users!
thought you might be interested in some stats. since those are really your numbers it’s time to show what we know about you:
webwise
according to google analytics vvvv.org had 313.075 unique visitors in 2011 compared to 244.010 in 2010. they obviously didn’t get a download each (see below), so what did they do staying on the site for an average of ~4m30s?. around 22% came with an iOS and here is where they all came from:
| 2011 | 2010 | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. germany | 16.82% | 18.22% | - |
| 2. usa | 11.36% | 9.61% | + |
| 3. uk | 6.33% | 6.81% | - |
| 4. france | 5.17% | 6.28% | - |
| 5. italy | 4.66% | 5.49% | - |
| 6. russia | 4.17% | 2.58% | + |
of all visitors in the last ~7 years 4254 took the effort to register on our site of which ~300 have been logged in within the last month. watchout facebook!
the image above shows visitors of 2011 (blue) vs. visitors of 2010 (orange) where you clearly see that the node-festival in november 2010 had quite an impact which is still lasting. this we can clearly not count as the devvvvs work. from the bottom of our quads: once again thanks to david and team (bow). in case you wonder what those regular spikes are in the graph, here is a view on the month of august that clearly shows your completely consistend access pattern. you conservative weekend-lazy bunch!
on a sad note, while firefox is still your favorite browser (37%) it lost massively since 2010 (47%) and instead you seem to prefer that kidsbrowser that is just oh so much better (from 17% in 2010 to 29% in 2011). ridiculous.
downloads
vvvv went through 3 incarnations in 2011 with a total of ~32100 downloads compared to 4 releases with a total download count of ~45700 in 2010 (with its node-festival). in the same period the community maintained addonpack has been downed ~14400 times (~10700x in 2010). so if you’re still reading, these figures clearly tell you that you’re part of a dying breed. consider a tweet: #vvvv userbase down ~30% in 2011. long live vvvv. apart from that i have no idea how anyone can work without the addonpack. i’d like to think of those that didn’t get the pack as not actual users of vvvv. leaves us with 14400/365 ~ 40 real downloads a day. can we conclude from downloads to users per day? or new users? note to self: get those numbers up.
licenses
in 2011 licenses/upgrades were bought by 61 different companies from 19 different countries (28 from 10 countries in 2010 and 37 from 12 countries in 2009. figures have been growing steadily ever since with 2010 being a particularly bad year with less licenses sold than back in 2007). 46 out of the 61 were new customers this year (18 new in 2010, 22 new in 2009). that is so naice, thanks! no, not nice as in girl. it’s your duty of course, you are just playing by the rules. so why thank you? (taking back the thanks). it’s still nice to be thanked for doing something that you’re obliged to do. thanks. or is it? (taking it back). thanks (taken) thanks (taken)…ah it is a tough one… anyway you should by now be aware that by using vvvv you are also participating in a social experiment, which goes like this:
ja, obviously some will do, but our experiment has a flaw which makes it kind of useless. while we do have the numbers of people who do buy licenses we don’t have any means to find out how many people actually think that power comes out of the socket. but since any way of tracking those would degrade the smooth experience (TM) of vvvvs legal users we couldn’t care less to even spend a single thought on trying to do so. hence vvvvs only copyprotection is still the good old T.R.U.S.T. given the following table of licenses sold per country and the above list of webaccess to vvvv.org would it be fair to conclude anything?
| 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. germany | 48% | 1. germany | 43% | 1. germany | 47% |
| 2. italy | 27% | 2. austria | 25% | 2. switzerland | 21% |
| 3. united kingdom | 12% | 3. united kingdom | 17% | 3. united kingdom | 19% |
| 4. united states | 3% | 4. russia | 4% | 4. austria | 6% |
| 5. austria | 3% | 5. switzerland | 4% | 5. italy | 3% |
| 6. switzerland | 2% | 6. south korea | 3% | 6. russia | 1% |
(if your country is not listed: congratulations, you were the only one from your country to buy a license)
if you own licenses please don’t forget to take care for them. note that under My Licenses you can see a list of all orders/licenses associated with your account. there you see a link to the download of the last vvvversion you may use with each of your licenses and from there you can easily update licenses. a license-update allows you to use all vvvversions that are being released within one year (since payment of the update). the latest vvvversion available within one year since purchase (of license or update) can still always be used indefinitely.
