About Traffic

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What is Traffic ? (Dwell)

Linden initially introduced "traffic" or "dwell" as a way to reward residents who create popular locations. Currently, traffic provides Residents with an off-the-cuff answer to the question "How popular is a place?"

• Initially, Dwell was a fixed value of points for each Resident assigned by calculating the proportion of their SL day spent at each location in the world on a daily basis. Currently, a Resident must spend at least 5 minutes in one full chunk to give a parcel one traffic point.
• Initially, Linden offered a $US reward to the 2% of landowners who receive the most dwell - in proportion to the dwell their properties received. In August of 2004, US$2,308 was distributed to 36 landowners. This was essentially seed funding in the earlier days of SL when even a popular build could still become economically unviable due to very low population numbers.
• In mid-2006, stipends based on dwell were removed as population growth provided a audience sufficient enough to support a more conventional economy in Second Life.
• Traffic is now counted only on a per-land-parcel basis, irregardless of whether the land is group-owned, individual holdings, mainland or private island land, a standalone destination or a waypoint in a series of related locations.
• Traffic also determines which "Popular Places" are selected each night. You can see these by clicking on the Find button and selecting the "Popular Places" tab. They also appear on the Map as a "thumbs up" icon.
• The traffic of all avatars count, regardless of their membership status.