March 2007 Key Metrics Released
Thursday, April 19th, 2007 at 10:53 PM by: Meta LindenHello all!
Today I have posted the current metrics through the end of March 2007, on our statistics page. As usual, they are available in XLS, Open Document, and the newly-popular Google Docs publishing format. A deeper explanation of what these metrics mean can be found in Zee Linden’s blog post on January Metrics.
Zee and I will be at my regular weekly inworld office hour tomorrow morning, starting at 10 AM PST on my property in Beaumont to discuss these figures and other metrics you’d like to see.
Constructive comments- please, keep them coming! Also, I am following the trackbacks and participating in some great discussion with other bloggers and partner businesses about what metrics are best to deliver. Some of your comments are very insightful and helpful, sometimes quite verbose… We have had many solid suggestions for improvement, some of which I am working on delivering in future months. And please- a gentle reminder to keep your comments on-topic?
Also a pointer that we also have live feeds of current metrics and sample scripts for consuming these which many residents use to gather and store and report on historical metrics for things like business planning and traffic and concurrency analysis. This should answer some questions like Alem’s.
April 19th, 2007 at 11:57 PM
Although not all directly relevant here, could we have some extra things added sometime please?
What’s the breakdown of M and PG landsales?
What’s the breakdown of gifts, payments to objects (buy), and payments to scripts (pay).
Could we also have hourly transactions and hourly or daily land sales totals available to be scraped please?
April 20th, 2007 at 1:22 AM
G’day Meta
Thanks for the up-to-date stats.
I have a question on the average land price paid and it being around L$10. Given that there is next to no mainland under L$12 at the moment and island land is around L$10, but some land sells for much higher prices, how can the average price (consistently) be the lowest price. Even autioned land is not selling for that much lower than the mainland pricings.
I do understand averages etc., but would expect the average land price to be a little higher than the lowest.
Unless island sales between Linden Lab and residents are included in these figures, as that would make the ave sqm price around L$6, but I didn’t think these were included.
Just curious.
Cheers
Alex
April 20th, 2007 at 1:52 AM
Thanks for these Meta your doin a grand job!
Sadly im not all that interested in the money flows, what I would like to see is info about the social demographics of SL. I understand these are harder to collect, and def much harder to make sense of, but there are lots of us out here who like sifting through such stuff.
What is available now (raw form is ok) and what could be available?
In particular, is there anything that could indicate how resident populations move around SL. Where are the oldies, newbies those in between for example?
April 20th, 2007 at 3:18 AM
I think a really interesting set of metrics would be: for each month’s new sign-ups, what percentage of them make it out of orientation to the mainland; are still signing in a month later; buy or rent land (not sure how you’d work out if they were renting); have bought L$ on the LindEx; have spent money in-world in the last month; have signed in within the last month…
In other words, a set of stats giving some idea of how far new arrivals get into the Second Life experience, and how long they stay, broken down by month of arrival. “Class of May 06″, if you like!
It would be interesting to have these metrics to help work out the lifecycle of someone’s SL experience. Is orientation getting more or less off-putting? How long do people keep signing in for? Does their economic activity build up? or tail off? Are new sign-ups more likely to make it past the first month than they used to be? or less likely?
It might also be worthwhile emailing people who haven’t signed in for a month or two, just to ask them if they wouldn’t mind completing a brief survey asking why they’re not signing in. If you give them a well-chosen list to pick from (”Costs too much”, “Technical issues”, “Real life was too busy”, “Couldn’t figure out X”, “Bling too expensive”…) this would give you another really useful metric for improving the Second Life experience.
April 20th, 2007 at 4:00 AM
“I think a really interesting set of metrics would be: for each month’s new sign-ups, what percentage of them make it out of orientation to the mainland”
WHY? does it matter? they skip it anyways…………they land and Teleport to money making devices……..So
April 20th, 2007 at 4:08 AM
Usagi, it’s interesting because it shows how successful orientation is. If people don’t understand it, don’t like it, feel stuck, think it’s stupid, they’ll give up before they reach the mainland. I think it’s interesting and useful to know if a significant proportion of people do that.
