Technology getting the better of second lives?

Second Life's biggest blogger (and author of a book about the phenomenon) Wagner James Au has posted about 'concurrency' (the numbers on at any one time) in the virtual world starting to dip.

In June 2006, you would have found a maximum of 8000 fellow citizens of Second Life in-world with you at any one time. In June 2007, at the height of the brand gold rush, that had risen to 48,000. Despite the subsequent media and brand backlash (for a summary see here), the numbers kept going up, albeit more slowly, to a peak concurrency of 66,000 users in March of this year.

But since then, growth has stalled completely and concurrency is back down slightly to 65k.

Wagner James Au suggests that this could be due to constant Second Life software enhancements getting the better of a lot of users, in particular the introduction of Windlight.

Windlight is a new graphics system built into the software viewer that radically transforms the way you view the 'world': "It has turned a muddy sky into a tapestry of radiant golds and perfect blues, made the atmosphere itself a palette anyone can shape to paint visuals they need."

It's also brought exhibits and installations, such as Bettina Tizzy's Hieronymous Bosch's inspired garden to life like never before.

The problem is that Windlight takes a very high performance machine to run properly and can cause constant crashes. Therefore ironically a feature designed to make the world more enjoyable is actually delivering a less than ideal experience for a lot of users.

The oxygen of publicity Though users switching off due to tech hassles could well be one explanation for the tailing off in numbers, I'd also look at the oxygen of publicity. Which Second Life is getting less of.

A Factiva search shows that from January to June 2007, there were 3571 press articles worldwide that had mentioned Second Life in the headline or lead paragraph. From January to June 2008 that had more than halved to 1626 - and this was during a period when Second Life owner Linden Lab had a natural piece of news in naming a new CEO.

As we've said before, the nature of Second Life has changed. It still has a core loyal user base.

But it's also a place where people and companies can collaborate, and educational institutions can set up virtual campuses. That's very worthwhile, and in the long term a more stable foundation than it being a place for advertisers to sell products.

It's also more of a slow burner and something that's of more interest to the back - the specialist - pages of the papers, and not news and features that get the most pick-up.

Simply put, for a lot of people, Second Life has just got less interesting, resulting in less exposure. That - obviously - is bound to have some impact on user registrations.

Photo - From Torley Linden's photo stream under a creative commons license.