Category: Features

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Classic metaverse books on sale now at Amazon

I don’t personally agree with the dystopian visions of the metaverse as presented by sci-fi writers. But if you want to understand where the inspiration for platforms like Second Life — and OpenSim — comes from, these books are a must-read.

Plus, they might give us some tips about what to avoid as we move closer to a fully immersive future. I’ve also got one last bonus book on this list, at the bottom of this post. Not about the metaverse but a must-have sci-fi classic — and as relevant today as it ever was, if not more so.

Neuromancer by William Gibson

The paperback is normally $19 but it’s $9.50 today. The hard cover is also on sale, down from $28 to $21.

This book won all the sci-fi awards and helped create the cyberpunk genre — and paved the way for how we think about the universe.

It’s a bit of a dystopian vision of the future but one well worth revisiting, especially today, when that future seems to be coming ever closer.

From the publisher:

Winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Awards, Neuromancer is a science fiction masterpiece—a classic that ranks as one of the twentieth century’s most potent visions of the future.

Neuromancer was the first fully-realized glimpse of humankind’s digital future—a shocking vision that has challenged our assumptions about technology and ourselves, reinvented the way we speak and think, and forever altered the landscape of our imaginations.

Get the book on sale here.

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

And speaking of dystopian metaverse futures, this book started it all. And, today, it’s 44% off — just $10.70 for the paperback. And the deluxe hardcover edition is also 44% off, down to $22.60.

Myself, I prefer his book The Diamond Age. But that one, too, is on sale today — down 36% to $12.79.

But back to Snow Crash.

From the publisher:

Hiro lives in a Los Angeles where franchises line the freeway as far as the eye can see. The only relief from the sea of logos is within the autonomous city-states, where law-abiding citizens don’t dare leave their mansions.

Hiro delivers pizza to the mansions for a living, defending his pies from marauders when necessary with a matched set of samurai swords. His home is a shared 20 X 30 U-Stor-It. He spends most of his time goggled in to the Metaverse, where his avatar is legendary.

But in the club known as The Black Sun, his fellow hackers are being felled by a weird new drug called Snow Crash that reduces them to nothing more than a jittering cloud of bad digital karma (and IRL, a vegetative state).

Investigating the Infocalypse leads Hiro all the way back to the beginning of language itself, with roots in an ancient Sumerian priesthood. He’ll be joined by Y.T., a fearless teenaged skateboard courier. Together, they must race to stop a shadowy virtual villain hell-bent on world domination.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

This paperback is 59% off, for a total price of just $7.35.

It’s an love poem to 1980s video games crossed with a Willy Wonka-style competition about who gets to run the metaverse.

I’ve got several beefs with this book — and others of the genre. First of all, a lot of stuff happens inside the game that shouldn’t. Just shut down the server, guys. Or terminate the user account.

Second, a scavenger hunt is a very poor way indeed to do corporate succession planning.

Finally, why does one poorly-run company dominate the metaverse? In the real world, competition pops up almost instantly. Yes, Google dominates the search engine space — for now, at least — but it certainly doesn’t have a monopoly on websites in general. And Second Life might be a big elephant in the social gaming area, but it’s got a lot of competitors — both big commercial players like Robox and Minecraft and all the MMOs and all the VR chat games, and open source stuff like OpenSim.

If you read this book, and the other cyberpunk novels on this list, treat them the way they were intended — as cautionary tales — and not as how-to manuals! Please!

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

Another classic of my childhood, and that of many other people. It isn’t set so much in a virtual world, but in an immersive game. But how real is that game, exactly?

Now the hardcover edition is available for just $10.49, down from $15.99.

From the publisher:

From New York Times bestselling author Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game―adapted to film in 2013 starring Asa Butterfield and Harrison Ford―is the classic Hugo and Nebula award-winning science fiction novel of a young boy’s recruitment into the midst of an interstellar war.

In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race’s next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers.

A brilliant young boy, Andrew “Ender” Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn’t make the cut―young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training.

Ender’s skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders.

