Emerald, the dominant third party viewer from 2010, accounted for only half the user hours then. However, rather than that expanding the userbase for the company's own software, usage among existing users seems to have slipped. The SL viewer has seen a number of usability improvements since Rod Humble became CEO in early 2011. Linden Lab has little control over Second Life as it is actually used by most of its established userbase, and has little chance of re-gaining the market lead. But that to one side, Oz's words lead to some pretty extraordinary conclusions, among them:
So my original estimate of Phoenix usage from yesterday was way off, and I've corrected it as much as possible (short of just replacing the whole post with a picture of Keyboard Cat, which I'm tempted to do). Up to 65-75% of SLers are now using Phoenix or Firestorm, and 65-85% of total SL user minutes are on those viewers. Still, it's unlikely the shares have changed drastically in two months, and based on what Oz says, along with what some SL insiders have suggested elsewhere, I think the following is a very plausible estimate:
"The 'market shares' of various Viewers isn't a data point we're currently sharing," spokesman Peter Gray told me. This admission came in March, as I said, so I checked with Linden Lab if it remained true: And our viewer is number three behind Firestorm." And Firestorm is the newer technology viewer from your project, is the number two, and it's gaining market share. Phoenix is far and away the number one viewer, although it's quite steadily losing market share these days, has been for some months now. A significant minority - we're the number three viewer behind, behind the two. At about 33 minutes into the conversation, Lawrence says this in relationship to the official Second Life viewer as compred with Phoenix and Firestorm, which are third party SL viewers made by The Phoenix Viewer Project team, a large consortium of SL users (none of whom are well known by their real names): "Our own viewer users are a minority. It's so important, it needs to be highlighted here. Third party viewer developer Tonya Souther recently pointed out a very important March interview on Treet TV with Linden Lab's Open Development director Scott "Oz Linden" Lawrence, which includes a crucial passage I initially missed.
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