DISQUS

Hi Kat,

This was not a criticism of you or your work - I didn't refer to the quality of the build which is fine, it was more about the on-going discussion of things in SL being overtly representational of the real world.

These builds are fine for 1st time SL'ers and as 90% of SL is like this then there is obviously a demand and you are making a living, great. My point is about those who have been inworld for a significant period of time and who have the view that another conference room, another shopping mall, another suburbia house does nothing to evolve SecondLife or humanity itself. In my commercial SL work I constantly battle against these issues - but I try to help the client realise that for longevity building a replica of their showroom or board room is more about vanity and not about engaging inhabitants for any length of time or evolving the metaverse. The period where new entrants walk around amazed at 'traditional' clones of interiors is around 2-3 weeks I reckon? What do you think? I have long been a member of the SLED list who have done a great deal of research into the best environments for learning, collaboration and engagement and it is not a replica of a classroom.

I wont contact you directly as this was not a criticism of your work but a general one about the direction that SL has and is moving.

Best Gary

Why are the buildings (rooms) so, well, representational and officious (my god they have ceilings!!). Just kidding - they are a bit, SL 101, "here is a space that looks really like your office or classroom...now isnt that something"

SL is a world where you can fly, hover, go anywhere in an instant, create things that are truly unique and profound - would be interested in hearing others who still need these really big cues from the real world for it to make sense. It doesn't have to be floating plasma clouds and revolving domes - just a little forward looking please!!

BTW - is it politically correct to advertise yourself Lowell in a blog that purports to be a SL news site?

Hi Tateru,

Yes I actually travel to parcels too that are unlisted and add them to measurements as I have noticed quite a few 'brands' now removing themselves from search because they obviously dont want the world to see how 'low' there actual passing/dwell traffic is.

I disagree with your comments as both you and Lowell seem to concentrate on spikes vs long term dwell usefulness (now that is a skewed perspective too). Like talking about an election and saying well my three friends voted for candidate X who didnt win there it is rigged?!. We have been taking readings over the past few months and the 'order' or popularity is pretty consistent. Here is the latest order based on all the parcels for each of these brands. I have removed 2 brands who refuse to have their parcels listed in search or even inform us of their full range of parcels. This strikes me as 'cover-up' poor performance (given that both are big builds - designed to keep avies on their land). So pulling out one or two examples, like your 20 min one stop person, or a group of friends staying most of one evening are just more examples of spikes.

To me this is about comparison over longer periods of time. I will say again, comparison over long periods NOT one off, anecdotal events. Until there is an alternative, fair, agnostic system (vs companies and sims just telling us how popular they are) then this remains. Gary

Positions based on dwell for we 28 may:
(range from 19 000 at top to 48 at bottom.)

BigPond
Pontiac
ABC TV Australia
NetG Training
Nissan
Mercedes-Benz
IBM
Dell
Mazda
American Apparel
Showtime (L Word)
Microsoft
MTVN
Toyota
Reuters
AOL
Sears
Samsung
Sony Ericsson
Adidas Reebok
Starwood Hotels
Sony BMG
STA Travel
BMW
Circuit City
ABN AMRO
Cisco
PA Consulting Group
Intel
Sun Microsystems
Sundance Channel
Sprint
The Infinite Mind
Text 100
Wired Magazine
CNET

It would be if it was averaged over a longer period cause here your just talking about spikes. Your rolling average is therefore probably around 300 or so...Is this math 101? Take a series of readings over 14 or 21 days then do an average!

You can also get the figures using the backend LibSL to automate the process (which we do too to cross check) - then apply simple rolling average equation to smooth them over the week.

But I would suggest if you are concerned about self-promotion just go and look yourself. The figures are obvious and visible to all.

Gary

Tateru - very simple.

Step 1 - Go inworld.
Step 2 - Type SEARCH/PLACES. Put in some of the big brand names like, Microsoft, IBM, L Word, Pontiac, BigPond, ABC etc:
Step 3 - Look at the numbers. Add them up to get a total for the brand.

