» vvvv in numbers
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vvvv in numbers

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:

if you produce something of value and give it to people for free with the only restriction that they must pay you if they themselves make money using your product, will they do it?

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.

joreg, Thursday, Jan 5th 2012 Digg | Tweet | Delicious 47 comments  
eno 05/01/2012 - 15:15

Yes please everybody, BUY MORE LICENSES!

It's the only ways to keep the development live and fast!

circuitb 05/01/2012 - 16:59

hahaha
i can only notice that France is not there...
anyway i'll get my first license very soon
even if it won't help France to keep its AAA rating
it's a first step to get in the vvvv licenses charts :)
thanks to be there in 2012
take care

u7angel 05/01/2012 - 18:23

very intersting statistics. we are happy to be able to support you guys and hopefully more and more people think that way.

lasal 05/01/2012 - 20:01

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.

dave 05/01/2012 - 21:45

chrome ftw :)

zepi 05/01/2012 - 21:59

I miss the country statistics for V4 license per head ;)

bo27 05/01/2012 - 22:58

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!

u7angel 05/01/2012 - 23:23

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.

mrboni 05/01/2012 - 23:41

What's wrong with Internet Explorer 6?

thezer0ist 06/01/2012 - 00:36

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..

zepi 06/01/2012 - 03:58

and what exactly happened May 7th+8th 2011?

dannielmach 06/01/2012 - 05:47

I do thank you for all the learning never omitted here for all:)

david 06/01/2012 - 11:41

nice compilation! turns numbers into a brilliant text. thanks.

dave 06/01/2012 - 12:15

zepi, I think we had a server crash. it turned out that our provider hadn't screwed the cpu fan on the rack computer correctly, so we had a day or so of downtime.

leon.polon 06/01/2012 - 14:04

you are so awesome it is hard to descirbe! i upvote thezer0ist idea of donation button. thank you for your great work and long term dedication to this project. V4 fo life!

eno 06/01/2012 - 16:00

I also think there's a great need for some sort of crowdfunding function on the v4 site!

Desaxismundi 06/01/2012 - 17:15

shame on me and my finances lately :(
2012 will do it! hopefully...

m4d 06/01/2012 - 21:59

thanks for these very interesting numbers. also a good reminder to update my license.. :)

aze 07/01/2012 - 20:50

+1 for donations, could not buy a license, don't make money with vvvv, but i care about great work and would pay some beers with pleasure. or i can send some aaa french cheese.. what's the adress? :)

hierro 08/01/2012 - 02:47

incredible, the best thiefs country italy paying licesens...a smooth paradox to start with ?

casinowilhelm 08/01/2012 - 04:13

+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!

gaz 08/01/2012 - 16:13

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 =)

u7angel 08/01/2012 - 17:28

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 ?

elliotwoods 09/01/2012 - 01:36

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.

elliotwoods 09/01/2012 - 01:36

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.

gaz 09/01/2012 - 22:05

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.

u7angel 10/01/2012 - 12:03

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...

aze 10/01/2012 - 17:04

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 :)

h99 10/01/2012 - 18:17

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).

robe 10/01/2012 - 18:36

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_am_from_Chile 11/01/2012 - 15:30

I agree with Robe could be good if there was a licence that could be passed to the actual Gallerie or Museum ,as in my case only have exibitions a couple of times a year with very small budgets ( but still want to get back what I can to the Dev's )...Student discount (perhaps)...

poof 13/01/2012 - 02:47

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.

h99 13/01/2012 - 15:37

@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.

aze 13/01/2012 - 19:37

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.

xd_nitro 13/01/2012 - 20:16

@poof horses for courses

thezer0ist 14/01/2012 - 00:10

@aze: regarding the multithreading and GPU stuff, i've often wished that i could get into the native core code to see if i can track down some issues and learn more about how to things work in order to optimize patches. i know that the devvvvs are opposed to releasing source code for that stuff. i understand their reason and i'm not trying to criticize their choices, but there would be some benefits to opening up the same kind of community contribution in the native core.

h99 14/01/2012 - 03:11

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...

u7angel 22/01/2012 - 00:16

@poof
i qote you, "vvvv just isnt accessible" right ?

and i quote you again shout-by-poof-0

contradiction at its best !

xd_nitro 22/01/2012 - 04:15

@u7angel & poof! classic :)

Urbankind 22/01/2012 - 09:19

all the way "we we we we" :)

aze 25/01/2012 - 01:47

h99 you we get the point

aze 25/01/2012 - 01:48

and i love you

aze 25/01/2012 - 01:48

and im drunk sorry

aze 25/01/2012 - 03:00

(im ridiculous)

h99 27/01/2012 - 13:46

@ aze Thanks! Just one more thing...

bo27 07/02/2012 - 23:49

what i dream about now is credit or some installment system for licensies.

colorsound 13/02/2012 - 20:30

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

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Shoutbox

~14d ago

~17d ago

joreg: The Winter Season of vvvv workshops is now over but all recordings are still available for purchase: https://thenodeinstitute.org/ws23-vvvv-intermediates/

~24d ago

schlonzo: Love the new drag and drop functionality for links in latest previews!

~1mth ago

joreg: Workshop on 29 02: Create Sequencers and Precise Clock Based Tools. Signup here: https://thenodeinstitute.org/courses/ws23-vvvv-08-create-sequencers-and-precise-clock-based-tools-in-vvvv-gamma/

~1mth ago

joreg: Workshop on 22 02: Unlocking Shader Artistry: A Journey through ‘The Book of Shaders’ with FUSE. Signup here: https://thenodeinstitute.org/courses/ws23-vvvv-12-book-of-shaders/

~2mth ago

joreg: Talk and Workshop on February 15 & 16 in Frankfurt: https://visualprogramming.net/blog/vvvv-at-node-code-frankfurt/

~2mth ago

woei: @Joanie_AntiVJ: think so, looks doable