4:48 AM
So how long before land owners have to shoulder more of the cost of all these free accounts flooding in?
December 15th, 2006 at 4:51 AM
Bella, Broccoli,
thx for the info. i keep it in mind and think it over, but i normally don’t give banking infos to the web as i fear misuse of those data.
but thx again you both make me feel less unwelcome here
December 15th, 2006 at 4:55 AM
3 mill in end of januar….4 mill in feb….5 mill in Mars…6 mill in April….7 mill in May and so.
at Christmas next yare we are 15 mill,,,and 150.000 online at any given time and with a lot new stuff in SL
It wil never end. Ugrade your comps folks! 3 gig cpu–2 gig ram, get the best Graph card you can…just wat i did 3 days ago and my SL are a lot better!!!
December 15th, 2006 at 4:55 AM
Well Done!! Cool world, I’m hooked.
Just need to sort out the odd crashes on my PC, P4 3Ghz, 1Gb RAM, GeForce 6600, 2Mb DSL. Is it just me?
Keep the good work up folks, give us a job!!
December 15th, 2006 at 4:58 AM
To cut it short: if you don’t like it, leave. Come on, go to WoW, they have wonderful server support, it only takes a fixed fee every friggin month if you want to play…
to themselves. They’re part of mankind and cannot be avoided, like vandals in your hometown.
What it’s great of SL, aside the social interaction world-wide and the creativity I see expressed in it every day, it’s that i’m online from August, i’m having a great time, **and haven’t spent a dime so far.** All the L$ i haev i earned inworld, and i’ll spend inworld, and i’m not forced to pay just to play, like many other MMOPRGs do. So, why the hell are you complianing? As long as it’s free (at least for a great part of you) you can’t complain for what you get. Sure, there are problems, and bugs… where’s the software that hasn’t? SL is a huge thing, growing constantly and constantly developed, so it’s no wonder if there are bugs, but at least they are fixed if you wait enough… WoW maybe address them faster, but oh look EVERY user pays **big bucks** for their access. SL is free. Try asking Microsoft for bugfixes as quick as these…
As for Live help… i don’t know wha are you talking about. Every time i asked for assistance, the answer was quick and efficient. At its worst, i had to wait FIVE damn minutes! wow! It’s a lot of time! Come on…
When something becomes famous, it’s obvious many will come just “to see what is it”. Many newbie Friends i made Friendship with still have to be seen again… and it’s perfectly normal, as people that lose passion after maybe six months or so. But among that million newbies there are the Aimee Weber and Anshe Chung of the future… let’s count on them and leave the others (kids, griefers, campers…
Try to appreciate the good things that are improving, and wait over what it’s not functioning… it will be fixed sooner or later, and the world won’t end meanwhile.
December 15th, 2006 at 5:00 AM
Congrats on the account mark!
Half the people in my friends list dont log in no more. I play a kid avi an even my parents are gettin tired of all the problems. I hardly ever see them.
But I love t build in SL. I love makin things other people enjoy.
I feel sorry for people wit no inventory now.
SL is the only place I can build so freely and get paid for this hobby.
I dont expect to be able to play at all on update day. When i can it feels like a treat.
I hope the problems can get fixed before we hit 3 mill accounts.
December 15th, 2006 at 5:03 AM
Why worry about 3 mill? when will we hit 10 million residents? Somewhere along this timeline most of the whiners will finally leave since their numbers will have droppped to total insignificance and will go off to find some other game to complain about.
hopefully next year we will see some people buying large islands. these tiny islands are so small compared to a region in EQ2, etc. We need more space to wander and build in that is full of fantastic and creative/fantasy content. And more concerts and mass broadcast opportunities.
December 15th, 2006 at 5:05 AM
@ janeforyou
i use a 2 year old 3GHz P4 with HT enabled that is reported as not supported use 2GB Corsair Memory @ dual channel mode and a GeForce 6800GT and SL lags horribly. I dont have the money for a Core2 duo with all the gadgeds and the GF 8800 (Maybe LL would spend me a new PC;))
@ Broccoli
my banking card has only a symbol that named MAESTRO no matter what that means
December 15th, 2006 at 5:06 AM
As Disreali famously said, there’s lies, damned lies and statistics.
LL are past masters at presenting statistics with a very heavy PR slant.
December 15th, 2006 at 5:06 AM
“All i see here (for the most part) are people complaining about a online game which: 1)they continue to play/use none the less; 2)they have no intention of helping develop (by all means, if i’m wrong, bring out your C# manuals, Cisco routers, and immense collection of servers and prove me wrong)”
1) If we didn’t care, would that be better?
2) How do you expect people to help develop without access to the source? Which, by the way, is one thing the people standing by with their compilers have been asking for…
December 15th, 2006 at 5:12 AM
@Argent Stonecutter: If your so good and want some source code then write it. SL source needs to be kept secret and never be opened up for the anarchists to hack. Make them work at hacking I say.
December 15th, 2006 at 5:17 AM
G’day Jeff
3 million by January 23 2007.
My mum’s birthday.