This is the first book of the six-book Ender Sextet series. The other books are all on sale today as well, as is Ender’s Shadow, the first of five books in the Shadow Saga series.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

This one isn’t so a book about the metaverse specifically — it’s more about AI. Which, these days, is increasingly becoming a closely intertwined topic as AI is used to build the worlds, script interactions, and animate in-world characters.

And, as I watched the OpenAI and Google AI announcements this week, I could see that their chatbots are getting pretty darn realistic.

Philip K. Dick predicted all this back in 1968. That was before I was born. That was before the moon landing. Lyndon B. Johnson was still president and the Beatles were still together. Philip K. Dick predicted a lot of weird things. He was a pretty weird writer. I’m constantly surprised by how many of his stories got made into big-budget films.

Get the book on sale here.

Have you read these books? Do you own them?

Oh, and I almost forgot — I’ve also written books about the metaverse, though not quite as dystopian as these.

And they’re not just on sale — they’re free. I’ve written over a dozen more in the same universe, which I’ll be publishing soon, so this is your chance to catch up on the story so far.

The Krim World series

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All OpenSim stats drop on grid outages

The total land area in OpenSim fell this month by over 3,000 standard region equivalents, the total number of registered users fell by just over 1,000, and the number of active monthly users dropped by 425 compared to this time last month.

The region loss was due to the fact that Discovery Grid did not report its region totals this month. In April, the grid reported 5,178 standard region equivalents.

In addition, several grids did not report their stats this month, including Kater and Friends, ProxyNet, Caribou Grid, and Resurgence. Each of these grids has reported hundreds of active users earlier this year. If the grid has moved, please let me know at maria@hypergridbusiness.com.

The numerical losses were not due to 3rd Rock Grid’s closure yesterday, since that grid still showed up as active for the past four weeks and did report its stats. Its loss will show up in next month’s stats report.

The total land area on OpenSim’s public grids reached the equivalent of 135,700 standard regions this month, down from last month’s all-time high — and still several times bigger that the total land area of Second Life.

The biggest gainer in terms of land area was OSgrid, which gained 1,160 new standard region equivalents, maintaining its status as the largest public grid in OpenSim. It was followed in growth numbers by ZetaWorlds with 1,024 new regions and Wolf Territories Grid with 384 new regions.

At the same time, the number of active users dropped to 47,195.

Wolf Territories Grid retained their first-place position by traffic numbers.

I’m now tracking a total of 2,661 OpenSim grids, of which 307 were active, and 249 published their statistics this month. If you have a stats page that we’re not tracking, please email me at maria@hypergridbusiness.com — that way, your grid will be mentioned in this report every month, for additional visibility with both search engines and users.

The following grids were added to our database this month: 3World, BachmansWorld One, Bridger, CyberDataStorm, and Dark Heaven.

Also, I’m no longer sending out a monthly email blast reminding OpenSim grid owners to send me news and updates for this report. If you have news, please email me before the tenth of the month if you want a short item included in this monthly wrap-up. For longer news, feel free to send me press releases at any time.

OpenSim land area for May 2024. (Hypergrid Business data.).

Our stats do not include many of the grids running on DreamGrid which is a distribution of OpenSim since these tend to be private grids.

OpenSim is a free open-source, virtual world platform, that’s similar to Second Life and allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds and teleport to other virtual worlds. Those with technical skills can run OpenSim worlds on their servers for free using either DreamGrid, the official OpenSim installer for those who are more technically inclined, or any other distribution, while commercial hosting starts at less than $5 a region.

A list of OpenSim hosting providers is here. Download the recommended Firestorm viewer here and find out where to get content for your OpenSim world or region here.

Hypergrid Business newsletter is now available

Every month on the 15th — right after the stats report comes out — we will be sending out a newsletter with all the OpenSim news from the previous month. You can subscribe here or fill out the form below.

Get our monthly stats and all other OpenSim news delivered right to your mailbox every month.

We don’t spam! Read our privacy policy for more info.

