It is incredible en vogue currently, for serious analysts - and those who want to present themselves as serious analysts - to warn about "the unfounded hype" surrounding virtual worlds - especially in the name of Second Life - or warn about imminent danger in this area of the web. The latest report of this kind comes from the well established yankee group: Wither Second Life?
Actually this report doesn't reveal anything new. What I found most astonishing, though, was the fact that these serious and well renowned professionals can't count (or can't use Excel). They reveal (!), that
user engagement (as measured by average time spent per user) has leveled off at just 12 minutes per month
and go on to talk favorable about sites like Facebook and MySpace with Facebook now at 186 minutes peruser per month "engagement".
Dear Mr. Collins (Senior Analyst at the Yankee Group, quoted as being the main author), the only metrics available about usage of Second Life, reveal some 23 Million hours spend inworld by users in July. For the same time period there were 560000 active users listed.
According to my Excel sheet this comes out as more than 40 hours or 2,400 minutes of usage per user per month.
Even if you include the casual users who log in only once in a monthly you get some 900,000 users, each spending more than 1,500 minutes inworld per month. This is much less than the TV consumption of the average American (or German) but I would not exactly call this a low level of engagement.
It was obvious even in the summary of the report, that the intention was not to talk about virtual worlds (or bash Second Life; that was collateral damage). The intention was to promote the yankee groups theory that succesful offers on the web have to have a mobile component (Anywhere access). Second Life and most other virtual worlds don't have one currently, so it goes without saying that they are doomed! - At least you have to come to that conclusion if the yankee group's theory is true ..
Technorati Tags: 3d web, second life, virtual worlds, web 3.d
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