It’s akin to the stats that get generated for big websites. Is there a particular page in the process at which many people “bail out” and leave the site, without completing their transaction? Is there something about the page that can be changed so that those people don’t leave?
April 20th, 2007 at 5:23 AM
What would be the chances of translating exchange rates into other currencies, for instance Lindens to British Pounds, or Euros?
April 20th, 2007 at 5:27 AM
Another set of interesting metrics would be availability and performance-based SLA metrics, showing grid uptime as well as the times in which the main grid was malfunctioning due to asset server problems that affect payments, teleports, rezzing, saving notecards and scripts, and so on.
April 20th, 2007 at 5:55 AM
@7 and @8: and maybe this would point to a place to improve. Maybe improve orientation, or maybe give a hand on doing an inital setup like get some land etc.
April 20th, 2007 at 5:59 AM
@10
They have tried, but nothing works. for awhile now they tried paying newbies to stay on the island, putting mentors etc on there. Now it appears that they makinbg it auto type now. But really maybe they should redo it YET AGAIN! But how many times will it take? But for what reason are people willing to stay on this island if most of the users are just alts of existing players?
Just a thought……
April 20th, 2007 at 6:11 AM
This is great news! I am so glad you are using the metric system, it’s a lot more sensical. Thanks!
April 20th, 2007 at 7:18 AM
#4. I have an easy answer to the land price average puzzle. The average price as percieved by land search is being driven down artifically by sellers who use ‘reserve prices’ to place themselves at the front of the search function. They list prices as low as 1 linden dollar for a plot and then require that the purchaser pays a second one-time cost to retain the land (this being the actual cost of the land).
In the form it is usually practiced it is a bait-and-switch.
It also abuses the land search system and (I’m assuming here) interferes with the linden’s metrics on average land prices.
April 20th, 2007 at 7:37 AM
Thanks, Meta!
Any chance the graphs page could be updated, too?
April 20th, 2007 at 7:44 AM
Greatest news I’ve heard this year. Finally after months of no questions being answer. Finally, some answer. I’m so excited that Im already here waiting. I just hope this short 12 hours notice doesn’t limit resident participation. I would love for all residents to get a chance to have all there questons answered from A to Zee.
S.Radio
I LOVE SPONTANEOUS MEETINGS
April 20th, 2007 at 8:26 AM
@Astrid & Tilley: Actually, we are looking at those metrics quite intently. We do have a team working diligently on improving the Orientation Island experience, I’ve worked some with them myself, and have been encouraged to see some of the improvements. The group that is best to route your suggestion for OI improvements is the Liason team, and Blue or Torley Linden are good resources for that- Torley has twice-weekly office hours on Friday as well. Our calendar for Linden office hours is here.
@7 - Toni - good question, a great one to discuss at our office hours.
@10 - Cat - LOL! BTW, thanks for supporting Locks of Love. I hope the Hair Fair and Bandana Day was a great success.
@11 - Meade - it just so happens I’m working on that right now.
April 20th, 2007 at 8:33 AM
@4: the average includes ALL land sales, including land sales arranged between individuals. I’m sure that many of those privately arranged sales are at lower prices than the ones that show up on the Land Sales listings. There are probably also internal transactions between accounts held by land barons at prices like L$1, which would drag down the average a lot.
The other thing I found fascinating is the increasing internationalization of Second Life. US residents are less than 27% of the active residents in March (if memory serves, that’s a 5% drop from the February number!); Germans, at 13.5%, are now half as numerous as Americans. Brazil is coming on strong with nearly 5%. Africa remains the invisible continent.
There is also an uptick in usage by women. It will be interesting to see whether it’s a reversal in the long, mostly steady slide since May 2005 (the one month of SL history when women represented more than 50% of SL usage), or just a momentary blip.