trivia
around 10 years in the making it should be pointed out that vvvv has been completely self-funded ever since. vvvv has not received financial support in any other way than through licenses sold and sponsered development of specific features. ie there is no EU/government/university money we would make our livings from. meso the company that incubated vvvv in its early years is still the single largest buyer of licenses every year! we sincerely bow for that. and it is worth mentioning that vvvv has been quite a large donor to the node-festival, ie license-money is also being distributed back to the community this way, allowing eg for cheaper pricing of tickets.
so the reason for having to sell licenses is in fact the fact that we need to eat and drink (which isn’t free as in beer). we wouldn’t really mind running around naked though (if anyone gets the eat/drink thing sorted).
if you’re still struggling to decide whether to buy licenses always remember that it is for a good cause. and while you cannot claim it as a good deed it still reduces your taxes.
taxes. probably a good word to end the sermon. thanks for being with us. have a great 2012. (buy more licenses) yours vvvv.
Comments:
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Yes please everybody, BUY MORE LICENSES!
It’s the only ways to keep the development live and fast!
+1 for a donation button…not making any money out of vvvv at the moment, sadly
but I love it
ps don’t be shy about thanking your paying customers, that’s normal surely!
I feel that a lot of the members give their time and skills to helping users which is worth more than them buying a licences as it keeps paying licence holders returning!
Donation idea is great.. but if you have a client paying for vvvv software, don’t forget to add an extra licence fee on top of your fee for the devvvvs =)
you’re mixing things up. a supportive community has nothing to do with the simple rule:
you earn money with v4, buy a license.
and i’m not sure about donation, it could weaken the rule and people might think they donate a little bit and don’t ever buy a license.
donation = peace of mind ?
congrats devs!
personally, i probably would have donated for some smaller projects where i wasn’t breaking even to begin with and i still would have bought a license (+other licenses for client projects) if there was a donate button.
but i think in general it’s a bad idea.
however, perhaps pricing / funding could be something to be discussed in a little group at Node we’re all behind the development of vvvv, and i think a bit of a ‘focus group’ might help. e.g. is the price right? what would make you feel happy about the purchase? etc. Perhaps even put some people at ease who shouldn’t be buying licenses about when the right time for them would be.
congrats devs!
personally, i probably would have donated for some smaller projects where i wasn’t breaking even to begin with and i still would have bought a license (+other licenses for client projects) if there was a donate button.
but i think in general it’s a bad idea.
however, perhaps pricing / funding could be something to be discussed in a little group at Node we’re all behind the development of vvvv, and i think a bit of a ‘focus group’ might help. e.g. is the price right? what would make you feel happy about the purchase? etc. Perhaps even put some people at ease who shouldn’t be buying licenses about when the right time for them would be.
U7.. There are quite a few developers here who earn a living from vvvv, but only just about earn that living. They’re not business guys and sometimes asking for more money than the bare minimum can be very hard. If they give the community their time and awesome examples of work why should they not feel entitled to use vvvv for “free”?
