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Phillip Rosedale is returning as a strategic investor and advisor to Second Life, a company he founded 19 years ago, but it is unlikely that Second Life is going to change much given the tough company culture, closed nature of the platform, and the fact that High Fidelity is itselfRead More →

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Active users passed 40,000 for the first time in history, hitting 41,145, up more than 2,000 compared to last month. This despite a number of grids not reporting their stats this month including Tag Grid, which typically has more than 1,500 unique monthly logins. The number of registered uses alsoRead More →

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StoryLink Radio, a group of Irish storytellers at Seanchaí Library, will host a series of Halloween events on Kitely and Second Life next month. There will be live in-world storytelling sessions and hunts from 7 p.m. Pacific Time every Thursday, Friday, Sunday, and most Tuesdays from 1 October to 30 October,Read More →

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OpenSim users have purchased more than a quarter million dollars worth of virtual goods on the Kitely Market since its inception in 2013, Kitely announced yesterday. In that time, it has grown from fewer than 1,000 listed items to nearly 34,000. When it launched, it only delivered to one grid,Read More →

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The Tag Grid Marketplace, in development since 2015 but which the grid began widely promoting this year, has grown at nearly twice the rate of the Kitely Market over the past five months. Tag Grid merchants added 4,058 new item listings, while Kitely merchants added 2,289. However, Kitely is stillRead More →

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The Kitely Market, OpenSim’s largest commercial content marketplace, has passed the 30,000 item milestone this month. The market currently delivers to 345 different grids, both hypergrid-enabled and closed, private grids. (Instructions for how to configure the Kitely Market for closed grids are here.) According to Kitely co-founder and CEO IlanRead More →

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In the comments section on one of the several InWorldz-related articles these past few days, I saw some people talking about whether OpenSim is safe for content. The idea being that InWorldz was somehow safer because it’s not OpenSim. First, InWorldz IS OpenSim. It’s just another fork off the OpenSimRead More →

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OpenSim grids are welcoming former InWorldz residents with open arms, offering technical support to get their OARs uploaded, discounts on region rentals, and even free homes and stores. Scroll down for details about special offers. Where to go For people looking for a closed, commercial grid — no hypergrid travelRead More →

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Although many creators do not speak up, theft and illegal distribution of their content is hurting their morale and creativity, and may even be driving some out of OpenSim altogether. One creator of mesh avatars, who did not want to be named, saw her products distributed full perms across multipleRead More →

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After trying several business models with fail and shutting down and reopening several times thus earning the name “the yo-yo grid,” AviWorlds is back online. This time, it’s a closed grid, meaning people will not be able to teleport to other grids or easily take their content to other grids —Read More →

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OpenSim users can buy legal mesh bodies for their avatars — and the news has helped keep noted designer Linda Kellie from leaving. “Jessica Random and I sat down the other day and made a pro and con list,” she wrote in a post yesterday. “And in the end one ofRead More →

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Kitely Market sales have increased significantly over the past year, Kitely CEO Ilan Tochner told Hypergrid Business. The market now delivers licensed OpenSim content to 162 grids, with 16,364 product variations grouped under 8,551 listings. Of the variations, 11,394 are sold with the export permission, meaning that they can beRead More →

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Update: I missed a couple of grids in the first version of the story, AllCity updated their stats, and I removed Alife Virtual’s stats from the report because of questions about their accuracy. Read full story here. Only a small handful of grids had problems this month, while the restRead More →

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There are grids whose welcome areas are always full of people hanging out, with mentors on hand to help newcomers and answer questions from residents and visitors, even grid owners stopping by to press the virtual flesh. Kitely has not been one of those grids. In the past, its welcomeRead More →

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The number of non-exportable items on the Kitely Market dropped this week, while exportable products continue to rise, according to statistics released today by Kitely. The difference between the two was the second highest in history. The first, in November of 2014, came after Kitely significantly improved market functionality andRead More →

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The Kitely Market is now delivering content to 138 different OpenSim grids and mini-grids and merchants are continuing to increase the amount of exportable content available on the platform. There are currently 7,486 product listings in Kitely Market containing 14,134 variations, of which 9,237 are sold with the Export permission.Read More →

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Since it first launched in early 2011, Kitely has been the only major grid not to publish its stats, instead providing them by email to Hypergrid Business on request. That changed today, as the grid began publishing its land area and total registered users on its login page. This isRead More →

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The Kitely Market reported a new high in the number of product listings, and the share of those listings that are exportable to other grids was also higher than ever. The Market currently offers 13,703 different variations on 7,201 products. Of those variations, 8,909 are exportable to other grids. ExportablesRead More →

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Merchants who sell virtual goods on the Kitely Market can now automatically share the revenues they receive with third parties, both for individual listings and for individual variations of those listings, the company announced this week. “Merchants have been asking us to add support for automatically splitting marketplace store revenue betweenRead More →

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I regularly get emails from new grid owners looking for publicity but very few grids can answer the first question I ask: “What makes your grid different?” Instead, I get generic answers, which could apply to any of the 300-plus active grids I’m currently following. Such as community, support, lowRead More →