Top 25 grids by active users

When it comes to general-purpose social grids, especially closed grids, the rule of thumb is the busier the better. People looking to make new friends look for grids that already have the most users. Merchants looking to sell content will go to the grids with the most potential customers. Event organizers looking for the biggest audience — you get the idea.

Top 25 most popular grids this month:

  1. Wolf Territories Grid: 5,904 active users
  2. OSgrid: 5,263 active users
  3. GBG World: 2,174 active users
  4. DigiWorldz: 2,125 active users
  5. Alternate Metaverse: 2,001 active users
  6. Darkheart’s Playground: 1,462 active users
  7. WaterSplash: 1,419 active users
  8. Vida Dupla: 1,222 active users
  9. Moonrose: 1,149 active users
  10. AviWorlds: 1,105 active users
  11. Neverworld: 1,086 active users
  12. Trianon World: 1,014 active users
  13. Littlefield: 993 active users
  14. Craft World: 965 active users
  15. AvatarLife: 940 active users
  16. Party Destination Grid: 845 active users
  17. Astralia: 773 active users
  18. Virtualife: 750 active users
  19. Kitely: 655 active users
  20. German World Grid: 623 active users
  21. ZetaWorlds: 618 active users
  22. Herederos Grid: 588 active users
  23. CandM World: 563 active users
  24. Groovy Verse: 505 active users
  25. Eureka World: 490 active users

Top 40 grids by land area

All region counts on this list are, whenever available, in terms of standard region equivalents. Active user counts include hypergrid visitors whenever possible.

Many school, company, or personal grids do not publish their numbers.

The raw data for this month’s report is here. A list of all active grids is here. And here is a list of all the hypergrid-enabled grids and their hypergrid addresses, sorted by popularity. This is very useful if you are creating a hyperport.

You can see all the historical OpenSim statistics here, including polls and surveys, dating all the way back to 2009.

Do you know of any other grids that are open to the public but that we don’t have in our database? Email me at maria@hypergridbusiness.com.

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3rd Rock Grid residents find new homes on ZetaWorlds

Today was the last day of 3rd Rock Grid, one of the oldest grids in OpenSim.

Empty welcome region on 3rd Rock Grid. (Snapshot by Maria Korolov.)

The grid announced that it was closing back in March, and, since then, many of the former residents have found their way to other grids, with ZetaWorlds being a popular destination.

Start at Sirocco, which is slated to by the administrative hub of the new 3rd Rock Grid expat community once its done. There is already land available for rent, starting at $2.50 a month for a 10,000-prim Second Life-sized region.

Check out the 3rd Wind Community website for more information, including land prices, an events calendar, and a membership form.

The community rented a dedicated servers from ZetaWorlds and, as a non-profit, can offer very low land prices, said Alia Soulstar, a founder of the 3rd Wind Community.

There are also arts and education areas and other public lands, she told Hypergrid Business, with a total land area of more than 800 standard region equivalents.

“We had a month-long series of community meetings where we invited the owners of a handful of grids to come and talk,” Soulstar said. “Then we had a long discussion and choose this grid. A lot of the choice was based around the flexibility of having a dedicated server to design our own community around. The general feeling was that we wanted to stay together as a family, so we made the collective decision to move here.”

Land office on the Sirocco region of ZetaWorlds, with 3rd Wind Community founders Alia Soulstar and Ellemir Maven. (Snapshot by Maria Korolov.)

She recommends that people start on the Sirocco region of ZetaWorlds, where they can find out about land ownership and get other administrative information.

Teleport to hg.zetaworlds.com:80:Sirocco.

“We are still under construction so haven’t made a landmark map yet, but will have that up in a few days,” she said.

People also gather on the beach on the Peapod region and Risa on the Anubis region.

Peapod region on ZetaWorlds. (Snapshot by Maria Korolov.)

Teleport to hg.zetaworlds.com:80:Peapod.

But the most popular location is Infinity region’s Starfleet Infinity area, home to bars, dance places, space stations, and starships.

Departures on the Starfleet area of the Infinity region on ZetaWorlds. (Snapshot by Maria Korolov.)