April 20th, 2007 at 8:43 AM
#16 I do believe the average prices that they give is mainland average only. Im sure Zee would answer that for you today. The reason the prices are dropping is that the Lab is placing about 4+ Sims of main land online a day. Its called supply and demand. January and Febuary not many new main land sims. Low supply, high price. March a new continent with about 250 new main land sims in about a mouth. High supply lower cost. It took the Lab about 1 year to build the South Continent. It has taken the less then a month to make the new East Continent that so far is about 1/4 in size compared to the South Continent. Im sure you can ask that today at the meeting to find out the anwser.
April 20th, 2007 at 9:18 AM
Meta–
Thanks for the update.
I also want to thank you for including the posters’s name reference alongside the post number that you are responding. If you hadn’t then I would have not found the proper message in which you reference, since the post numbers no longer coincide.
I recommend others do the same, for it’s apparent post numbers may change, due to insertions of posts possibly waiting for approval before becoming visible in the blog.
April 20th, 2007 at 9:35 AM
I don’t know why The Lab would include private sims in there stats for land sale, since most private sim owners take other forms of payment beside L$ for land sales.
But lets focus of the topic at hand, the METRICS posted by Zee Linden in Januarys blog.
January 2006
124K registered users 13K premium account that 10.8%
April 2006
198K registered users 16K premium account that 8.3%
July 2006
427K registered users 21K premium account that 5%
October 2006
1.2M registered users 32K premium account that 2.7%
January 2007
3.1M registered users 57K premium account that 1.8%
At this rate the percentage premiun account holder will be below 1% by July 07, if not already.
April 20th, 2007 at 9:48 AM
One bit of information that interests me quite a lot, and I’m thinking is of interest to long time players……… is there anyway to document how many avies a player is signing up for. I realize that there could be legitimate reasons for a player to want an alt, many of us do for things like checking our work and proceedures if we run a business. However, it has been my experience that when a player wants to be a griefer, they make one or several alts to do it with. Is it at all possible for us, the players to get this kind of information so we can be more informed in these cases?
And going back to a former question I raised here awhile back, is there a way to make a division between Land Sales and Land Rentals to save the older player time, and the new player from making big mistakes?
April 20th, 2007 at 9:54 AM
January 2007
Registrations 3.1M
Unique Users 1.9M
October 2006
Registrations 1.2M
Unique Users 773K
July 2006
Registrations 427K
Unique Users 297K
April 2006
Registrations 198K
Unique Users 155K
January 2006
Registrations 124K
Unique Users 95K
And Matt very great about the land sale board, I remember someone posting about breaking down the etates sales about a month and half ago. And all that happened was Mainland and Estates Land was seperated. Hope to see you you at todays meeting.
April 20th, 2007 at 10:29 AM
“Another set of interesting metrics would be availability and performance-based SLA metrics, showing grid uptime as well as the times in which the main grid was malfunctioning due to asset server problems that affect payments, teleports, rezzing, saving notecards and scripts, and so on.”
Agreed. When I look back at my sales, I’m often wondering if the reason I have low patches is due to lack of advertizing, poor placement or just plain the game is broken issues (IE the search is broken.) This can help us see what’s really inhibiting store owner’s sales and then we can create work arounds.
That would help a lot.
April 20th, 2007 at 10:32 AM
Very diappointed that it is 10:31am and there is no sign of Zee Linden.
April 20th, 2007 at 10:38 AM
Apologies, folks, he got pulled into another meeting. I will be sharing with him a full transcription of this, and I will chain him down here next week.
What is this no time for residents in game.
April 20th, 2007 at 11:19 AM
@Meta — thanks for your reply. I don’t have particular suggestions for how Orientation Island should be improved though, and I’m not suggesting there’s anything wrong with it. I just thought it would be interesting to see general information about how far people get in to the second life experience, broken down by month of arrival.
April 20th, 2007 at 11:30 AM
Meta thanks for your time. It was very helpful. Would fo been nice to have Zee answer the questions that you could not. Yu did your best, Meta and keep up the good work. Zee thanks for NOTHING, again.
