Kitely Forums

I hope these posts aren't getting boring!

Once again February's HGB OpenSim statistics report shows that Kitely's land area is continuing to grow, and Tyche Shepherd's Second Life Grid Survey confirms that the number of SL private regions is continuing to shrink.

Between 17 January and 14 February the number of SL private regions saw a total decline of 75 regions: Between 17 January and 17 February, the number of regions on Kitely increased by 354, to a total of 10,861.

Kitely's land area is now 61.5% of the current land area of SL private regions, and is managed by just two individuals. Think about what that implies in terms of efficient server usage and underlying code.

Since Kitely has automated so many features, some that could be done only by those running their own simulator instances on the consoles...I think it is the most automated, features rich grid in the Hyperverse.

This enables, as you suggest Dot, for them to more fully engage in person to person issues.

I think that is very smart and other commercial grids would do well to do things similarly.

"Scale up" is almost irrelevant to Kitely's business model--they can support more land and more people and only increase the load on Amazon. And increase their cash flow. If I were running a grid in OpenSim I would be talking to them about hosting my grid.

After the launch of the new Kitely Evergreen Island new-world template on 18 February, an interim report might be interesting.

At the Kitely Community Meeting of 28th February 2016, it was reported that:

Ilan wrote:From Feb 18 to Feb 27 the new world template was used to create 55 new worlds. For comparison, the Empty World template was used to create 77 new worlds during that time. No new worlds used the Universal Campus world template during that period. [I don't have] the stats for the total number of worlds created during that period so I can't tell you how many people used the Upload OAR option but even without this info you can see that the Kitely Evergreen Island is a popular option.

So at least 132 new Kitely worlds were created between 18th and 27th February.

In contrast, between 14th and 28th February, the number of private SL regions went from 17674 to 17614, a loss of 60 regions.

Watch this space...

I am happy Kitely is doing well. But, just like many statistics -- things can be presented to say most anything.

What happened to MAINLAND in these statistics? I have five MAINLAND plots in SL. Three are group owned and two I rent.

Also since the "best deal" in Kitely is the four sim model (unless that has changed while I wasn't looking), folks will likely opt for that and use very little of the land. I have seen that often here. That's OK. Open space is a GOOD thing in my book.

So while this looks good for Kitely (no arguments there), I don't think the OP was presenting the fairest comparison.

I just moved into Oz's new rental sim after my previous one disappeared without warning some months ago. I am pretty sure Ozwell will be around for awhile, being the top seller on the market, so I have hopes of continuing on there for a long while. It is quite lovely.

BUT there is no way I am leaving SL. Too much there that is not here. I don't need a sim to enjoy it.

I think it would be best of folks in general would just be happy with where they are and not try to cast shadows on other grids (this goes in MANY directions).

That's my two cents.

I find these statistics fascinating not in a negative-for-SL way, but more in a Opensim-is-amazing kind of way. I still have land and friends and stuff in SL. There's no joy for me in watching the SL region count go down. But there is a lot of excitement in watching Opensim grow.

In answer to Chic, I focused on SL private regions because that seemed to be the most obvious parallel in land usage.

Usage of SL Mainland is rather infrequently surveyed by Tyche Shepherd. Her latest Mainland Census report on SLuniverse is dated 2 February 2016, and combines two surveys, from 2014 and 2016. The previous published report was in 2013.

Here's the final paragraph from the 2016 report:

Tyche Shepherd wrote:The TL;DR version:
Mainland is still there but with less owners and more abandoned land, though losses in the past 18 months are significantly less than between June 2013 and June 2014. This pattern is similar to what we have seen in Private Estate shrinkage, with most of the past 2 1/2 years loss in the initial 12 months though this observation is more pronounced in mainland usage.

People use virtual world platforms for different reasons. For those whose main focus is building environments, the availability and affordability of land and potential lack of pesky inartistic and insensitive neighbours in OpenSim is ideal. For those who prefer community etc., SL has a lot still going for it.

The March report on OpenSim statistics from Hypergrid Business has just been published, so it's time for another update on this thread.

During this month, Kitely's land area increased by 312 standard region equivalents to a total of 11,173, making it the second largest OpenSim grid.

Tyche Shepherd's Second Life Grid Survey reports the number of SL private regions between 14 February and 13 March as follows (the number for 21 February is gleaned from Tyche's summary post on SLUniverse): Kitely's land area is now 63.7% of the current land area of SL private regions.

Keeping the series going, the April report on OpenSim statistics from Hypergrid Business has just been published.

During this month, Kitely's land area increased by 267 standard region equivalents to a total of 11,440. It remains the second largest OpenSim grid.

During the last month, SL introduced a "Private Estate Buy Down offer of Grandfathered regions" -- in effect a way of reducing monthly tier of existing non-grandfathered private regions, on payment of a chunk of money up front. This seems to have slowed the reduction in private region numbers, as Tyche Shepherd's Second Life Grid Survey reports.

The numbers of SL private regions between 13 March and 17 April are as follows, a net loss of 16 regions compared with the previous month's net loss of 144 regions: Kitely's land area is now 65.3% of the current land area of SL private regions.

In this graph the blue line shows the number of Kitely regions and the green line the number of SL private regions plotted on the same scale.