Really?
But Opensim is still widely used regardless of all the naysayers that just love to lash out on this column while proclaiming their love for the platform in the same breath. No, truth be known the naysayers are mostly people that have failed in Second Life, moved on to Opensim and failed with that too. Some are just whiners who can't afford to do much else but use a laggy home pc and find fault with the software. Goodness me! Opensim is open source and open source is by it's very nature alpha pretty much indefinitely. That is the nature of the beast. Want it to be better then learn to code and send in your patches but don't go rubbishing the exceptional work of those who have spent thousands of hours doing it for you for free.
And far from being out of date or the "bastard child of Linden lab" (frankly, a supreme insult to the developers) Opensim was never Linden code, ever. Opensim shares the protocols but none of the code and if anyone thinks Opensim is buggy then Second Life is just as buggy if not worse. Second Life has only recently got any better but then Opensim has been advancing brilliantly in the past two years as well so the naysayers need to get real because even they still think it's worth using. Hell, why are they still bothering if they think it so bad? Just get out and flog some other dead horse if that's what you think of it but don't go crabbing on about everyone else being in a state of denial. Speak for yourselves!
So now lets take a look at traffic and to hell with Google trends. Opensim is not Facebook or Minecraft of Second Life come to that. It has it's own character and appeals to a broad spectrum of silent users (the dark Metaverse) while the visible tip of usage can be evenly divided between commercial grids trying to mimic the SL business model and mostly failing and the Hypergrid users that collectively make up the greater part of what is visible. In SL you can see on the map vast numbers of little used regions while activity is mostly concentrated on particular sites. The Opensim Metaverse is smaller but very similar in many ways with a lot of little used mini grids while most of the activity is concentrated on particular grids. It is these concentration areas in both Second Life and Opensim where the real communities gather so, if you trouble to go looking or Hypergrid traveling, you will find plenty of community in Opensim as well as creativity.
Too many people have tried to get rich on Opensim and failed - the antics of AviWorlds is a good example but money is being made by hosting companies anyway. And plenty of it! Why? because there are so many people paying for hosting and not relying on slow home connections and laggy home Pc's. Lani Global with her sci-fi sims in OSgrid has been very successful and on G+ Opensim Virtual we learn of mini grids like Nara's Nook that appeals to writers. Nara puts in the time and effort to make her little grid a welcoming site but these are just a few. Travel and you will find plenty more on Metropolis, Craft and OSgrid to name a few. But beyond all that I don't see Opensim grid owners spending money on advertising while Linden lab dose even though they are well known anyway, and so does IMVU and Minecraft and all the others. So for all the whiners who moan there are no people in Opensim grids don't judge every grid by your own failures. Opening a grid is one thing but getting people through the door takes hard work, a good theme or service and spending some serious money on advertising very often. Otherwise it's just pot luck and getting known any way you can which is what a lot of people in Opensim spend time doing. They get involved with others across the Hypergrid worlds which is why we set up G+ Opensim Virtual to help that along. But if you are going to sit in your delightful Never Never land dreaming about how Minecraft made it and then blaming everyone else for your failure then sure, your flogging a dead horse I would agree.