Breaking News: OpenSim Combined Regions Set to Surpass Second Life in 2012.

From January 15 2012 Hypergrid Business

Hypergrid Business released their latest report on the number of OpenSim Grids today.

They claim that OpenSim’s top 40 public grids gained 1,056 new regions over the past month, hitting a new record high of 22,651 regions. Meanwhile, the total number of active public grids is now over 90, with 16 new grids added to our list this month.

OpenSim growth in the past 12 months has been about 50% on average based the numbers indicated in the above chart. This assumes that the size of an OpenSim region is the same as an average Second Life region.

The top 20 OpenSim Grids according to Hypergrid Business are as follows:

• OSGrid: 10,819 regions
• ScienceSim: 1,915 regions
• Kitely: 1,502 regions
• Virtual Worlds Grid: 922 regions
• InWorldz: 883 regions
• The Other Universe: 728 regions
• New World Grid: 696 regions
• Metropolis: 631 regions
• Avination: 603 regions
• FrancoGrid: 468 regions
• MyOpenGrid: 389 regions
• AlphaTowne: 344 regions
• GridNirvana: 315 regions
• 3rd Rock Grid: 205 regions
• Moses: 158 regions
• Craft World: 142 regions
• Gay Nations: 135 regions
• Virtyou: 130 regions
• eceCloud: 127 regions
• Open Neuland: 127 regions

From January 15 Gridsurvey.com

The number of Second Life grids on January 15, according to Gridsurvey.com, is 30,840, or 36% more than the number of top 40 OpenGrid Regions. The number of OpenGrid Regions should surpass the number of Second Life regions in Q4 2012 if current growth trends hold. However, the number of Second Life grids is actually declining according to New World Notes, leaving even more concern for this seeming eventuality.

Why concern?  Because if the advantages of being in Second Life and its extremely high land prices are seen as simply not worth it for merchants, clubs, and entertainment venues, a stampede effect may occur --- and, by then, it may be too late for Linden Lab to adopt a more competitive land pricing policy -- and seek to raise revenues by other means.

To see my 2012 projections for Second Life which talk about this issue and others:
http://eddihaskell.blogspot.com/2011/12/7-important-second-life-predictions-for.html