Clear for you? In otherwords these figures are published all the time for all to see. This is why I keep saying if they are removed we will have no open figures to compare and don't understand why Lowell thinks there is a better traffic/dwell system.

Gary

So I will correct you...prim count and agent (avatar number) is fixed to each sim (a quarter of a processor).

The limits are - 15000 prims and you can control the number of agents on a sim (depending how lagged you want it to be). I know some owners who have set their agent limit to 120 and got that many on. People talk about oh you can only have 30 avatars in one sim (true about a year ago) now you can set the upper limit. 60-70 is actually more comfortable on the series 5 processors, and that is getting better. It really comes down to how many attachments and scripts each avie carries. For example you could get 100-130 noob avies (jeans/tshirt) on a sim without major performance hit.

Best Gary

Your assumptions are again out.

ABC is one sim and is number two brand using these figures. The Pond figures, two thirds of the traffic is from one sim The Pond - the data above shows that 12000 out of 18000 is from that one sim.

Best Gary

My original line - "a main meeting/social spot." Notice the word 'a' - not saying one, which you turned it into?

Sure there may be more, but at the moment that single 'spot' is busier than ALL the other branded areas in SL (expect pontiac and ABC). Obviously it will not compare strongly to various and many clubs (where there is endless rights infringing music). Not sure why the word premature comes into this - the' Bong' area as it if affectionately known has been between 3000-8000 for the past 3 months!

We should be celebrating this space which actually does not rely on any major Aussie 'icons' to promote it as I designed it as my original creation based loosely on a few look and feel pics I took when extensively travelling in RL in WA and QL in 2003.

BTW (rather than posting to another post) the quality of the new Australia sim is very poor, the builder has seeked no permissions (using pics of uluru and aboriginal art) and actually cheapens the Australia presence globally - see this image for instance, Uluru is turned into a lump of I don't know what! http://www.flickr.com/photos/garyhayes/515323325/
Also across the flyover road that cross uluru (!) there is a shopping mall full of ads (which looks nothing like the supposed Darling Harbour complex!). Now that really is being disrespectful.

Best Gary

Thanks Lowell. A much larger range of brand figures which show comparatively how Australian brands are doing is published every monday at http://www.theprojectfactory.com

Rather than say this is at best indicative (which you keep saying) perhaps the readers would want to know why it is the ONLY way to compare like-for-like stickiness to sims - as it goes beyond just 'visits'. To help people I list below how the figures are worked out. Also this changes daily so you do need to consider mapping a rolling average of these figures. Finally if LL remove these figures then we could end up with the equivalent of a dot com bust - at the moment being able to see these figures openly is a bit like being able to see 'web traffic' stats in the early days of the internet vs companies over inflating their figures. I for one think we need to put pressure on LL to NOT remove these figures.

Also you need to add the figures up for the Australian sims - ABC TV Australian dont own the Virgin nightclub obviously! I just did a check on the figures as they have updated this morning and here are the latest (you can check inworld)...Notice that the small 16th of a sim bar area of the Pond has reached record levels, showing how the Oz community now see that as a main meeting/social spot.

BigPond - TOTAL 18004
Billabong bar 8014, Pondex 2731, The Pond 2594, Uluru 996, Harbour Bridge 814, Pyramid Spa 744, Ponderosa 648, Club Illusion 526, The Dome 454, Pondex 273, Opera House 210

ABC - TOTAL 11376
Sandbox tower 8687, Broadcast Tower 1172, Triple J 593, Eco House 346, Amphitheatre 310, Media Pod 181, Dreamtime Cove 87

Reporting dwell statistics in Second Life as a measure of engagement Traffic is a number allocated to each parcel which is based on the amount of residents who visited, and the time spent on that parcel out of their total time in world that day.

Every user gets a set number of traffic points to give out during the 24 hours between midnight and midnight. The user's points are then evenly divided between those parcels. So, if I was online for 1 hour and spent 20 minutes on resident A's parcel and 40 minutes on resident B's parcel, resident A would get 33% of my points and resident B would get 66%. Alternately, if I only spent 5 minutes online and spent all of it on resident A's land, they would receive all of my points.

Gary

You will find a searching on Telstra works now ;-)