NBC Xmas Tree: Largest Event in SL History?
Sam Landman of the Electric Sheep Company (who, as you know, sponsor this blog), just got in touch to let me know that NBC managed to get around 1,000 avatars into the 18 sims they’d mustered for the virtual tree lighting event they put on earlier this evening in Second Life to match the tree lighting in Rockefeller Center. NBC, as well, counted the event a success. Does that make it the largest single event in SL history? It very well might. Though if you know of a larger one, I’d love to hear about it — especially how it was pulled off. The Sheep had a last-minute scramble on their hands to pull off this one, due to unavoidable scheduling conflicts with the Wednesday update of SL’s software, which threatened to close the entire thing down, and the fact that Linden Lab has been unable to meet demand for new regions, forcing the Sheep to go to land baron, “business girl,” and virrtual millionaire (in US dollar terms, note) Anshe Chung to rent a bunch of sims. Look for more such events in future. “We were very impressed with how forward-thinking NBC was in using this medium,” Sam says. “They really get it. It would be great to see them leverage this to further build their digital media brand.”
It would also be interesting to see Anshe, or someone like her, leverage their capacity to meet demand LL just can’t, for whatever reason. That’s what’s been happening with SL land barony for a long time, just on a slightly smaller scale. Brokers of multiple sims for events like NBC’s tree lighting could clean up, and create a brand new virtual industry along the way. But Linden Lab will still have to bring service for new customers up to a higher standard if they expect to continue to see sustainable growth.
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SecondCast #45 - “Honorary Viking”…
Happy Thanksgiving everybody! It’s great to be back! Here’s the weekly installment…
Secondcasters get together to trip on their Tryptophan left overs and cold medicine to bring you *cough* the latest audible news echoing through …
“BBC News reports that attendance for BBC Radio 1’s recent festival in the virtual world of Second Life pulled in more than 6,000 avatar attendees over the weekend of May 13, 2006.”
http://www.secretlair.com/index.php?/clickableculture/entry/bbcs_virtual_fest_brings_big_numbers/
Nice. Although I think 6,000 avatars over 48 hours is maybe not the same as 1,000 avatars over 2 or 3 hours.
The 6,000 over the course of an entire weekend was impressive - and it was a really fun event. Snow Patrol and Primal Scream, especially! However, there were never 1,000 concurrent avatars which is what makes this feat so impressive.
I enjoyed the event thoroughly, once I managed to get in. Teleporting which I suspect was meant to be fixed by the upgrade was as bad as it could possibly be without an actual crash of the grid. A note to NBC. Free Ice Skates in a box you can’t open in sim are slightly useless when the TP is so unstable. Nice job on Rockafeller though, very clean work.
Mark, I know 6,000 avatars over 3 days is not the same as 1,000 concurrent avatars in a 2-3 hours period :) I mentioned it because you asked about the “largest” event ever held in SL. I guess I should have known that what you meant by “largest” was “highest concurrency during the shortest timespan, across the most simulators.”
peace
-t-
Yeah, Tony, let’s keep it apples and apples, huh? I mean, jeez.
jk, man.
:)
Kidding aside, I feel that it would be useful for to establish some consistent measurement standards to describe event attendance–for example, I got a press release this morning from someone claiming that their pending 20-sim event is anticipated to be “the biggest music event in Second Life ever” How will “biggest” be quantified? Will it be the same as “largest?”
Communication between the folks staging these events, the folks paying for these events, and/or the folks following these events can only be improved by agreeing on measurement standards, in my opinion. We had to adopt standards for measuring web site traffic/usage in order to talk about web sites credibly, why not places like SL?
Tony > “We had to adopt standards for measuring web site traffic/usage in order to talk about web sites credibly, why not places like SL?”
That’s a good point. But I think what happened was that *we* (i.e., the public, users of the Web, third parties) set those standards, not the companies. I imagine we’ll continue to see plenty of hyperbole for some time to come.
[…] For some companies the goal is to reach as many avatars as possible with one or more live events. BBC Radio One, NBC’s Tree Lighting Ceremony, Bantam Dell’s Dean Koontz event (and upcoming George RR Martin event) and the Infinite Mind events are examples of this approach. Long term traffic is unimportant for these projects and the destinations are often transient or minimized. 4 Eyed Monsters and the Dean Koontz event used an Electric Sheep affiliate network to push their events out to resident locations on the grid. […]
[…] It took place this week on Monday afternoon, apparently because of the Christmas schedule, but it looks like NBC, which has already held a couple of events in the virtual world of Second Life, is now trying out Sunday Night Football in the virtual world. The Christmas game between the Cowboys and the Eagles was not simulcast in SL but instead accompanied by a “guess the play” game (run from a heads-up display) that rewarded virtual armchair quarterbacks with prizes of Linden dollars at halftime and at the end of the game. The event, a beta test, according to the Electric Sheep Company (sponsors of this blog), was held at NBC’s virtual sports bar in the »Second City 3« sim, and was attended by about a dozen people, I’m told by one sports fan, who didn’t seem to mind watching the game on TV while they carried on in high Second Life style within the virtual world. No word yet on whether the event constituted a success for NBC, but I’m betting it worked well enough that we can look forward to more such Sunday night games in SL — which clearly has greater potential than the lame offerings that used to be known as “interactive television.” […]