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.
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.
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:
- Wolf Territories Grid: 5,904 active users
- OSgrid: 5,263 active users
- GBG World: 2,174 active users
- DigiWorldz: 2,125 active users
- Alternate Metaverse: 2,001 active users
- Darkheart’s Playground: 1,462 active users
- WaterSplash: 1,419 active users
- Vida Dupla: 1,222 active users
- Moonrose: 1,149 active users
- AviWorlds: 1,105 active users
- Neverworld: 1,086 active users
- Trianon World: 1,014 active users
- Littlefield: 993 active users
- Craft World: 965 active users
- AvatarLife: 940 active users
- Party Destination Grid: 845 active users
- Astralia: 773 active users
- Virtualife: 750 active users
- Kitely: 655 active users
- German World Grid: 623 active users
- ZetaWorlds: 618 active users
- Herederos Grid: 588 active users
- CandM World: 563 active users
- Groovy Verse: 505 active users
- 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.
- OSgrid: 30,960 regions
- Wolf Territories Grid: 28,928 regions
- Kitely: 18,085 regions
- ZetaWorlds: 12,772 regions
- Alternate Metaverse: 9,811 regions
- Groovy Verse: 7,864 regions
- DigiWorldz: 3,546 regions
- German World Grid: 2,476 regions
- CandM World: 1,760 regions
- Tag Grid: 1,464 regions
- Shoalwater Bay: 1,072 regions
- GBG World: 956 regions
- Virtual Worlds Grid: 915 regions
- 3rd Rock Grid: 872 regions
- AviWorlds: 853 regions
- Friends Grid: 816 regions
- ArtDestiny: 784 regions
- Kinky Haven: 669 regions
- AvatarLife: 605 regions
- Littlefield: 514 regions
- Craft World: 471 regions
- GorGrid: 430 regions
- Tomi’s World: 400 regions
- Furry World: 373 regions
- Neverworld: 344 regions
- DreamNation: 318 regions
- Nemesis 3D: 305 regions
- EdMondo: 300 regions
- Open Virtual Worlds: 241 regions
- Japan Open Grid: 194 regions
- Counter Earth: 186 regions
- MisFitz Grid: 181 regions
- Adreans-World: 173 regions
- GerGrid: 141 regions
- OpenSim Fest: 140 regions
- Darkheart’s Playground: 137 regions
- WestWorld Grid: 135 regions
- Outworldz: 127 regions
- Galactic Virtual: 127 regions
- Logicamp: 123 regions
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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