Comments on: Bad News Is Good For Second Life

By: HUGSaLOT

HUGSaLOT — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 20:31:37 +0000

As an avid second life user, I knew nothing about the 9/11 event, further more even if I did know I wouldn’t care. Most users don’t care anyway about company-created events, with the exception of “town-hall meetings” with Linden employees.

After all getting an account on Second Life is FREE. So, if anything this is a wash. For all the users who couldn’t validate their accounts, simply just created a new account, these were most likely people who don’t play the game that seriously.

However those serious SL users(own land, run a business) I’m sure they had no problems getting their account re-validated, or they took the time to get it validated rather than just throw in the towel and create another newbie account.

Plus you to consider a lot of people have several different alternate avatars already. So these kinds of numbers of increased usage is inherently exaggerated.

By: jsaltz

jsaltz — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 23:44:54 +0000

Rob is right. You made an error. This is an abomination.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 13:36:23 +0000

Maybe the new signups all came from the person who breached the security. Could there be a hostle takeover coming up in SL?

By: Dave Siegel

Dave Siegel — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 06:05:40 +0000

Maybe it was all the wayward VON geeks flocking to the Pulver keynote in Pulveria early morning on Sept 12th. ;-)

(link)

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 21:09:12 +0000

Wasn’t the 300% increase in daily new user signups, not the total user base?

By: Om Malik

Om Malik — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 18:21:12 +0000

it seems like there is a bit of both according to the folks whose post i linked to. i am not sure that it was September 11 remembrance event which drew in the people, because the numbers went up on 9th and 10th.

New residents were coming into Second Life at such a rate that the orientation facilities for them had to be expanded by another 25%. These are genuinely new people, going through the steep learning curve, coupled with a sense of wonder.

You can read the entire analysis and make your own conclusions.

By: Hiro Pendragon

Hiro Pendragon — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 18:17:15 +0000

I think you’re probably right, but also consider a lot of the new signups are possibly people who’ve forgotten security info from their old accounts and need to sign up for new ones. (e.g. alts)

By: Rob Stevens

Rob Stevens — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 17:10:25 +0000

You made a very critical error, Om. You attributed one thing as the cause of another. Look at the date of all the signups.

9/11

There was a very well publicised rememberance event in Second Life planned for that day. Isn't it more likely that people flocked to sign up, not because of the security breach controversy, but to attend this event?