Tech Watch | InfoWorld Staff » Second Life buzz plagued by fuzzy numbers

December 28, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Second Life buzz plagued by fuzzy numbers

TAGS: Social networking

Those of us here in Massachusetts know that numbers count. After all, we're residents of one of just a handful of states in the country that is shedding population. And, as we all know, fewer people means less clout -- politically and otherwise.

The same thing is true, more or less, in virtual worlds like World of Warcraft and Second Life. Having a critical mass of users draws in other users, who draw the attention of advertisers, sponsors and partners -- a kind of virtuous cycle.

That's why recent posts at blogs like ValleyWag that question game maker Linden Labs' census of their Second Life virtual community touch a nerve. The game, which has been around since the late 1990s, has been riding a wave of publicity and favorable press coverage this year, as established firms like IBM, Intel and Sun Microsystems, media players like The Sundance Channel, not to mention press outfits like Reuters and CNET have set up outposts in Second Life. Reporters were drawn by the buzz, and by stories of Second Life users setting up shop and supporting their First Life selves through Second Life commerce -- admittedly, a cool development. For corporations, however, the lure was clearly Linden's claims that a population of 2 million tech-savvy users (the figure is one million in company press releases) awaited them and their products in Second Life's sprawling geography.

Those claims, and Linden's habit of snaring gushing and often uncritical write-ups from the technology press got under the skin of the folks over at ValleyWag, where contributors like Clay Shirky, in the truest tradition of muck raking journalists, developed an "incohate irritation" with Second Life and began poking around a bit behind the the pr blitz. In recent weeks, Shirky has been questioning, loudly, Second Life's claims to have two million or even one million unique participants, and the media's tendency to simply parrot those numbers without demanding proof from Linden that they're for real.

To quote Shirky: "There isn't one million of anything human inhabiting Second Life. There is no one-to-one correlation between Residents and users. And whatever Residents does measure, it has nothing to do with paying customers. The number of paid accounts is in the tens of thousands, not the millions (and remember, if you're playing along at home, there can be more than one account per person. Kits, cats, sacks, and wives...)"

No doubt, Second Life has plenty of enthusiastic participants. But for companies like IBM that are sinking thousands (tens of thousands? millions?) of their own money into creating virtual islands in Second Life, there's a big difference between a person who's paying a monthly subscription and logging on regularly to their account, and someone (like me, for instance) who downloaded Second Life's software a year ago to take a spin in the virtual environment, but never signed up or paid a return visit. It's not clear how many me's figure into that one or two million users figure -- or whether any of us do. It's also unclear, as Shirky points out, whether Linden is counting registered users or just their avatars in their census data. As more advertising and marketing dollars pour into Second Life, companies should (and probably will) be asking Linden for ham, not spam, when it comes to the real number of users active in Second Life.

And, as ValleyWag noted yesterday, at least one marketing executive at IBM, David Berger, may have heard Shirky and others. In a blog post, Berger says the company, which claims 1,000 employee users of Second Life and 12 virtual islands, may start asking "tough questions" and "exert(ing) leadership" amid the hype over virtual worlds.

Posted by Paul Roberts on December 28, 2006 10:43 AM

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