Chic at Ebbe's Place

I have been keeping track of the new accounts made in Inworldz, seeing how The New World announcement  (after a personal epiphany which I will write about later, it doesn't seem so much of an SL world to me *wink*) might affect other grids. Since Inworldz has the same population as the next five grids in the SL-like list  combined , it is POSSIBLY the most likely choice for refugees.

The weeks closely following the New World announcement there were  more people making accounts in Inworldz than in the last 2.5 months -- the only yardstick I have and that because Inworldz reached 100,000 uses in mid May and I wrote about it on my IW blog. Around 30 extra accounts per day were made in the two weeks or so following the revelation (42 was the norm for that previously noted period). We don't know how many might be alts of already settled residents of course. But an increase.

This last week (10AM - 10AM from Saturday to Saturday) there were 88 sign ups average per day -- so an increase over the days following the revelation.

We don't know that all those folks are coming from SL, indeed from comments I overhear on the IW newcomer group some folks are new to virtual worlds altogether. But it is a pretty fair guess that a good portion are from "the big grid".

Now those people aren't necessarily STAYING. They are there to see if the other grid will work better for them. As Jessica Lyon stated in her SL11B talk, moving seems fairly silly since they would be starting over in any new grid, spurred by the POSSIBILITY of having to start over (not completely of course as some items can be ported) to the new Linden platform.

Concurrency is up 30 - 50 during in my personal six month history (US popular hours), so some of those new folks are exploring and some are perhaps settling in. The big test -- for both grids -- will be seeing how the figures are in six months.