Over a fortnight ago Tyche “Statto” Shepherd reported that the Second Life grid had experienced net growth of 14 regions, 15 for private regions, with Linden Lab dropping a region. This was the first net growth on the grid since March 31st 2013.
A week later the grid returned to losses, although it wasn’t an awful decline with the grid experiencing a net loss of 10 regions, 11 private regions and a Linden region appearing, possibly the missing one from the week before. However this did buck a trend of sorts, the grid growth of 31/03/13 was followed by a net loss of 16 regions, meaning the grid was smaller than it had been before the growth.
Prior to that, the grid had last grown on 24th June 2012, this is an important date. That week the grid grew by 30 regions, which was the third consecutive week of growth. However the week after that, the grid shrunk by a whopping 237 regions, wiping out all of that three week growth, which in total stood at 149 regions. This is why people shouldn’t get too excited about signs of growth too quickly.
Last weekend, Tyche was busy, it should be remembered that Tyche is pretty much a one woman band, she does have assistance from her survey bot, but a survey bot can only do so much. Therefore there has been no report from Tyche on the scores on the doors last weekend. However there is a backup plan, it comes in the shape and form of Tyche’s fantastic website : http://gridsurvey.com/
There we can see the scores on the doors for last weekend. The total number of Main Grid regions on March 9th was 26,176 ( 19,193 private estates & 6,983 Linden owned). This meant a net rise of 41 regions, all of them amongst private regions, there was no change in Linden owned regions. This is the largest single week rise since the 17th June 2012, although it should be noted the grid has only showed week on week growth four times since then, with last week being the fourth.
Adult rated regions grew by 55 regions to 4,262, whereas General rated regions fell by 14 to 1,896 and Moderate rated regions rose by 10 to 13,033. Now you may be thinking, wait a minute, that’s growth of 51 regions, not 41. However when Tyche’s survey ran the week before, 12 regions were offline, on this run there were only 2 regions offline.
Unfortunately it’s difficult to see what has happened without Tyche’s expert analysis. I don’t know which regions have came online, whether there’s a big event adding regions etc. However it should be noted that big events have been happening since June 2012 and the stats have shown decline.
The results from June 2012 should be heeded, those three weeks of growth were more than compensated for by losses later and this may end up being the same. However the signs have been more encouraging lately, week on week losses have been much lower than they previously were, whereas it’s still way too early to pop any champagne corks, there are most certainly some encouraging signs emerging.
My guess is that we’ll enter a period where the grid shows growth more often, but I still expect overall decline, largely because the tier is still too damn high!
Tyche Shepherd’s stats are a most impressive resource and on her Grid Survey site you will find a lot more than just numbers, you will find old Incident Blotter reports, which are both interesting and fun. There are also economic figures, charts and you can even find information about your own or favourite sim.
For example if I look up 1920’s Berlin I can find information about neighbouring regions, the SLURL, the SL Map link and even photos taken there which have been published on Snapzilla. Tyche really deserves thanks and praise for her wonderful archive.