“Zee and I will be at my regular weekly inworld office hour tomorrow morning, starting at 10 AM PST on my property in Beaumont to discuss these figures and other metrics you’d like to see.”
I would of like to see Zee here. But again no in world contact. Thanks you show us that you don’t care about the residents, Zee. It all about the inflatted numbers.
April 20th, 2007 at 11:50 AM
[...] Estado de Latinoamérica en SL, Marzo 2007 Estuve revisando las estadísticas de Second Life publicadas por Linden Lab el día de hoy para el mes de marzo 2007. Me llamó la atención el dato de países representados dentro de la [...]
April 20th, 2007 at 12:01 PM
WOW thanks you Zee for calling me. It shows me that you do care.
April 20th, 2007 at 1:09 PM
@22.
Those stats really dont tell the whole story, that’s just percentage of registered users, not unique ones. Alot more people have been making alts these days, or camper alts etc etc etc.
If there was some magic way of accurately working out the unique distinct users registered each time vrs percentage of them being premium holders, that would rock.
April 20th, 2007 at 1:55 PM
@4 Astryd
I doubt that we’ll ever see the kinds of metrics you ask for. Primarily because as @22 shows, about the time that Linden started to allow NPI accounts, an explosion happened in new non-premium accounts but that did not show a similar increase in the premium accounts.
My gut feeling is that many of those new accounts are NPI and throwaways. Metrics showing those throwaways would ruin the big numbers that’s making press for Second Life. After all, how many hours of use does a griefer get out of an NPI throw away account? Once he’s done his damage, the account is good for nothing but another “Resident” in the count.
April 20th, 2007 at 2:25 PM
@RC - another cause for increase in alt accounts is possibly the login problems many residents have been experiencing in the past few months. I had both my primary account and a second premium account I use for business both locked out of SL at one point. My Primary account was in the middle of something important when she froze (including being frozen out of the region), so I logged my alt account in to complete - and that one froze too. It meant I couldn’t communicate at all with the person who is inworld rarely in same time as me. So I created a throwaway free account to finish the deal. That account is now only used for emergencies.
April 20th, 2007 at 2:37 PM
That total number of residents keeps climbing and climbing. Surely there are accounts being cancelled daily. The total resident number accounts should be going up and down shouldn’t it? How many accounts are being cancelled daily?
I was always curious to how much LL makes daily/weekly/monthly off those $10 snapshots, downloads and etc…..
April 20th, 2007 at 2:41 PM
Oh duh Upload Charges 18,519,050 0 11,065,021
April 20th, 2007 at 3:07 PM
#30 refer to #24 for unigue users.
April 20th, 2007 at 6:10 PM
OMG I SEE A LINDEN PRESENCE IN THE BLOGS ACTUAL COMMENTS AND RESPONSES *DROPS DEAD FROM SUPRIZE AND DISBELIEF*
April 21st, 2007 at 3:13 AM
[...] Meta Linden has provided an update on SL metrics. In the past month, Australia has had significant growth to 2.43% of the overall SL population: [...]
April 21st, 2007 at 4:34 AM
@ 2 Alex Warrior - there is a difference between asking price that one see listed in land search and actual price paid. Also, don’t forget to consider land sales between residents that is never listed in land search.
April 21st, 2007 at 7:47 AM
Hallo Meta,
thank you for your work. They are actually very very useful to me.
However I got a doubt and question about the Linden supply: there you are of course tracking the supply of “primary” money, but actually SL is developing a quite fast and un-regulated financial system in-world. Do you have any data (or at least a plan to collect data) about the “secondary” money managed by the SL “Banks”?
From what I see and read prpbably the mass of secondary mney created in this way is no more negligiable, and probably is having an impact on the worlds economics.
April 21st, 2007 at 12:58 PM
[...] ist laut der neusten Veröffentlichung mit 13,53 % die zweit größte Nation in Second Life. Das freut uns natürlich in vielerlei [...]
April 21st, 2007 at 4:13 PM
G’day
Thanks to all the RESIDENTS that responded to my question, especially seeing as Meta Linden just ignored it and then proceeded to answer all the others.
