Today, Hamlet Au wrote a column suggesting that the OpenSim user base is shrinking — and used Hypergrid Business numbers to support his position.The short answer to his question is: No, OpenSim usage is not falling, and the numbers do not support this. In fact, it is growing quite well.The reason being — the numbers Au is citing aren’t the full numbers, not even for the top 40 largest grids. In particular, InWorldz has only released its active user numbers once, last month, when it was at 4,500 active users. And New World Grid, one of the largest grids, stopped reporting active user numbers this fall.Assuming that both have been growing steadily, in line with the growth on other grids — and in line with their region growth — that would show a very different picture.
Via www.hypergridbusiness.com
The Metaverse Journal
Virtual Worlds Since 2006
It is hard to know what is going on in the OpenSim grids. I can’t see it being a good sign when a grid stops reporting stats. One can speculate the numbers are going down or up.
I tend to agree with Hamlet because of the last years trend. In the comments to OpenSim
vs Second Life vs Minecraft I added a copy HyperGridBusiness’ graph with different trend lines. Maria Korolov’s point that we can’t know user numbers are decreasing is well made in the comments. But, I think the real point is we can’t know what they are doing, increasing or decreasing.
Opensim hits new low on Google Trends http://www.google.com/trends/?q=opensim&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
Reference to the combination of AIDA marketing approach and using Google Trends for virtual world trend assessment…
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2067665/The-Decision-Making-Funnel-Stage-2-Interest
AIDA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDA_(marketing)
Hamlet is a horrible statistical mathematician. I’ve criticized his “polls” consistently but it doesn’t stop him from drawing all kinds of conclusions from absolutely zero significant statistics. Let’s examine what you’ve done in this post. If I get this straight, we assume that OpenSim grids are growing and then conclude that OpenSim grids are growing. As ridiculous as it may seem, your math is correct! But, unfortunately, meaningless.