Advice+about+tracking

Advice About Audience Tracking in Second Life
From: "Eric Hackathorn"  To: "Beth Felice"  Subject: Re: interest in maya realities Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 17:57:43 -0500

Hey Beth,

Attached is the canned sales response to customer inquires. That said, I'm sure we could arrange some kind of discount for non-profit or educational institutions. Take a look at the requirements in the information below and if you're still interested I could set up a demonstration account to allow you to look at some of the data we are collecting on Linden Lab's new orientation island.

Thank you for your interest in Maya Realities!

The importance of understanding customer behavior is critical for a successful business. Until recently, the necessary tools have not existed for virtual world environments like Second Life. Maya Realities allows your 3-D web site based in Second Life to connect with visitors at a new level of analysis. As the emerging 3-D Internet takes shape, what better way is there to verify the return on your investment?

Our customers are businesses owning a minimum one "sim" land investment within Second Life. Once we process your order, a consent form is sent authorizing the deployment of our sensor grid. Upon receipt of the signed consent form, within one business day a setup package is delivered in-world to your organization's point of contact with detailed instructions. We require the use of a media URL on a small but popular sub-parcel. Also, a kiosk must be installed at a location of your choosing that informs visitors of your organization's privacy policy and provides visitors the option of opting out of personally identifiable information collection. This kiosk is not intended to be an advertisement for Maya Realities and can be customized with your organization's branding.

Maya Realities will optionally assist this deployment process for a nominal setup fee.

Once initial metrics are collected, your web account should be initialized within three to five business days. At this time, you will receive additional instructions on how to log into our service. For reference, you will find the login link on the top navigation bar at http://www.mayarealities.com/

Our service structure is as follows:

Setup:- optional sensor grid deployment per sim (not required for self installations) : $50 USD

Subscriptions: The first week is a free trial, after which the following rates apply: - one month subscription : $75 USD - three month subscription : $180 USD - six month subscription: $300 USD - one year subscription: $480 USD

To initiate your service, send an email to sales@mayarealities.com with your organization name, sim name, and Second Life point of contact. Extensive improvements are planned in the coming year and will be included in your subscription at no additional cost. PayPal is accepted.

At Maya Realities, your satisfaction is our top priority. If you have a problem with our service offerings, just let us know and we will work with you to resolve the issue. We make every effort to respond to all customer service inquiries within two business days. If you are unhappy with our service for any reason, we will provide a refund for the remainder of your subscription period less setup fees.

//I signed up for a trial to see what it looks like. Seems more and more like a functional backend makes sl a richer place.-ao//

I've not used the product Sean mentions, but I just got a demo of http://www.second-labs.com/analytics_info and I have to say, it is the most comprehensive and easy to use web interface I've seen of any of the traffic and sim performance tracking applications.

I believe we will be using it for the Second Life Best Practices in Education: Teaching, Learning, and Research conference this Friday ( http://slbestpractices2007.wikispaces.com/ - are registered? Are you coming? Last chance to volunteer or be involved!) and I will be sure to let you know how it works out.

- Chris/Fleep Chris Collins (SL Fleep Tuque) Conference Co-Chair Media, Vendors, & Exhibits Chair 2007 Second Life Best Practices in Education Conference http://slbestpractices2007.wikispaces.com/

From: Alan Levine Subject: Re: Metrics/Traffics on Sims/Parcels FYI, I just heard from Larry that we are working with the guy who did the NOAA sim who has a service that provides comprehensive SL metrics: [|__http://www.mayarealities.com/i__]

I'm not in the loop yet, but it sounds like we are going to be abel to have to heat maps, etc with tons of data. There was a post recently on SLED of someone else who had described a set up similar to this one. [beth f says, yes, go three paragraphs down]


 * from a conversation with JJ Drinkwater of the Caledon Library:**

Annie Octavia: ok. so the centralized landing point, is that to enhance the visitor experience more than say, capture metrics? JJ Drinkwater: ...the founder of Caledon uses the "telehub system" to encourage people to see more of the sims. That obliges the merchants, and also means that people encounter each other more often, which creates a more sociable environment. One complaint people often make about SL is that it seems empty, so having spots everyone must pass through adresses that Annie Octavia: may i quote this on our wiki? http://npsl.wikispaces.com JJ Drinkwater: You most certainly may! The gentleman to whom I am referring, the Guv'nah of Caledon, is a Mr Desmond Shang. JJ Drinkwater: It works very well on Info island, too....one is almost sure to meet someone or other at the Welcome Center

Tracking options I know of:
 * via Nick Noakes**

1) visitor counter - if you have a whole sim, then need a telehub as forced landing point where you also have the visitor counter. 2) sim radar which will scan and collect data. you can have the scan remote sims .... useful if you have multiple sims like NMC 3) hire a scipter to create what you want - likely to be anything from 500-15,000 Lindens 4) home develop script connected your own MySQL server. 5) mixture of 3 and 4

1 and 2 are purchasable SL gadgets ... usually in the 200-800 Lindens range. I don't know of one that will actually count new vs repeats. You could get a scripter to do this for you.

I have a simple visitor counter that sends me an email once a day. It think the radius is about 96m so not very far but it does tell me av name and duration they were there ... which obviously is not accurate as they go out of range. The Sim Radar Ultra by Thomas Convenor seems to be rated quite well by people I've talked to. Do a search on SLexchange for sim radar and visitor counter.

I ma not documenting, as Boracay was my experiment ... Alan is NMC? but you have got me thinking. However, it was easy to spot repeats. Also seeing that some people stayed anything from 15mins - 2 hours was interesting but doesn't tell me that much .. they could have 'parked' and gone afk. When I actually chatted with people, for some reason I got a lot of people straight off orientation island. I have a couple of stargates too on Boracay and that brings in gate hoppers ... usually don't stay long.

Stan you might also want to talk to the folks from Johnson & Wales University who did the Virtual Morocco project. They were working on flash-based tool that tracks the movement of avatars in real time and said they would be making it available to others - http://bloghud.com/id/2893/
 * from a current thread over on the SLED list:**

Sean

Trevena, Stan wrote: > WOW! Very cool stuff. We have tested using the SpyBot object available on the main grid to try to gather student statistics, but it's very general in the metrics it provides. > > We would VERY interested in discussing how we might get these tools on PacRimX. Do you need an infusion of L$ to your island? Email me at PacRimX@comcast.net if you might be willing to share. > > We are on the Teen Grid too, so there would be no tweaking of code required. If this is something you are willing to do for others (for a cost, or not), talk to Claudia Linden. She set Max Case up with an account that allows him to visit private Teen Grid Islands to distribute his Babbler/Debabbler translator. He had to make a few tweaks to get it to work properly on the Teen Grid, but now it works great! > > Stan Trevena > http://pacificrimx.wordpress.com > > > > From: educators-bounces@lists.secondlife.com on behalf of D.S.Seamans > Sent: Sun 5/13/2007 1:04 AM > To: SL Educators > Subject: RE: [SLED] Tracking students > > > We've done this on Schome Park on the Teen Grid. I wrote a blog post about it a few weeks back, including screenshots of the activity 'heatmap' we generate. > > Please take a look at http://conclave.open.ac.uk/glasshouses/?p=18 for the full lowdown. > > Dan Seamans > The Open University, UK >

Sean FitzGerald Second Life: Sean McDunnough Website: http://seanfitz.wikispaces.com/ Blog: http://seanfitzgerald.wordpress.com/