Continents and regions and sims, oh my!

There was an announcement in April 2026 about Linden Labs making an unusual and rare change - they are going to alter some continents.  

You can read about it here: https://community.secondlife.com/news/featured-news/a-new-chapter-for-mainland-gaeta-1-transition-zindra-expansion-r11269/

I don't quite understand what they mean by 'not a lot of use' because I was eyeing properties for sale there regularly, hoping to snatch a beachfront property near a friend's place, and it always looked like there was plenty going on. I am sad for my friend, though, and hope he gets a good replacement deal.

My main confusion over this is TIL that continents have names. 18 years and going and I was unaware. I looked around in the game and couldn't find labels anywhere.  My own property just says 'Mainland.'  Where is this information? How do they expect you to know which continent is which?

I did a little digging and found the continents section in the Second Life Wiki. I had to click each map and compare to my viewer map to finally figure out that I live on the continent of Sansara.  The region is still up in the air, I clearly live to the east of the snowy region, which is labeled both 'Atomic Sims' and 'South-East Sims' on two different maps within the wiki article about Sansara. My region, the only thing clearly labeled, is Badger, but I haven't really found it listed anywhere. I live near Route 1, which is a tourist route? 


I am clearly not using Second Life the way everyone else is.  When I first came to the game, I wanted to fly and teleport.  I spent all day on the road in real life, I wanted something different! 

I am a little bit hurt over they way they describe it.  Remote, little used, etc. I use it all the time, TYVM.  I LIKE not having a lot of visitors, it keeps my laptop from overheating. Is this how they determined Gaeta was unused? Because it's all introverts living there, vibing in their own homes, organizing their inventory and learning how to animate their furniture?  So not fair.

So what does all this mean?  Like your own real life location, there are levels.  

1. The Grid: The World

2. Continents, comprised of two styles:

•     Mainland - owned by Linden labs (second life)
•     Private Estate - owned by other users

3. Regions: The continents are evenly cut up into smaller sections, like a county/district in a state. They are also referred to as sims or servers by other users. These have names, which you will see in the teleport location address (SLURL).

4. Parcels: These are properties owned by users, and can be any shape or size that is divisible by 8. Users can name these.

Users can buy or rent property from both mainland and private estates.  I prefer mainland, because I've gotten burned in the past from a private estate owner that decided last minute to give up their property, and came home from a Valentine's Day week trip to find everything gone. I might still be upset over this, but it's what pushed me from renting to owning land again. Which is a topic for another blog post!