Wagner James Au / New World Notes
Author, strategist, virtual world reporter
recent posts
- Welcome to New World Notes’ 2006-2025 Archive!
- Virtual World Usage Stats from S&P Global Market Intelligence — Plus VRChat & Second Life Specifics!
- Top Five Posts Including: Huge Rec Room Layoff & Meta Boots Neal Stephenson Off Facebook (Briefly)
- Four Glorious Second Life Sims to Explore — After Watching Sabina Valeska’s Machinima Tributes to Them!
- Virtual World Usage Stats from S&P Global Market Intelligence — Plus VRChat & Second Life Specifics!
about
Category: Real world in SL
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I'd estimate there's roughly 3000 active Second Life users from Ukraine. According to data from SimilarWeb, .5% of visitors to SecondLife.com are from Ukraine. And based on public data from Linden Lab and from what insiders tell me, there's roughly 600,000 active SL users. So simple math gets us to 3,000 Ukrainians, more or less…
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While the Second Life community rallies to support Ukrainian users in the virtual world, such help during a time like this can only go so far. I've been thinking about that over the last few days while intermittently messaging Hanna, creator of the beloved SL fashion brand Osmia. While Osmia is listed among the Second…
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A Tribute to Ukraine – "Long may Ukraine stand proud and free." by Rhaenys Targaryen Update, 2/26: Bumped up for weekend support! This is a Google Spreadsheet of Second Life stores and website Marketplace shops owned by Ukraine-based creators on the virtual world platform. It was quickly created by SL community members within the first…
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This is a pretty fascinating thread on /SecondLife where community members answer the question, "How has Second Life helped you sharpen for any real life experiences?" The examples given range from the funny: Fashion. I used to dress well, then during lockdown started dressing like a trash pile, but dressing up my avi made me…
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Update, August 2: As Vaki predicted, Linden Lab announced the end of gachas in Second Life: Due to a changing regulatory climate, we’ve had to make the difficult decision to sunset a very popular sales mechanism for content in Second Life. It’s widely known as "gacha", and is defined by a chance-based outcome as a…
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Where do virtual worlds go when the pandemic’s gone? It's a topic I'll be thinking a lot about in the coming months. The tragedy of the global pandemic accelerated the need for online work and virtual social spaces as never before — hence the explosion of Zoom-meets-virtual worlds startups such as this one. But as…
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You'll likely need to wear your headphones to hear it, but on a recent visit to my office in Waterhead in SL, I noticed the location was starting to sound really lovely. Not just due to my artificial tide, but recently a neighbor added one of those lonely pier bells, while another had installed a…
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In case you missed it last week, here's the Discovery Channel's BattleBots fight between SlapBox and Sharko, prototyped in Second Life by Artorius Constantine, owner of SL's Nano Station Technologies store. Sent to us via BattleBots super-fan Devin Vaughn, it is almost more brutal and merciless as a major fashion drop in SL, which is…
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As the United States takes stalk of the violent riot of Trump supporters at the Capitol last week, led in part by people wearing Nazi shirts and carrying Confederate flags, I thought back to the behavior of Trump supporters in Second Life before the 2016 election — mobbing the virtual HQ of Bernie Sanders, for…
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August 31, 2006: Read my interview with now-Senator Mark Warner here. His SL appearance came at a time when Democratic insiders were considering whether the former Virginia governor should be their "fallback" presidential candidate in 2008, should Senator Hillary Clinton’s presumptive ascension as the party’s choice for President in 2008 ever fell through. (Funny these…
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 