Cheers mate - guess my question wasn’t of any interest to you even though it was ON TOPIC as opposed to some of the other people you responded to that were completely OFF TOPIC. (Why do you think people post off topic comments in the blog - you encourage it when you respond.)
Not so cheery
Alex
April 21st, 2007 at 6:03 PM
I would like to see someone that knows what they are doing better than I do put an editable copy of the stats file into Google Docs and or Zoho or some other publicly editable spreadsheet and charting system.
I imported the file into both but I’ve never used those programs and haven’t had the need to make many charts in the past few decades.
April 21st, 2007 at 6:27 PM
Meta, thanks for keeping us updated with this
Also, I love having the stats at the click of a button on a web page (Google Spreadsheet rocks!) which make it so more convenient than trying to figure out what version of Excel you need to have to be able to open the document… 
Anyway, I subscribe the ideas presented above by Astryd, with a slight difference. The percentage of people that go through OI into HI and then the mainland will, over the course of time, be less significant, as more and more organisations and companies will use the Registration API to get new users to totally different areas anyway.
But some things are interesting to know, like, say, how often does, on average, a user log in per week? (ie. how many days out of the week will they log in, and how many hours, on average, will they use) How often does a user from 2003 or 2004 still log in?
The other thing is breaking up demographics per country… I imagine that might be overkill, but how closely does every country listed follow the same demographics as the average? Are users younger or older in Europe? What is the distribution of paying vs. non-paying users in Japan? Are Brazilians also split among 2/3 male and 1/3 female? As Second Life grows mostly on the international market, these statistics become more and more important. Will there ever be a way to take a close look at each national market?
April 21st, 2007 at 7:54 PM
I, personally, love all the stats. I would love to know how many hours that my av is actually spending logged into SL, too!
I play on wireless & after X amount of hours they slow me down so bad it makes me want to cry and sends me to my car with my laptop, in search of someone’s wifi, until the battery is dead. I would love to call my ISP & tell them..look..I pay $70.00/month for lousy service and use the stats of my own log in time to search for a wireless provider that can put out!
I would also like more than 25 groups. I belong to some groups, like…Mardi Gras that is seasonal but next year I want to be able to commuicate with the same people from those groups.
I am also hoping to be able to work out of world on things like profile and, well, anything without logging into SL grid.
Cheers!
Chelsea
April 22nd, 2007 at 12:25 AM
[...] Labs hat letzten Donnerstag die Zahlen per Ende März veröffentlicht. In der Zeit zwischen Ende Februar und Ende März sind die totalen unique users um [...]
April 22nd, 2007 at 5:35 PM
@33: Very few accounts actually get cancelled. Unless you actually go to the trouble of telling LL to delete your basic account, it stays around forever. Premium accounts can get cancelled for non-payment unless the resident requests to be downgraded to basic.
For every account that is cancelled, I would guess that there are at least 100 that are simply lying around idle.
April 23rd, 2007 at 9:40 AM
nice to see how things are doing at a glance.
April 23rd, 2007 at 4:56 PM
@ Alex/Hypatia/Shirley: Yes the average land sale price includes the $L 1 and 0 sale prices. This was discussed during the inworld meeting on Friday. I will be looking into seeing if I can determine the percentage of these “outliers” to more closely report specifically in-world land sales. All estate owners who accept payments other than $L for their land and tier (such as Paypal) use this “Sell for $0″ practice.
@ Albert: All we really can track is the money that moves between residents inworld and is exchanged through the Lindex. The private resident-run banks are just that, and do not disclose their details to us for our reporting.
@ Gwenneth: The Demographics per country question came up during the office hours on Friday also. I will see what I can do.
April 24th, 2007 at 3:11 AM
[...] hat schon vor ein paar Tagen aktuelle Zahlen bis März 2007 zu Second Life veröffentlicht. Die Daten sind auch als XLS- und Open Document- Dateien verfügbar. In dem [...]
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