Teleport to hg.zetaworlds.com:80:Infinity.

Still on the Infinity region. (Snapshot by Maria Korolov.)

Teleport to hg.zetaworlds.com:80:Anubis and hg.zetaworlds.com:80:Infinity.

There are also music venues on the Khamsin region, she said, with live performances four to five times per week.

Hal 9000 simulator on the Khamsin region of ZetaWorlds. (Snapshot by Maria Korolov.)

Teleport to hg.zetaworlds.com:80:Khamsin.

For those who haven’t yet transfered their regions or avatar inventories, there is still time, said Soulstar. ” 3rd Rock Grid created OARs of all the regions there and will hold them in cloud storage for a year so they can be reclaimed, and a number of IARs for active users, too. And we are able to load OARs and IARs for recovery, so all is not lost if you find yourself locked out.”

ZetaWorlds will upload the OAR region export files and IAR inventory files for users, she said, and the 3rd Wind Community will help with the process.

The OARs will be “kept for the foreseable future,” 3rd Rock Grid board member Tara Dockery, also known as Thoria Millgrove in-world, said yesterday. “We will provide those OARs to the registered owners upon request.”

Her own region, Peapod, is already on ZetaWorlds, along with its events, Dockery told Hypergrid Business.

You can read more about the transition to ZetaWorlds at Thirza Ember’s Hypergrid Safari blog.

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Five things every grid needs on its home page

I have a new OpenSim grid stats report coming out tomorrow, so I’ve been surfing OpenSim grid websites these last couple of days, looking for errant stats pages. And that means that I’ve been looking at a lot of grid home pages.

And there are some really pretty ones out there! And some grids truly use their websites to show off what they’ve got to offer.

But most grids, I’m afraid, miss the mark. If you’re a public grid and want to attract traffic, or a commercial grid looking to rent out land, you’re leaving money on the table by not having these five elements on your home page.

A beautiful picture that shows people enjoying your grid

A picture is worth a thousand words, and when it comes to your OpenSim grid’s website, the right picture can make all the difference. As I browsed through dozens of grid home pages this week, I was struck by how few of them featured images of people enjoying themselves. In fact, I could only find four examples, and two were avatars from other platforms, not actual grid residents.

This is a missed opportunity. Your grid’s home page is the perfect place to showcase the fun and excitement that awaits visitors. Even if your grid is brand new, you can still create engaging images. Pose some alts in dance animations, have them chatting in a cafe, building a house, working in a garden, or raising farm animals. The possibilities are endless.

Too often, grid slideshows and images focus on empty spaces — a deserted dance floor, a vacant cafe, a barren island, or a lonely rock. Sure, sometimes it’s a pretty rock, but it’s still just an empty landscape. The same goes for pictures of museums or shopping areas — if they’re devoid of people, they look like ghost towns.

By featuring images of empty spaces, you’re sending a subconscious message to potential visitors: “Our grid is an empty wasteland.” That’s not the impression you want to make. Instead, show people having a great time on your grid. Capture the excitement of a fashion show, the energy of a rock concert, or the camaraderie of a community event.

If you don’t have a skilled photographer on your grid, consider reaching out to the OpenSim community. There are plenty of talented photographers who would be happy to take some great shots of people enjoying your grid.

One of the grids that featured prominent images of people enjoying themselves in their world was the New Life Italy grid.

(Image courtesy New Life Italy.)

I’m not saying that every grid should put a picture of a dance floor on their home page. OpenSim grids would all look pretty much identical if everybody did this. Hopefully, your grid has more to offer than just dancing, or, if there is dancing, maybe it’s in a particularly special location? And when taking pictures of people enjoying themselves, try to have at least one closeup of an avatar’s happy face.

Again, I’m using an illustration from New Life Italy‘s home page here:

(Image courtesy New Life Italy.)

My theory is that many grid owners and website managers are technologists at heart. They prefer to work by themselves.

