Sand Castle Studios

The current Second Life offers a list of “Popular Places” on the grid. This list is determined by traffic numbers. The current traffic number is generated based on the amount of Residents who visited a certain parcel, and the time spent on that parcel out of their total time in-world that day. Because of the way that this formula works many Second Life parcel owners use camping to generate traffic numbers. Camping is when parcel owners pay avatars to spend time on their parcel. Unfortunately this process has been further exploited by residents who use bots (software-controlled avatars) to collect this camping wages. This process has caused added strain on the grid and made lists like the popular places list inaccurate, but is this all about to change?

Today Linden Lab announced on their official blog that they are interested in revamping their current traffic system and that they would be replacing the current popular places list with the new Second Life Showcase in two months. Linden Lab says the new list will be determined by an internal team that hand select places within categories. In the future they may allow resident to nominate places as well. You can find out more about the showcase here.

As far as traffic goes, Linden Lab admits in their blog post that the current traffic system is not working.

“It is clear that the current Traffic system is not an effective means of determining the success or popularity of a parcel, nor does it provide useful information about Residents visiting those parcels.”

They are encouraging residents who are interested to join the “LL Traffic Future” group to give input into what they would like to see for the future of traffic in Second Life.

Will Linden Lab really change the way traffic is calculated? Will that along with the end of the Popular Places listing open the doors for parcel owners to end camping and thereby decrease the use of bots? With no campers and bots, and mostly only truly active residents in-world will Linden Lab suffer a great loss in their statistics of the number of users currently online? Will this reduce some of the strain on the grid?

Time will tell.