Multiplicity at The Good Life - A story in pictures

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

Via Toady Nakamura, we discover...














Click to see large


Click to see large

More on how traffic numbers are determined, this time from Miki Gymnast

Yesterday, I touched on the Second Life® Wiki's explanation for how traffic numbers are determined - one point per minute a single avatar is present on a parcel - and a few hours later I received an interesting email from Master Scripter Miki Gymnast on the topic.

She wrote: "Two parameters seem to be relevant to the Linden Lab traffic number: First, it counts the minutes, but only for people who are present longer than a minute on the land. Additionally, the number of people who are present also influences the traffic score. So, if 2 people produce 500 minutes, it is a little bit less than when 10 people produce 500 minutes. All heights of the parcel where visitors have been are included in the number, from 0-750 meters."

This begs the question... Are avatars above 1,000m counted? "It seems avis above circa 760 meters are not counted," said Miki. "This is also the (regular) maximum building height, so perhaps this corresponds."

Some time ago, Miki created UP, an entirely web-based parcel and sim management system that includes a tool for scanning land heights, and counts all visitor minutes plus the number of avatars which generated them. "It is always very close (+/- 50) to the Linden Lab visitor count (and this many hours before the land shows the number)," Miki added. She also provided the following graphs:


Number of visitors; click to see large


Vistor minutes; click to see large

A demo version of UP is available by teleporting directly from here.

And while we are on the topic of the Second Life Wiki, something very promising is going on over at Linden Lab these days. They appear to be stepping up the communication process with the Residents. Case in point: a just released, super-well executed and fun (yes, fun!) tutorial on how to deal with griefers, file an abuse report or a DMCA. I have depended on Torley's videos throughout my own Second Life, but I can only wish that this one had been available a long time ago. Still, I see this as genuine, sterling progress.

The skinny on traffic in Second Life

Two bits of info I've been wanting for a long time... Ever wonder - like me - how traffic is calculated? According to the Second Life® Wiki, parcel traffic is calculated as follows:

*In 2006, traffic was changed to be a minute an avatar spends in a parcel.
*The traffic of all avatars count, regardless of their membership status or if a resident or bot.

And here is the Second Life® Wiki on Linden Office Hours. Prefer the Linden Office Hours listed by day? Here you go.

Content is King

It took years (the 80s... the 90s... Okay, okay, decades elapsed) for most marketers to figure out that this flat thing you are looking at right now, the 2D web, needed real content before it would have any value. Some of you will recall how - when they finally got around to it - corporations slapped their brochures and their contact information up on a pretty little website and thought they'd done their day's work. They've since come around. I just Googled the phrase "content is King" and got 717,000 returns. Hehe.

Pretty much anyone who reads this blog already knows that the 2D web has become scarily democratized and that, with a wee bit of know-how, any fool can create a platform in minutes and have a voice. To be heard and to develop a following is another matter. You've simply got to provide fresh and meaningful content. As much of it as possible.

This is my first blog, ever, and it's been fun watching it grow and easy to come up with blogposts thanks to the never-ending always-amazing quantity of content-rich stories arising from the creators of Second Life®.

I've been so busy with the Garden of NPIRL Delights the past ten days, however, that I haven't been able to do more than publish posts prepared by my fellow NPIRLers KK Jewell and Douglas Story and Desdemona Enfield. Even with their contributions, nary a word has gone up here since Monday.

The thought of looking at this blog's traffic stats for the past few days made me cringe, so I chose not to.

I finally got around to it a few minutes ago, and what I saw amazed me. How is it possible? Readership is up. Not by a lot. But enough to bend my mind.

The only explanation I can come up with is that these are new readers who landed here through web searches that pointed them to older blogposts. How cool is that?

Turns out that even a blog can be forgiving.

Bizarre and very NPIRL ways to beef up traffic numbers?

Hobo King Orhalla Zander just TP'ed me to a poorly made, untextured prim skybox. Inside were 9 avatars in various states of Ruth, all members of the Blue Bay Beach Club and all apparently "manufactured" between October 10th and 13th of this year. All of the avatars were facing one direction and all were silent. None were "away." Creepy.



We were above Athena's Mall & Beach Club where, it was advertised alongside the sim name: "Mall Space for Rent."



Want to take a look for yourself? Teleport directly from here.



It was Orhalla who surmised - and I can't imagine that he's wrong about this - that these were traffic generators. What else could this be, and is this camping taken to new and ghastly heights? Traffic numbers for this parcel: 12,766.

Hmmm.