You, as a technologist, might enjoy a home page that is full of dense text, statistics, details of your server configurations, and capacity utilization charts. But you target audience doesn’t. If they did, they would be running their own grids — they wouldn’t need to rent land from you!

Sure, a percentage of your customers will also be loners, or people who might like a little quiet time once in a while. But most people are going to come to a social grid to socialize.

The bottom line is this: Don’t make it hard for potential visitors to imagine themselves having fun on your grid. Show them what they’re missing with vibrant, engaging images of people enjoying all that your world has to offer.

And this picture should be the main focal point of your home page. The first thing people think of when they see your site should be, “This grid is fun. I want to be there.”

How to get there

Okay, so somebody’s come to your website and thought to themselves, “Oh my God, the people in this picture are having so much fun. I want to join them. How do I get there?”

This brings us to the next essential element your OpenSim grid website needs: clear and easy instructions for accessing your grid.

For most existing OpenSim users, the simplest way to get users to come to your grid is via hypergrid. Give them your login URI as plain text that they can copy and paste into their viewer. Make sure this login URI is prominently displayed and easy to find on your homepage.

Like at the top of the DigiWorldz home page here:

(Image courtesy DigiWorldz.)

Avoid using graphic images for your login URI, as this makes it harder for users to copy the text.

I am always surprised by how often I can’t find the grid’s login URI or hypergrid address at all on the home page and have to hunt around for it.

For people who are new to OpenSim, you’ll want to guide them through the process of creating an avatar and accessing your grid. Consider adding a button or link that says something like “New to OpenSim? Start here!” This should lead to a page with step-by-step instructions for creating an account, downloading a viewer, and logging into your grid.

The goal is to make the process of accessing your grid as simple and intuitive as possible. If you can, try to get someone who’s never been to OpenSim before to follow your instructions.

Remember, every extra click or step you require is an opportunity for potential visitors to get frustrated or distracted and give up.

Rent land

For most commercial grids, renting land is a primary revenue source. The land rental options should be very easy to see on your website. Nobody should hunt around for it. This isn’t something to bury in a sub-menu or hide at the bottom of a long home page.

Unfortunately, many grids make renting land far more complicated than it needs to be. They require users to create new user accounts, or provide technical details like region coordinates and specific server configurations. Unless someone is an experienced OpenSim user or grid owner, they probably won’t know this information off the top of their head. And if they do know exactly how many cores and RAM they need — well, they don’t need you, do they? They can run their own grid, thank you very much.

Each time someone has to make a decision, or look something up, half the time they’re going to say, “I’ll do that later.” And they never do it later. Instead, you will lose about half you potential customers with every additional click, every new page, every form field they have to fill out. Pretend you’re a new customer. How many clicks will it take someone before they can finally send you money? How many decisions do they have to make?

So, if, say, you have 100 visitors who come to your website thinking of getting a region, and six steps to go through before they can buy land — you’ll lose 50 people at the first step, another 25 at the second step, 12 more at the third step, another six at the fourth step, three at the fifth step. And you’ll have just one or two people left, if you’re lucky. You just wasted 99 potential customers. Sure, some of them might come back. Eventually. When they remember. Or they might forget that they wanted to get a region. Or get a region somewhere else. Or they’ll go to Second Life, because at least they know how to buy land there. Though even Second Life makes you click around a lot before you finally get to… $209 a month for a 20,000 prim region??? With a $349 setup fee???

Oh, for God’s sake. Don’t make your potential customers suffer like that! And pay so, so much for so little!

Make things easy for them. And take their money first, then figure out everything else.

Put a big, bold “Rent Land Now” button right on your homepage. When a user clicks this button, they should be taken directly to a simple, streamlined land rental page.

Or you can put a form right on the home page with your three top-selling options.

Darkheart’s Playground was the only grid I found that had a land rental box right on the home page. You do have to scroll down to find it, and the options could be simpler, but they’ve got something! Unfortunately, as of this writing, none of the buttons work. In theory, however, they could bring up a PayPal popup where all a user would have to do is click the “Pay Now” button and be in business. They can create their user accounts and decide on region names later, after they’ve given you the money.

