Tag: Anniversary

The RyanSchultz.com Blog Celebrates Five Years!

It was exactly five years ago today—on July 31st, 2017—that I wrote my first blogpost on this blog. It was to announce the public beta of the social VR platform Sansar, which at the time was owned by Linden Lab (the makers of the still-popular virtual world, Second Life).

At the time, this blog was called the Sansar Newsblog, because that was the only metaverse platform I wrote about. Over time, I began to expand my coverage to include many other social VR platforms and flatscreen virtual worlds, and on February 10th, 2018, I changed the name to the RyanSchultz.com blog.

One of the advantages of using your real-life name as your blog name is that you can go off on tangents, and because it’s you, you never go off-brand! 😉 And so, in addition to “news and views about social VR, virtual worlds, and the metaverse” (as the tagline for this blog states), I have written about artificial intelligence, the crypto/NFT space, and notably, my experiences during the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic.

Over the past five years, my blog has become more popular, and I have even been interviewed by publications such as The Globe and Mail newspaper and New Yorker magazine. I’ve also been a guest on several podcasts about the ever-evolving metaverse.

In 2018, I set up a Patreon (from which I earn a small amount of money, enough to cover my WordPress.com hosting costs), and I also set up my Discord server, which now boasts over 685 members representing any and every metaverse platform!

In retrospect, creating the RyanSchultz.com Discord was one of the smartest things I have done. I have made so many new online friends who are also keenly interested in the metaverse! I rely on them to alert me to news and events happening on the various social VR platforms like VRChat, and in the flatscreen virtual worlds like Second Life. Honestly, I get half my new story ideas from them, and I thank them! And I believe that the members of my Discord are the single best team of metaverse bullshit detectors on the planet! 😉

Some statistics from five years of blogging:

  • 2,553 blogposts (which works out to 1.4 posts per day, over 1,827 days)
  • Over 1,280,000 blogpost views (my busiest month so far has been January 2022, with over 40,100 views!)
  • Over 720,000 blog visitors from all around the world (top ten countries in order: United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Brazil, and Spain)
  • Over 1,500 comments!
  • Over 450 blog subscribers via email or WordPress

My Top Ten Most Popular Blogposts in 2022:

Please note that, for a few months in 2022, I did test out Patreon patron-exclusive blogposts, but I have since decided that it’s not worth the hassle (also, Patreon has changed its rules and that particular plug-in no longer works in WordPress unless I upgrade from “Patreon Lite” to “Patreon Pro”). Accordingly, I have now unlocked all my previously-restricted blogposts, and you should be able to access and read all of them. Please note that all these blogposts are safe for work, even the ones which discuss adult or sexual topics.

  1. The Dirty Little Secret of VRChat—Hidden Adult Content (which to my bemusement, is still, far and away, THE most popular blogpost on this blog, mainly because it comes up as the first result when you Google “vrchat adult”)
  2. Welcome to the Metaverse: A Comprehensive List of Social VR/AR Platforms and Virtual Worlds (Including a List of Blockchain Metaverse Platforms)
  3. A Step-by-Step Guide on How to Get Started in Decentraland (and Some Caveats for New Users)
  4. Clip and Save: Ryan’s All-In-One Guide to Freebies in Second Life
  5. LGBTQ Spaces in Social VR and Virtual Worlds: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer Places in the Metaverse
  6. List of Non-Combat, Open-World Exploration/Puzzle/Life Simulation Games
  7. 3DX Chat—A Brief Introduction (and the Biggest Problem with Most Adult Virtual Worlds)
  8. Shopping for a New Penis in Second Life: Any Recommendations?
  9. Exploring Sleep Worlds in VRChat
  10. Second Life Steals, Deals and Freebies: Free and Inexpensive Mesh Heads and Bodies for Female Second Life Avatars

As you can see, sex is popular, as can be seen by numbers 1, 7, 8, and maybe 5 on this Top Ten list! However, as I have stated in my ever-popular list of social VR, virtual worlds and metaverse platforms:

Please note that there are two categories of metaverse platforms which I will not endeavour to cover on this list:

• Products aimed at the teen/tween market (mostly on mobile devices, e.g. IMVU); and
• Purely sexually oriented or “adult” virtual worlds and social VR

Why? Well, I’m not interested in either category, and I will the herding of those particular categories of cats to other people… I’ve got my hands full as it is!

However, you can expect a complete overhaul and reorganization of my list of metaverse platforms (item #2 in my Top Ten list above) in the second half of this year.

Also, although I still dearly love to spend time there, I will be spending less and less time writing about Second Life on the RyanSchultz.com blog. While my coverage of “Steals, Deals, and Freebies” in Second Life has proven extremely popular, and I have firmly established my credentials as a freebie fashionista, there’s just so many other things that I want to write about! Instead, I would encourage my faithful Second Life readers to join my in-world group, where I will continue to post fabulous fashion freebies as I encounter them in my travels around the grid (group join fee is L$50).