An alternative to a donate button, could be a third type of licence - Artist Licence. Which allows you to decide how much you want to pay for the licence.
gaz, thats something i thought about too. when i started VJing with vvvv, the money i made a year with this was never enough for a license. an “artist” license for a lower price might cover this group of users.
since vvvv is used for so many different cases, maybe this should be reflected in the license scheme. educational / artist / professional ?
like the node festival tickets…
i think that too cause 500€ for somebody like me who doesn’t earn money (or very few) from his vvvv work and is still to the bedroom visuals in housesharing point is quiet an amount. precisely the one of my soundcard which just died, or half the one of my videoprojector who’s dying too (grr acer..), or the one i should put in my fiat panda for it not to be half-wrecked (still rolling though!).. i don’t want to make you cry or what but, yes, i’m quiet a poor man doing some vvvv for fun first and trying to transform it in a legal work or something, doing some unrelated jobs here and there to continue this way. I think/hope i’m not the only one.. If i was a company with mercedes or microsoft as clients i’d be glad to pay dozens of licences, but for now i just propose the support i can provide in return of what the community and devvvvs give, which i really care about and makes me very thankfull.
something between 100 and 200€ would already be something more affordable for me, not to feel too guilty of using naked devvvv’s work.. (or i can send plastic bags, for sex-hiding when beer/food-buyin! works like a charm :)
I think there’s also this site… I mean, the site is the “business card” of the devvvvs and vvvv.
I thought that to give something back to everybody in community I could add pages to the site. Who knows, maybe helps. I would do the same even if I got licensed.
This ain’t a substitute to licenses and it’s a tiny act, I know, but a growing, active community claims consideration.
Everybody can give something to vvvv and devvvvs. One has just to find a way, if can’t buy a license (which remains the first choice, obviously).
It’s not so complicated: When You’re going to make a budget for a weekly installation or one day show in the list add a line:
VVVV License (Interaction Software)……………………. 238.00 EUR
And It’s done. I think
More show you do more money you give, and you don’t have to pay anything: The client will pay for you! Cheers
I hope i can support you soon… not too much luck the last year :P Meanwhile i try everyday to make the best promotion of vvvv everywhere i go.
Good luck guys, it´s going to be a great year.
Im relatively new to vvvv and graphical programming in general, but i am familiar with both the business side and the user side of media generation tools and am a bit shocked at how small your customer base is. From the content of your post i got that you are expecting people to use your beta toolset and pay you for it, thereby growing your business and your software. While bootstrapping might be the idealistic approach to growing a business, rarely does this ever work. It would be like a new car manufacturer selling a car that only runs on one cylinder, is prone to breaking down, and is really confusing to operate, and then saying to their customer “if you drive this to work, pay me and ill make you a better car next time”.
Now it seems that you pride yourself on not taking investment, but how do you expect to develop this program enough to make it accessible to more than just the hardcore programmers it takes to operate it? Like on the topic of getting vvvv to use my full processor in the future event i want to run a complex visual, i got the response that its single threaded, only using 1/4 of my computing power, and to make it run off the gpu which is the only sane way of doing graphics processing i have to write shaders. Right there vvvv has already eliminated me as a paying customer, because if i had the ability to write shaders id probably be more comfortable programming my visuals in notepad.
vvvv just isnt accessible, and its such an incredible time-sink to use much less learn that even the slightest flaw, like the one above, is enough to send most people scurrying in the other direction. Now i’m probably going to keep on with it because its free to learn with and i can always transfer my knowledge to jitter, if there’s any difference, but i can say for sure there’s alot of room left in the node based world for creating an intuitive programming environment, and you’re not going to get there humping cycling74’s designs or asking for handouts.
@poof Sorry to be rude -though probably you won’t care at all
your words ooze scorn.
That’s sad, even compared to this reality slap you gave us all.
yeah sounds a bit raw.. with some truth in it but raw..
vvvv is experimental and opened to a wide range of horizons and if one want to go in a direction he can have support from others to go there and create something new, which will be implemented to next beta when done or shared in contributions section. Unc/Karistouf/Dimix (and others i forgot)’s collaboration around texture pack is quiet an example. Begins by an idea, competent and kind people gets involved, shaders are ready to use at the end and are implemented in addons or contributions. call it communism or anarchism or what, that’s the way it’s done till now.