(Image courtesy Darkheart’s Playground.)

Offer a few pre-configured land packages based on your most popular options. For example, you might have a “Starter Region” with 15,000 prims and 20 avatar capacity, a “Community Region” with 45,000 prims and 50 avatar capacity, and a “Commercial Region” with 100,000 prims and 100 avatar capacity. Each option should have a clear price and a “Rent Now” button that takes the user directly to a payment page. Or you might organize them based on who the customer is — a homesteader, a builder, an events venue, a merchant — and create default region packages that fit their needs best.

If a user wants a more customized land configuration, take them to a simple form where they can enter their desired land size, prim count, and avatar capacity. Avoid requiring technical details like server names or region coordinates — handle these on the back-end after the user has completed their purchase, or give them a default configuration that they can simply agree to.

The key is to minimize the number of decisions and technical details the user has to deal with.

Pretend you’re a newcomer from, say, Second Life, attracted by your grid’s low prices. How many clicks would it take for them to actually make a purchase?

Try to get someone who hates you to go through the process — a teenage child, for example, or a coworker whose lunch you’ve stolen. Will they be able to navigate through to the end without your help?

If your grid doesn’t rent land, replace this item with whatever else a top priority for your visitors would be.

For example, if you’re a free-to-connect grid, you can feature an at-home region-installer download.

If you’re a non-profit, use this space for a donation button. You can use one simple donation button, or have tiers for different levels of support. Explain what the donation will be used for — to buy developers coffee? To pay for backup servers? To reduce lag?

If you have a content marketplace, feature a bestselling item or a new arrival.

If you offer paid memberships, put that in this prominent location.

Latest events

The next thing you’ll want to feature on your home page is an ad for an upcoming event, to give people a good reason to come to your grid. Or you might feature a write-up of an event that just happened, to make people feel sorry that they missed out on something cool.

If you don’t have any events, offer a promo deal, or a how-to article, or showcase a freebie — something new and fresh that will reward people for coming to your website, and make them more likely to share the link with friends.

The goal is to give potential visitors a sense of the vibrant, active community on your grid and to entice them to come and check out what’s happening. This is your chance to show off the variety and creativity of your grid’s residents and events.

Discovery Grid does a great job here, by embedding their calendar right on the home page, with attractive visuals for each event.

(Image courtesy Discovery Grid.)

Some ideas for types of events to highlight include:

  • Live music performances
  • Art exhibitions and gallery openings
  • Fashion shows and contests
  • Role-playing events and adventures
  • Educational workshops and classes
  • Community gatherings and parties
  • Charity events and fundraisers

For each event, provide a brief description, the date and time, and a high-quality image that captures the excitement and energy of the event. If possible, include a direct link to the event location on your grid, so visitors can easily teleport there.

In addition to featuring specific events, consider showcasing user-generated content and activities on your grid. This could include:

  • New and notable builds or regions
  • User-created games and attractions
  • Popular social spots and hangouts
  • Featured merchants and creators

By regularly updating your events and activities section, you’ll give visitors a reason to keep coming back to your website and your grid. They’ll see that there’s always something new and exciting happening, and they won’t want to miss out.

Remember, the goal is to make your grid irresistible to potential visitors. By showcasing the vibrant, active community on your grid and highlighting all the amazing events and activities happening there, you’ll give people a compelling reason to come and experience it for themselves.

Having fresh content on your home page will also help your grid rank higher in search engines. You can also cheat, and embed your social media feed. For example, if you regularly post stuff on Facebook or another social media platform, embed the feed to get fresh new stuff for your home page all the time. Well, as long as you keep your social media fresh.

Littlefield Grid, for example, embeds their Twitter feed on their home page. OSgrid and AviWorlds embed Discord pages. GroovyVerse embeds their Mastodon feed and shared snapshots from residents. ZetaWorlds features their latest blog posts.

(Image courtesy ZetaWorlds.)