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The Kitely Market is now offering more than 12,500 different items, 64 percent of which are exportable to other grids, with exports growth continuing to outpace Kitely-only content. “We’re very happy with Kitely Market’s current growth,” Kitely CEO Ilan Tochner told Hypergrid Business. “Last month we reached a record highRead More →

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While most OpenSim hosting companies are cautiously optimistic about the new Gloebit currency, currently in beta testing on Hyperica and ZetaWorld grids, grid owners themselves are split on how they want to see payments evolve. Dreamland, Zetamex testing platform Dreamland Metaverse was one of the early testers of the GloebitRead More →

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By all indications, the hypergrid is hopping. As of mid-January, 68 percent of all active users, 75 percent of all public OpenSim grids, and 93 percent of all regions were on the hypergrid, and the number of hypergrid events and communities is exploding. The Kitely Market now delivers to moreRead More →

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Last Sunday we reported that Kitely Market‘s top-selling merchant, Ozwell Wayfarer, has made all this content exportable to other grids and has seen no evidence of bootlegging. I have long been reminding content creators that closed grids don’t provide any additional security for content, except for scripted or rigged content, becauseRead More →

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Merchants continued to expand the number of exportable items listed on the Kitely Market this month, showing an increasing tolerance for selling to the broader metaverse. Meanwhile, the number of items limited to just being used on the Kitely grid shrank for the second month in a row. There areRead More →

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The Kitely Market saw the first downturn in its listing numbers this month, a result of some housekeeping on the part of management. “We were forced to remove the listings of several merchants who repeatedly failed to follow our product listing guidelines despite our detailed instructions on what needs toRead More →

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There are now 6,097 different products listed on the Kitely Market, in 11,847 product variations — 7,189 of which are exportable. Kitely groups items together, so that, say, a red version of a dress and a blue version of the same dress are listed as variations of the same product.Read More →

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It’s back to the past for AviWorlds this week, as the grid has moved to turn off hypergrid connectivity and start charging for uploads. By our count, this is the fifth time the grid has turned off hypergrid connectivity after turning it on. The previous time was last winter, notRead More →

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The Kitely Merchant Fair starts tomorrow with freebies, events, and more at the Kitely Hypergrid Merchant Fair region on Kitely. Teleport via hypergrid to grid.kitely.com:8002:Kitely Hypergrid Merchant Fair.Read More →

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The Kitely Market hit another milestone this month, with a new total of 10,162 different item listings grouped into 5,030 different products. This is up from 9,971 different listings a month ago. Of the listings, 6,080 are exportable, or 60 percent. Kitely groups items together, so that, say, a red versionRead More →

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The Kitely Market has successfully delivered purchases to customers on 96 different grids, including both hypergrid-enabled grids and closed grids. “Our marketplace’s reach is continuing to grow,” Kitely CEO Ilan Tocher told Hypergrid Business. “By now it has become quite clear that merchants who take the time to create highRead More →

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The Kitely Market gained almost 700 new listings this month, its biggest growth month since the market first launched two years ago. More than two-thirds of these listings were for exportable items, available for purchase on almost any hypergrid-enabled grid and some closed grids. The market now has 9,392 differentRead More →

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Customers have been able to shop on the Kitely Market and get the products delivered to other grids for over a year, But adding a new grid to the delivery list meant that the customer had to know the grid’s loginURI and add it through the grid manager. With hundredsRead More →

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The Kitely Market has passed the 8,000 item milestone, with a new total of 8,300 different items, grouped into 4,116 product listings. Unlike the Second Life Marketplace, where, say, different colors of a dress would each be listed separately, Kitely Market counts these as variations of a common product listing.Read More →

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The exportable content on the Kitely Market grew ten times faster than non-exportables over the past month, continuing a trend that began late last summer. The market added 245 new exportable items, compared to 23 non-exportable ones, for a new total of 7,950 different variations of 3,898 products. A singleRead More →

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Given the choice between selling to Kitely‘s 1,003 local active users or to the 14,075 on the hypergrid, it makes sense that more and more Kitely Market merchants have gone the hypergrid route. In fact, exportables have long been growing at a faster rate than non-exportables for the past eightRead More →

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I think, looking back, we’ll see 2014 as a pivotal year in the growth of the metaverse. This was the year that early adopters realized that virtual reality was on its way, the hypergrid came into its own, Google Plus became the social platform of choice for metaverse residents, theRead More →

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Growth in the Kitely Market‘s exportable products continued to exceed that of non-exportables this month, as Kitely rolled out several new features for merchants in recent weeks. The Kitely Market currently contains 7,213 different items or “variations,” grouped into 3,449 product listings. On the Kitely Market, like on Amazon andRead More →

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What do OpenSim users want for most of all? Content. According to this year’s OpenSim  Hosting Survey, 35 percent of respondents most wanted an online marketplace, and 30 percent wanted a bigger selection of content — and 53 percent picked one or the other, or both. In third place was a web-basedRead More →