I think there’s already a lot of ressources and material to play with, maybe too much, so no, you don’t have to necessarily code hlsl unless you want something special. In this case i don’t see other ways to go deeper without coding, except if there was a node based environnement to use hlsl..
vvvv requires some self-involvement yes, time, and it’s complicated sometimes, but the freedom you dispose worth it i think.
Anyway it’s not a product “customers” can complain about because it’s not like this or like that. it’s a collaborative/experimental/non-lucrativ developing experience and that’s why it requires some self-involvement from the users to jump in and reach their goals. needs time, making some concessions about performance or stability sometimes (but beta 27 proves there’s less and less of them, it’s running pretty great!), heavy learning, sharing ideas and ressources to make the thing evolve (shame on me but i do what i can), kindness (cause we are naïve you know, we believe in friendship or something..).
Multithreading is a known problem yes, it has already been pointed out and i’m sure it will be sorted out one day, but it’s not that bad, with CPUs we have today you can still do great things, and i think you still can assign different cores to different instances of vvvv if you really want (didn’t tried yet cause it’s not my priority and a bit tricky but you can ask about that in forums, people will help you).
the fact vvvv’s always evolving and going in different ways at the same time sure don’t let enough time to devs to solve some problems like this one which would require big work to be solved cause they are complex and have to find a solution which would fit multiple different cases and uses. It’s some heavy full time work i think, that’s why it needs time=money, this topic is here for that, to remind users that if they want sharper stuff they have to support the thing in a way or another. it’s not about pride i think, and if so, i think devvvvs can be proud of the work they have acheived till now.
Some kind people made my thought explicit, but there’s more, it’s sure.
vvvv it’s something you can say then I did it my way, yeah I sat there, stoned, mellow, a rough boom boom from inside, and wow! more food for mind, and you know, a good state of mind is essential not to get lost and not being able to come back, even if it sometimes is as sweet as possible, and along the road you may need money, you know I know, but you and I have to remember that sometimes you can’t lose what you never had, and… what the hell is that? Where am I? Where I’m going, too… What’s the meaning of a brand new Cadillac in this room?
It’s really too late… and I’m gone blue again…
@poof i qote you, “vvvv just isnt accessible” right ?
and i quote you again shout-by-poof-0
contradiction at its best !
Hi , sad to read statics are not great but do not surrender hopefully they get better ,people is more and more concern and the number of user seem to be increasing and learning fast.
I vote for :
-Extra effort to support the community now .
-Gig license. For artist and small vj sessions .
-Installment licenses . That could work in different ways a draft idea like you buy a week license for an event , if you buy 3 one week licenses in a short period like 40 days you get a full ,or some other way.
-Donation , indeed interesting and nothing to do with the license business. Many people may not ever make a commercial work ,but have been using vvvv getting the benefits and joy from the tool ,the generous ,kind and smart vvvv group and community . I,m sure many of them want to find a way to support it .
kind regards and high esteem for the V-Community.
Thank you and keep rocking ;D
webwise. seems russia is most growning part of the community last year. cool. quantity should turn into quality one day!
downloads. my personal reasons to download vvvv more than once: at home - using girlfriends laptop from time to time (every time download again :)) at work - last time pc worked it worked with OS only, so vvvv was deleted and i have no backup-flash-drive with me now.
licensies. wow! i thought my licensies were from 2011, but they are really were from last days of 2010… guess russia should back in top6 in 2012. and if we compare licensies to the webwise, russia not looks so totally pirate country. that’s good! but should be better this year.
thanks for advise!
p.s. firefox rules!
thumbs up for switzerland and austria. very few people compared to the us and france but in the license top 6.
second, its fine to say thank you to customers like they say in german trains: thank you for traveling wiz deutsche bahn.
and whats wrong with kidsbrowser.
If you’re having issues getting funding through license fees, you should add some sort of simple donation feature to the site. Some of us would help you out in small amounts from time to time.
Also: http://ie6funeral.com/ even Microsoft has given up on IE6.. though for some reason they haven’t given up on IE in general..