ZetaWorlds, by the way, also makes it super easy to grab the hypergrid address with that nice red “Copy” button, the green “Join Now!” button takes you to a signup page with a nice choice of membership levels, and the images on the home page feature people!

Login button

This is one item that nearly every grid has, and it’s where it should be — at the top right of the page.

That’s because they know that a top reason that people come to their website is to do stuff with their accounts, like submit support requests.

Good job, OpenSim grids.

Keep it simple

That might seem like a lot of stuff to put on a single page: a picture of people, a hypergrid address, a land rental box, a new event or announcement, and a login button at the top right.

But if you look through grid home pages, you’ll often find that they’ve got a lot of stuff crammed in there, most of it which isn’t a top priority for either users or grid owners.

Some grids put their mission statements on the home page. In my opinion, these are all identical and a waste of space that takes focus away from the things that you actually want people to pay attention to. Some grids post detailed technical details about their configurations. Some grids post random graphics unrelated to OpenSim.

Many grids post stats boxes. I’m all in favor of grids publishing their stats, but this is one thing you can safely put in a drop-down menu or at the bottom of the page. Stats are a nice-to-have — for me, anyway — but if they take away real estate that can be used to promote an event or a land sale — go with the event or land sale.

There’s only so many things a person can absorb when they look at a website. Too much clutter will drive people away.

You can put everything else in drop-down menus or further down on the home page, where people can scroll to see it.

A note about grid stats

Now, I know that grids don’t have to publish their stats. And some grids probably shouldn’t — there’s no reason for a school grid or a company grid only used by its employees to tell the world how many visitors it has.

But public and commercial grids should publish their stats, because it’s a free inbound link from Hypergrid Business every month. Our monthly stats report is one of our best-read regular posts, and people check the lists we publish to find new grids to visit.

If you have a grid, you can check that it’s on our active grids list, and if you want to know if we’re collecting your grid’s stats, check out our April 2024 raw stats report.

If you don’t have a stats page, or want to make sure that your stats page is as easy as possible for our database to read, so that there aren’t any mistakes, it should have the following information:

Total number of registered users: 123
Total regions: 4567
Unique 30-day visitors: 890

The way the scraper looks is that it searches for a key phrase, then grabs the numbers immediately after the phrase.

I prefer to see regions counted in the form of standard region equivalents, but my database can also handle square meters and square kilometers. And, for active monthly users or unique 30-day visitors, I prefer to have a single total of both local and hypergrid visitors. You can also have other stats on your stats page, but these three are the ones that I track to have consistency for comparison purposes.

I also prefer it when the stats page is as simple as possible, with no tables, animations, or weird graphics to mess up the parser.

If you want to see examples of stats pages that work well for me, check out the DigiWorldz stats page, or the Alternate Metaverse stats page, or the Wolf Territories Grid stats page. That last one is my favorite because there are no thousands separators in the numbers. The thing with separators is that some countries use commas, some use periods, and some use apostrophes. Arrgh!

If you’ve ever wondered why I’m the only one who collects these stats every month, and why there are so many mistakes in them — this is why. It’s pretty much impossible to write an automated system to collect stats because every grid formats them differently. So there’s a lot of manual labor involved, folks.

Why should anyone care about OpenSim stats? They’re meaningless, right? Who cares how many people a grid has? No, there’s no reason to care except… marketing!

Every grid that reports users is more social proof that people are using and enjoying OpenSim. The more grids report their stats, the better. Even if your grid is small — some people prefer small grids.

And don’t forget: other grids aren’t your competitors. Your biggest enemy is the fact that Second Life users don’t know that OpenSim exists. Once they find out, and learn about the great prices we have here, the superb amount of control people have over their own regions or private mini-grids, and the awesomeness that is the Kitely Market, then they come. And they stay. And they’ll visit multiple grids until they find one that fits them best where they can settle down and make their home. And they’ll go shopping, and attend events, and donate to performers, and do all the things to grow the platform.

Every single grid that brings in people from Second Life helps all the grids. Every single article or post or social media share that tells people that OpenSim exists helps everyone.