It wasn’t long ago that Second Life hit several major milestones in it’s path to greatness:
- One Billion Hours logged by Users
- Over $1 Billion USD transacted between residents
- Two Billion Square Meters of land
All of these together combine to show that Second Life is not “dwindling”, but Thriving. But why? In my course to find out what all Second Life is about, it seems important to understand what factors into its success and why does it continue to thrive given that it’s almost entirely built by the users, and not Linden Labs.
Is it really Thriving?
First off, I should probably justify why Second Life is Thriving, and not dying (as so many other reporters suggest). The recent Press Release from Linden Labs is a good start, presenting the statistics from the opening along with several others.
- Users average 100minutes per visit
- 250,000 new virtual goods every day, consuming 270 TB of space
- 18Billion minutes of voice chat
- and more…
But let us not take their word for it entirely. One avid Second Life user, Tyche Shepard (self proclaimed Virtual Land Surveyor) has been closely monitoring the growth of Second Life for a few years now, and regularly publishes extremely detailed reports containing graphs like this one:
His charts show that the influx of new users has slowed slightly in recent months, but the amount of money moving through the space is at an all-time high.
Human Psychology
In a recent event at the Singularity University, Linden Labs founder Philip Rosedale gave an hour-long presentation on Second Life and his views on virtual worlds in the human singularity. You wouldn’t think the two have much in common (perhaps, even, that they are mutually exclusive) however he makes a good point that the malleability of the “Prims” in Second Life closely approximates the proposed manipulations of atoms and molecules in the real world. In fact, Second Life offers insight into what would happen to humanity if suddenly we could transfer directly from creativity to product with no cost of goods in the middle? That is the exact case of Second Life, where millions of dollars of goods are sold on a daily basis in-world with no cost-of-goods, completely from concept to creation in virtual space.
In addition, he discusses one more interesting psychological feature of Second Life: Spatialized Voice Chat. In his example, he discusses how we all detest the modern standard of teleconferences: The Speakerphone. We all detest speaking to rooms of people on the other end of that little black box, and why? Because it confuses our brains who suddenly find multiple sources speaking from the same point in space. There are not the usual queues of who is speaking, the lips to read and analyze, nor the body language. In SecondLife (and other Virtual Worlds), voice chat can be spatialized allowing you to see moving lips and locate the sound in 3D space, making it far easier to handle multiple-participant conversations. Perhaps this is why meetings in Second Life are becoming more popular.
Multiple Worlds
In the case of Second Life, specifically, they’ve cooperated with other groups to provide multiple worlds (or “Grids”) specialized to various options.
If your needs are more science based, then you have the ScienceSim. If your needs are more educator based, then you have ReactionGrid. If your needs are even more specialized than either of these, you can buy your own Second Life grid and run it inside your own institution with the Second Life Enterprise system, or the software OpenSim. All of these show that the space is not completely under LindenLab’s control, making it widely variable in it’s features and capabilities and even more available.
Collaborations
In the future, Linden Labs is looking at several new collaborations to make it even more enveloping. Just recently they have partnered (acquired the parent company, actually) with a group called “Avatars United“, aiming to provide a dedicated social network for people who work with multiple virtual worlds. One of the biggest problems in SecondLife, particularly, is in transferring objects and assets between the various options. If you find a great model or object with the real SecondLife, how do you get it into your SL Enterprise or into ScienceSim? Even more interesting is how can you transfer your avatar, your virtual identity with models and inventory, between your SL Enterprise and ScienceSim? Various projects are underway to develop such an API to enable transfer of assets (Intel’s Justin Rattner discussed it briefly during his SC09 keynote), but still unavailable.
Second Life is currently playing host to 1-million users who are constantly pushing the boundaries of the system and providing new and fascinating ways to visit. SecondLife has already found several ways to “exceed” reality, providing objects and events that simply cannot exist in reality. As it continues to grow, it definitely has potential to be the virtual world of record, providing the platform and tools that are the base of several virtual environments.
yeah 1,000,000 users a month and around 50,000 at any one time but in answer to an earlier question. Has second life died or is it dying well yes it is, when i first logged on 4 there were buckets more people on at any one time never mind the monthly total from back then. During the last 4 years i have logged on to find less and less people logging into second life. You also have to take into account that in all the people i know on second life they all at least have 2 different accounts they log in with if not more, i myself have 4 different accounts i use one as a banking avatar where i back up all my creations or one i use specifically for RP etc. So that cuts down the amount of people using the service significantly.
Is right…’.’
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Randall Hand Ah, yea.. Sorry .
@ Randall Hand
Note that OpenSim is the software, OSgrid is probably the grid you meant to say.
It takes some time for the immersion factor to make the virtual world more valid than a video conference but add so much with simply proximity communication. Over 80% of our communication in real life is non-verbal and many studies have relayed information with just the relationship of WHERE the digital avatar chooses to locate themselves.
The Agile conference is just an introduction that shows that even in the beginning it can equal in information transferral to a real life conference. Good works happening in virtual worlds.
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Troy McConaghy Ah, thanks.. I updated the article to reflect that.
One minor clarification: Linden Lab didn’t partner with Avatars United, they acquired the company that created it.
@Baloo Uriza I just meant that they are both OpenSim projects.. I plan to spend some time in OpenSim as well.
Visually our spatial realtionships are important: so using a 3D immersive environment allows us to feel represented within it. Our Avatars also allow us to project ourselves onto the other which we have created. This human abiliy to project is as old as mankind itself. The ability to localize and identify those we are interacting with increases our connection to them and allows us to be impacted as well.
We make a “leap of faith” when we open a novel, watch a movie or listen to a radio program. This “leap” is immediately supported in Second Life because we have feedback from others like ourselves. In real time and with real thoughts, feelings and ideas.
ScienceSim doesn’t matter, it isn’t OSGrid. OSGrid is OSgrid.
@Baloo Uriza Don’t worry.. I’ll be covering OpenSim, and specifically Sciencesim, in an upcoming article on Scientific Research in Virtual Worlds. Should be up later this week, maybe even today.
I’m surprised OSgrid didn’t get a nod, being the largest, most widely recognized OpenSimulator based grid, where most of the OpenSim development occurs.