Very optimistic, but then I joined a year ago and it was only 70,000 - I feel so old. Does any one have a walking stick they can pass this 35yr old in real and 1yr old in Secondlife?
and a quote from the deep ….. “And still…. they come …. ” cue very dramatic war of the worlds music….
I love that record… lol
hahahah - do any of you remember records…. please IM me in world!!!
woudl love to hear a stream in real
would suit Sl to a T
Cheers
Alex Warrior
aka Janine Au
PS. Why is this blog here? It has no significance…
PSS. It’s Friday night here and my last night of work for 30 days wooo hooo - forgive me for my exurberance!
December 15th, 2006 at 5:18 AM
BIG FAT DEAL! Millions of freeloaders bringing on cyber-Armageddon. Fix the Search function then maybe we’ll be ready for a bit of your incessant self-praise.
December 15th, 2006 at 5:28 AM
Thanks for the hard work Linden Lab. Congrats on the 2 million membership mark. I wish us all a stable grid, a good frame rate, lower lag, less social unrest, and happy new year with less drama.
December 15th, 2006 at 5:28 AM
For Case Young:
“my banking card has only a symbol that named MAESTRO no matter what that means”
It means that should be affiliated to the MasterCard baning circuit, try with that. Should work like a MasterCard credit card.
For Argent Stonecutter:
Before opening the source to the public, as LL declared to be planning to in the future, i think they want to make the client solid and working. Sure, opensourcing the project could quicken the perfectioning process, but the recent CopyBot episode gives me some concerns about it…
December 15th, 2006 at 5:36 AM
Well, I don’t have access to your servers, so I’m just going to take your word on the number of accounts, and wish you a congrats on your numbers.
However, I have to wonder… Are you going to upgrade your servers? or get more servers to handle the traffic now, that seems to cause so much lag? Are you going to fix the bugs that need to be fixed like the search and the missing image, and the friends list, and the tp, sims crashing and booting everyone there off line? Stop fixing things that don’t need to be fixed, and focus on the issues that people point out every single day?
Don’t get me wrong, I love SL and all it has to offer, however sometimes I have to wonder and question the motives behind LL. When the real issues are addressed and fixed, that’s when I’ll jump up and down and dance (as will the other 1,999,999 residents).
December 15th, 2006 at 5:38 AM
Damn it people! Will you cut LL labs some slack. They just doubled the number of accounts in 2 months! This is well over 16,000 new accounts each day! In just the past two months!! Can you fathom how immense that truly is? What business, company gotten 16,000 new accounts for the past 2 months and managed to handle it as well as LL labs did.
You people got to stop complaining and let them catch up. They have only so many people, and can work only so many hours. They can only order so much equipment at once. Just give them time to get things back in order.
I’m sure they are working on hiring new people, getting new equipment, etc. To better help deal with the masses.
I like see one of you idiots complaining so much run your own business and do better!
December 15th, 2006 at 5:54 AM
I’m guessing January 8th. Due to the current population growth and the “hype” within the technology and news articles… I am sure, everyone that is no longer ashamed of being a part of an online community, are coming out of the closet and are standing proud to have been a part of the Secondlife Community, and are probably showing their families and friends around Christmas time. Thus, more and more people will get a twinkle in their eye and feel the urge to at least try the “New & Hip” 3D online community. My guess is a relatively short time span. Yesssss….. I am guessing….uhhhh……. January 8th, 2006. Luv ya all!! Frend
December 15th, 2006 at 5:54 AM
[...] /me dons his Second Life marketing cap By unbeliever So, according to the way the second life fuzzballs interpret numbers, my site has readers. [...]
December 15th, 2006 at 5:55 AM
What sad and depressing news this is. With a grid that couldnt sustain a million residents and no obvious improvements that have made things better, it looks like this game will soon be on the decline. So maybe you will plateau out soon unless you do something drastic Lindens.
So stop patting yourselves on the back and think about stopping new sign ups until you put some stability back into the software/networks/ and servers.
No to mention giving me my inventory back which appeared to have been dessimated before i was forceably logged off earlier today. oh joy
December 15th, 2006 at 6:03 AM
Who really cares about 2 million people, why dont you work on making a stable platform that can handle 15,000 people at once….i know for a fact i have 3 AVs and i know a lot of other people with 3 or more AVs……..hmm……if everyone had that many AVs…….which i know most people have 2 or more………yup, back under a million, but lets work on that 15,000 number first
December 15th, 2006 at 6:25 AM
Congrats on hitting 2 million. I’d wager 3 million by Valentines Day or St. Patrick’s Day.
December 15th, 2006 at 6:27 AM
We recognize that counting the number of registrations is only one number, and not a particularly meaningful one with respect to the actual population of Second Life. Other measures, including peak concurrency, unique log-ins, premium accounts and economic activity do a much better job of portraying the growth and health of Second Life. We recently added several of these statistics to the stats page (http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy-graphs.php) and we have plans to continue to provide data so we can all both understand and contribute to the world’s vitality.
Perhaps too much has been made of the 2 million number, but it is one benchmark and a rather exciting milestone. But we hear what you’re saying so I’m going to close off the comments at this point.