Statistics on how much landmass actually disappeared in the last 3 months is still ‘unavailable’ and although some basic maths leads us to believe more than 15% of Second Life’s landmass was lost due to the Openspaces Issue, Lindens refuse to disclose the numbers. But of course, we need numbers to have some kind of idea how Second Life is doing. Here are some alternative metrics suggestions for Lindens to implement:

1. Total Travelled Distance

The Big Benefit of Second Life is that you - about 50% of the time - can travel through the virtual world without much effort and without drastically increasing your ‘carbon footprint’. “Travelled Distance” is the total amount of kilometres avatars did not have to walk due to public transportation called “teleports”. The more you TP, the better our stats will look, so hand out the landmarks, dear Residents! We’ll also supply “average travelled distance data” which either means that residents find what they need quickly and thus don’t need to relocate often, or that they have a fun time exploring the Second Life Grid.

2. Trackbacks Removed

Any press is good press. “Trackbacks Removed from Second Life blog” will give you an idea of the exact amount of interesting, in-depth articles about Second Life.

3. Talking Nipples & OEZ

“Talking Nipples and Other Erogenous Zones” is the metric for Resident Interaction. We strive to build a solid community of residents, interested in “play”, “flirt” and “romance”. What better way to measure this than the amount of sentences spoken by aroused Xcite bits?

4. Outfit Changes

You’ve all been long time asking for a metric that would exclude the so-called “bots”. Well, here’s it, because which bot would spend an hour/day searching into inventory for something that will only attach after 5 attempts? The number of outfit changes will really reflect the number of active residents in Second Life.

5. DMCA reports

Many creators threaten to leave Second Life, but only few actually do. The Number of DMCA Reports will accurately reflect the serious creators still sticking around. Those who spend hours and hours creating innovative products, only to see them ripped. (Mind you, we’ll just count them, don’t expect us to actually act upon them.)

6. Island Added

We’ve fixed the numbers on this one. Starting today this will only show the total of regions added to Second Life each month. The simulators decommissioned or abandoned, you ask? There aren’t any. Really, nobody is leaving Second Life.

7. Drama coefficient

The Drama coefficient is an average/IP address metric. We won’t give you the exact algorithm, but can say it has something to do with the number of alts created, partnerships & divorces and TXT TIPED N KAPS! The more drama, the better!

Any other great suggestion for Second Life metrics which easily enable a ‘positive spin’? Client downloads? (Hey, let’s just release one every two days!) Or maybe Crash amount? (we all know it’s unhealthy to stare at the PC screen longer than 1 hour at a time.) Bot concurrency? (See, as long as they don’t do anything, concurrency is way fine. It’s you residents, in the wrong, trying to walk around and rezz things!) Linden bears handed out? Percentage of residents that are forced to use “low” graphics settings! (We told you ‘bad’ PCs can handle it!) Snapshots taken? What else? :)

Tags: metrics, parody, second life, statistic

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