While my formerly blistering pace of blogging has slowed somewhat this year, I do plan to continue reporting on news and events in the ever-expanding and ever-evolving metaverse, and the many companies who are building it!

Cheers!! Here’s to the next five years!

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Belle Epoque 5th Anniversary Hunt and Sale

Belle Epoque makes well-designed clothing for female avatars, focusing on classic, retro, and some historical/fantasy styles. She used to create clothing only for Maitreya Lara mesh bodies, but I see that she has now expanded to create clothing for the Legacy female mesh bodies by Meshbody as well. All Belle Epoque clothing is beautifully detailed, and includes an autohide. (For those who don’t know, autohide is when an article of clothing automatically hides the mesh body parts underneath it, so they fit better, and you don’t have to use the HUD that came with the mesh body to do it yourself. It’s a thoughtful feature I wish more designers included with the clothing they sell!)

Here’s an example of the classy, elegant style for which Belle Epoque is famous: the Beatrice blouse, tucked floral sweater, and matching belted skirt combination, which is all in one piece. Today only (Tuesday, November 10th, 2020), you can pick up the Beatrice outfit for L$25 each (or the complete fatpack of all six colours for L$150):

You can pick up this classic Beatrice outfit for only L$25 for each colour today (the version Vanity is wearing in this picture was a limited-edition group gift, no longer available)

To celebrate the 5th anniversary of her brand, Belle Epoque is holding a 50% off sale on everything in the store (except gachas), plus a free hunt with 32 prizes (10 from Belle Epoque, and another 22 from a variety of guest content creators).

You do not need to join any group to participate in the hunt; just look around the store for white frosted cakes with a pink rose on top, and click to claim your prize!

What you are looking for…

Vanity Fair here models five hunt prizes which I quite liked. ARTE is offering a set of lovely, clear, light blue, green, and violet eyes (Catwa and Omega appliers, mesh eyes with a HUD, and system/Bakes on Mesh eyes):

On a Lark’s generous gift is the Naima jewelry set which consists of a necklace and matching earrings, with a HUD with three choices for the metals, and 16 colours for each of the three stones, giving you thousands of possible ways to wear them to match any outfit.

Here Vanity is wearing the gift from Faida, the Carolina pastel pink-and-blue plaid dress, with the Meredith heels from ChicChica (which come in both brown and black versions):

Finally, we have this delightful casual blue dress with a design of dandelion seeds blowing in the wind, one of the ten hunt prizes from Belle Epoque! (The shoes are the same Meredith gift from ChicChica, this time in the black version.)

The sim on which the Belle Epoque store sits can only handle twenty avatars at a time, so you’ll have to be patient to get in. The hunt runs until November 30th, 2020, so you should have plenty of time to teleport in and snap up these and many other fabulous freebies! The 50% sale ends on November 15th, 2020. Here’s your taxi.

Two Years!

Today is the second anniversary of the open public beta of Sansar, which happened on July 31st, 2017. And it marks the second anniversary of this blog, which started out as the Sansar Newsblog and focused almost exclusively on Sansar. I renamed it the RyanSchultz.com blog in February 2018.

Over time, I have expanded this blog to cover many other social VR platforms and virtual worlds. I even started a section of this blog devoted to Second Life steals, deals, and freebies, which has proven to be surprisingly popular!

Over two years I have posted exactly 1,268 blogpots, which works out to almost 2 blogposts per day. These are the Top Ten most popular (i.e. most viewed) posts and pages on the RyanSchultz.com blog:

  1. Second Life Steals, Deals and Freebies: Free and Inexpensive Mesh Heads and Bodies for Female Second Life Avatars (posted Sept. 24th, 2018; 8,922 views so far)
  2. More Details on the Upcoming Ability to Change Your User Name in Second Life (March 22nd, 2018; 6,252 views)
  3. RyanSchultz.com Reader Poll: What Social VR/Virtual World Do You Spend the Most Time In? (Feb. 21st, 2019; 5,532 views)
  4. Linden Lab Announces a Mix of Good News and Bad News for Second Life Users (May 29th, 2019; 5,079 views)
  5. The Dirty Little Secret of VRChat: Hidden Adult Content (March 28th, 2019; 4,174 views and rising fast!)
  6. Oasis: A Brief Introduction to a New, Adults-Only Social VR Platform (Aug. 7th, 2018; 3,611 views)
  7. Second Life Steals, Deals and Freebies: The Four Best Freebie Stores in SL (May 15th, 2018; 3,072 views)
  8. Second Life Steals, Deals and Freebies: Free and Inexpensive Mesh Heads and Bodies for Male Second Life Avatars (Oct. 4th, 2018; 2,752 views)
  9. Second Life Versus Sansar: Why Linden Lab Can’t Win, No Matter What They Do (March 9th, 2018; 2,502 views)
  10. Comprehensive List of Social VR Platforms and Virtual Worlds (a page based on a blogpost originally made on May 10th, 2018; 2,412 views)

Here’s to the next two years!