Linden Lab is cutting the Second Life Community Gateways programme from August 19 (giving Community Gateway operators just 18 hours notice of the pending termination). If you haven’t been through the Second Life orientation lately, you might not even be clearly aware of what the programme is. The idea was simple enough. Since the Lab didn’t care to have a full-time employee … [Read more...] about One click can make all the difference
Metrics
Alice has a dollar. A virtual economic failure
Alice and Bob are participants in an economy. Alice has a dollar. Alice gives the dollar to Bob. In Second Life terms, that’s a user-to-user transaction. Bob gives the dollar back to Alice. That’s another user-to-user transaction. Repeat this sequence four more times. Is Alice and Bob’s economy now worth ten dollars? Or is it still worth one dollar? Well, that … [Read more...] about Alice has a dollar. A virtual economic failure
How big is Second Life?
It's this big (as of November 2008): The map comes from this site and you can download the full 13MB version to get a better understanding of the magnitude of Second Life. We've featured maps of the Second Life grid before, and they're useful to reinforce the scope of virtual worlds. Those who haven't spent time in a large world have no concept of their size and complexity … [Read more...] about How big is Second Life?
Gender and virtual worlds: new research
Dmitri Williams from the University of Southern California has completed some research in conjunction with Mia Consalvo (Ohio University), Scott Caplan (University of Delaware) and Nick Yee (Stanford University). The title of the research is Looking for gender (LFG): Gender roles and behaviors among online gamers. The research employed a range of survey tools as well as some … [Read more...] about Gender and virtual worlds: new research
The Second Life economy: calm before the storm?
Linden Lab today released the Second Life economy statistics of the third quarter of 2008 and it shows some healthy growth in some areas: hours spent by users in Second Life passed the 100 million mark the total land mass continued to grow significantly to just under 2 billion square meters the monetary value of user-to-user transactions in-world hit 102 million US dollars … [Read more...] about The Second Life economy: calm before the storm?