When it released its second quarter usage statistics, Linden Lab painted a rosy picture of the current in-world situation.
It boasted, among other things, that "user hours hit a new all time high of 126 million user hours", up 33% from the same period in 2008 and 2% over the first quarter of 2009. LL says that the meagre growth from quarter to quarter this year can be explained by a new anti-bot policy.
This sounds sensible and reasonable. The problem is that recently, the Nielsen market reasearch firm has questioned the credibility of such data because it is raw from the central database.
Much like television, Second Life usage has to be "adjusted". Imagine that a small device records your TV usage, when it is playing, on what channel and for how long. This is raw data. Now, compare this to the time you actually spend in front of the TV set, giving your full attention to the program or advertising that is playing. This would be adjusted data.
Nielsen favors the latter option because it is closely tied to the actual time when you see what is played. In the end, you could leave your TV set playing the same channel 24/7, which doesn't mean you are watching the programs and seeing the advertising. Networks and advertisers want to target real use.
Linden Lab only interprets the raw data, which advantages its growth scenario. This is, when you think of it, anything but credible. I could leave my avatar sitting on a chair for hours somewhere on the grid and LL would consider that I have spent, say, 5 hours being active on that day.
Meanwhile, Nielsen would calculate that in reality, the only time when I was truly active was when I visited a commercial sim for 10 minutes to buy a new pair of shoes. The rest of the time, I could be making coffee, going to the bathroom, talking on the phone or whatever else a human being can do at home.
So, I suggest taking official Second Life statistics with a grain of salt. The problem is that meanwhile, Nielsen hasn't come up with a transparent measurement system comparable to television, with a sample of SL users to test their activity level when they are logged in.
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