A nice new feature reported on Hamlet Au's blog. It shows the most popular places where Second Lifers are at for that moment.
To see how it works read his report after the jump.
Linden Adds Guide to Other Users Online in SL's New Login Screen - User Growth to Follow?
by Hamlet Au
Linden Lab has a new update to the SL viewer and the general user experience, and it includes a feature I've been wanting to see forever (well, at least since May 2010): A guide not just to SL's pretty places (probably unpopulated), but locations where actual in-world users actually are. And here that feature finally is:
As I noted last year, Habbo Hotel has a similar feature, and it's a fairly important part to Habbo's growth and retention of new users. Now when a new SL user launches the client, they'll have a list of places where they can instantly join lots of people. To be sure, this isn't a perfect solution: It'll often mean a lot of noobs showing up to an increasingly laggier lagfest, or noobs showing up where they're not necessarily welcome. But it's a start, it's a start. As a couple academics reported, when it comes to predicting which new SL user will stay, chat is the key variable: Not making money, not creating content, not exploring the world per se, but active chat -- the number of fellow Residents a new user talked with, over a longer period of time. Cross your fingers, we're about to see if that insight translates into user growth.
This is what I've been waiting for too. I'm so glad they've put this in!
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