Retention of New Sign Ups in Secondlife
I was reading the blog New World Notes when I ran across an interesting article about New World Numbers: The Trouble with Two Million written back on November 16, 2006. This article lead right into Tateru Nino’s Two Million Steps Forward… where she briefly discusses the rapid growth in Secondlife and goes deeper into the extremely small retention rate.
In this article she delves into live help and the impossibility of gaining new helpers fall into the impossible category as Secondlife membership is growing at record pace. Finding qualified Live Helpers becomes a daunting task. Over 13,000 new sign ups a day causes the few volunteers to burn out way to quickly and the new sign up are not learning how to use Secondlife.
So many of the new sign up have read about Secondlife in the media and come into it expecting it to be more of a game like they have grown used to playing… most find Seconlife a disappointment. They arrive at Help Island and usually aren’t met by a mentor (there are not enough mentors to go around and those there are are burned out). In an attempt to have mentors and volunteers for live help, it seems the quality and knowledge seems to be going in a downward spiral.
Maybe this is a big reason that only around 10% (according to Philip Rosedale) of the sign up for Secondlife stick around to become active residents in Secondlife. Most volunteers think that most people become bored or confused, expect more of a “game”, don’t understand the purpose, or offended by all the sexuality as reasons that such a large number never stick around to enjoy Secondlife. Many of the live helpers figure that less than 1 out of 50 actually stick around to become a resident. But Phillip Rosedale states….
“Actually, it is much higher than that,” he said.
“Although Second Life is still challenging to get used to, about 10% ofnewly created residents are still logging into Second Life weekly,3 months later. 10% is pretty good given the computer requirements andsteep learning curve”
Surprisingly, he added, “That percentage hasn’t changed much with the much higher rate of new users.” as reported by Tateru Nino
As you can see, even with the conservative numbers of Philip, that 2 million is down to probably less than 200 thousand regular users of Secondlife.
Yes Secondlife is growing by leaps and bounds! With all the trouble in the grid of late I can’t help but be concerned that the growth rate is still to fast.. even at only a 10% retention rate. Of course I am certian that Philip isn’t interested in what I think, but I think quality is considerably more important than quantity.
Feel free to express your opinion in the feed back comments.
January 1st, 2007 • 
Weirdharold • 
comment | January 1, 2007 at 16:53 | individual comment-link
I’ve written on this topic a great deal, for example here at the Herald:
http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2006/12/disoriented.html and I’ve written lots on my blog about the whole newbie industry.
I believe the entire racket of mentors/helpers/volunteers should just be removed. It’s broken and even corrupt and damaging. They should outsource the whole kit and kaboodle to either a community management company in general that handles lower-level CS, or open it up to bids from companies inworld or nonprofits that either can make a profit or find the funding to sustain this work.
Manning an infohub as I do in Ross frequently, and constantly tinkering to try to make the orientation system orient, I see three kinds of people coming into SL and getting lost:
1. Kids, often as young as 12 or 13, up to age 17, who have no business being on the adult grid, who ask annoying and draining questions or else grief with objects or sound clips. There is no solution for this problem that I can see as LL is committed to keeping unverified ID. Perhaps by offering more stipends or more useful activities in the TG, they can wean kids into going there — but then, the TG is for kids who provide ID proving they are 13 — so the younger ones won’t go there and will stay and grief, often on relatives’ accounts.
2. Older adults who came for educational or non-profit activities and are quickly angered at having a penis stuffed in their face or a Banana Phone clip played incessantly. They are the first casulaties of no. 1. Their groups and networks have to work harder and landing them at their own customized infohubs/orientation sites to avoid this negative experience, or at least get people to realize that landing at these hubs they need to take an active role in disciplining the miscreants themselves through calling Live Help, etc. (not a system I believe in, as explained, but not a system likely to change, so it should be forced to deploy its allegedly 1,000 plus network of loafers more effectively).
3. Foreigners who not only lack material in their own language, but lack certain basic response ability to various cultural cues that seem to be American or online game specific. And also RL cultural clash issues among all different cultures and educational levels. A clash I often see is invasion of “personal space” — the space that people feel should be left free around them in RL as in SL — and overdeployment of prims as if it were a personal sandbox or had endless capacity. Some people prove extraordinarily resistant to the idea that they are in a shared space with limitations like prim limits.
Basically, I think this will sort itself out over time. Kids will give up and go back to MySpace or WoW. Educational types will get better guidance. Adults interested more in socializing or exploring and building and creating will find their niches faster.
Nobody who arrives at myspace.com gets any special tutor holding their hand and telling them how to set up their page. Their friends show them. They figure out by trial and error. People need to allow the SL experience to be like this without fretting so much. If they have a constituent they feel needs served, they should go serve it — preferably for pay, as this helps the economy.
comment | January 1, 2007 at 22:56 | individual comment-link
Thanks for stopping by Prokofy Neva, I also feel that the live help and mentors are falling well behind the need of all the newbies coming to Secondlife. I just don’t think it should be removed, but improved upon.
I also agree that as for Brands and Educational facilities coming into Secondlife, their own orientation centers would be a very good option.
Basically, There is noting else nearly as advanced as Secondlife out on the web where the “players” are allowed to have so much control. There is a steep learning curve to be able to take advantage of what is available to an individual within Secondlife… and really isn’t that a good thing?
I simply wish more Linden Labs would pay more attention to having Secondlife actually work than simply gaining the numbers.
comment | September 18, 2007 at 05:40 | individual comment-link
When i first watched this on click on bbc world,i never thought it would be so popular.I thought i was the only one crazy about it.So i was wrong