OK, I promise this’ll be the last of these posts about the #’s. Posted also at Terranova.
Clay,

I’ve been watching this debate progress for a while and thought I’d weigh in.

Your core accusations are both serious and presumably easily addressed:
1. Define exactly what #’s you want explained by LL. They’ve always been pretty obsessively transparent and my guess is that they’ll continue to do so.
2. Keep chastising the press

What I’m observing however is that you’ve thrown down a serious gauntlet by calling their competence and credibility into question. Hence they’re probably not falling all over themselves to answer your questions. Additionally, it’s incited a debate/discussion amongst a legion of us, none of whom is really equipped with the data needed to settle the matter. Most irritating, the target keeps shifting because the core question of “What are the real #’s and how are they calculated?” has not been squared away.

In this secondary realm, you’ve speculated that the #‚Äôs are inflated by lots of Looky-Loo‚Äôs and are not in-line with industry standard reporting metrics. This may or may not be true, but it raises a really interesting question: ‚ÄúWhat Industry Standard Metrics Should Be Used?‚Äù.

Second Life lies at the union of web-based social sites and MMOG’s but the metrics for each of these don’t quite work for it. The implication being made is that there is some sort of deliberate sleight of hand being performed on the #’s. The truth, I think, is that it’s just plain hard to figure out what #’s/standards to apply. Second Life is NOT an advertising supported website and therefore Commscore #’s and the like are not particularly relevant. On the other end of the spectrum, the #’s typically reported by makers of MMOG’s radically undervalue Second Life’s population because they only reflect paying users. While this appears to be level-headed, it’s also offbase because the small percentage of paying “landowners” in Second Life are able to pay very high monthly fees because those fees are offset by their sales of virtual goods to “non-paying” users.

For those of us who have been really into SL for the last few years, it all seems a little moot. That is to say, we don’t believe there’s any deliberate manipulation going on but would certainly appreciate clarification/definition of the #’s from Linden Lab. But whether they are clarified, revised or unchanged, my feeling is that the core question is really a different one.

It’s that SL lies at the intersection of two seperate fields: gaming and social software. For the past few years, the game crowd has looked at it funny for reasons ranging from bad graphics to lack of a goal or originality or mainstream appeal. Now the social software folks are weighing in with a seperate set of concerns.

This #’s thing will work itself out and then we’ll move to the larger implied set of questions which will probably focus on whether SL will have mainstream appeal.

I promise not to turn this blog into a controversy-fest, but this last week of the year has given me time to weigh in on some of the discussions that have been brewing recently. On Apophenia, Danah Boyd wrote that she’s recently “become very irritated by the immersive virtual questions i’ve been getting”.

My response is below:

Danah,

Interesting post, but I’m not quite sure what the core of your argument is or why you find the virtual world questions so infuriating.

Reading closely, it would seem that your basic argument is that “social tech is not about divorcing the physical to live virtually” and your irritation comes from the fact that “techno-futurists” keep “re-instating this fantasy as the utopian end-all be-all of technology”.

First, let me disclose my bias. Prior to founding Millions of Us, a social media agency specializing in bringing real world companies into virtual worlds, I was the Evangelist for Linden Lab. So I am definitely one of the people irritating you but I’ve also been thinking about this stuff for a few years.

The appeal of Second Life has very little to do with physical vs. virtual. While there is a subset of the user base that prefers online interactions to real-world ones, the majority are simply augmenting their existing lives with Second Life. There are many reasons why this is appealing,but most of them are so similar to Myspace and other well-understood social sites as to make analysis uneccessary. Perhaps the most important difference is that unlike web-based communities, Second Life brings a concept of “place” with it. The impact of this on shared experience and culture is non-trivial — it results in a common set of visual references that make the overall cultural experience all the more powerful.

I agree with you that most people’s social networks and communications are confined to people they already know and that online spaces usually reflect that. In Second Life, the same is true with a few critical differences. First, the friend-of-a-friend concept can be taken a little further because somebody you know can actually introduce you to somebody in real time. Secondly (and this is the really interesting one), social interaction is the key driver of adoption. Second Life’s growth from Day 1 has been a result of word of mouth and press coverage. I discuss the press coverage here¬† and the word of mouth is pretty easy to understand. The interesting thing is that the strongest indicator of whether a user will stick around is whether or not they meet someone and form a relationship with them.

Finally, a word about the #’s. Clay’s big criticism is that the #’s are inflated by lots of Looky-Loo’s and are not in-line with industry standard reporting metrics. My question is, “What Industry Standard Metrics Should Be Used?”. Second Life lies at the union of web-based social sites and MMOG’s but the metrics for each of these don’t quite work for it. The implication being made is that there is some sort of deliberate sleight of hand being performed on the #’s. The truth, I think, is that it’s just plain hard to figure out what #’s/standards to apply. Second Life is NOT an advertising supported website and therefore Commscore #’s and the like are not particularly relevant. On the other end of the spectrum, the #’s typically reported by makers of MMOG’s radically undervalue Second Life’s population because they only reflect paying users. While this appears to be level-headed, it’s also offbase because the small percentage of paying “landowners” in Second Life are able to pay very high monthly fees because those fees are offset by their sales of virtual goods to “non-paying” users.

In any case, I’m gratified to see that you and others are beginning to scrutinize Second Life. I only wish that your commentary contained less of the “Second Life infuriates me” sentiment and more unbiased analysis.

A while back we launched a Brooklyn Brownstone for Warner Brothers Records’ artist Talib Kweli.¬† It was really cool, but we all wondered when the man would be stopping by for a visit.¬† Well the answer is. . . . tomorrow, at 1 PM, SLT/PST.¬† It’s very casual, just a fan meet and Q & A and hopefully will be a cool way for fans to connect with the artist.¬† Here’s a slurl to the event.¬† Here’s the announcement on Talib’s Myspace page.¬† I’ve predicted that by the end of 2007, avatars will be as much a requirement for celebs as Myspace pages are today.¬† All these early experiments are so interesting.¬† My feeling is that these things work best in SL when there’s less fanfare and it becomes more about hanging out and less about screaming adulation.¬† We’ll have to see.

Talked today with Jerry Paffendorf, the Resident Futurist at the Electric Sheep Company. Topics included next generation consoles, virtual worlds and some 2007 predictions.

“Tis the season and since it’s snowing on Millions of Us sim, I thought it would be nice to share this video Holiday card we just did for the folks over at Leo Burnett Detroit (just blogged by Adrants) For some reason, nothing makes me as happy listening to Run DMC do Christmas in Hollis around this time of the year. Masterfully produced by Kathleen Craig and Michael Verdi. Enjoy!