Key Second Life Statistics

BusinessWeek's Inside Innovation quarterly has a good package on Corporate America entering Second Life virtual world: main story, tips for companies,  branded metaverse destinations, developers other virtual worlds worth exploring. The most important part, however, are these statistics - some of which come directly from Linden Labs. What's notable?

• Second Life citizenship grew 995% just this year.
• Commerce, a more important statistic, rose to $9M, up 287% this year
• The male/female split is close to even -57 to 43%
• Finally, more than 55% of citizens hail from outside the US.

Comments

[Taran Rampersad (aka Nobody Fugazi)]

I have to question the male/female split on that; I'd love to know where they got those numbers from.

That 55% of SL residents are from outside the US is interesting - I'd been trying to get a similar statistic from a source. I'd love to know how valid that number is (and I'm questioning someone on it right after I post this).

Commerce is an important statistic; so is the acreage though the acreage doesn't identify the number of land owners...

Number of residents versus flesh and blood humans is always a question and there is no clear ratio.

[Matt Devlin]

I think it would be really interesting to be able to put a figure to the value that a Second Life involvement adds to a press release.

I suspect that value is substantially more than $9m of commerce within Second Life.

[Lisa Meltz]

I am just really curious how the infiltration of marketers, from IBM to Text100, into Second Life will affect the communities - will we have a Second Life revolution against corporate America? Will it dissuade people from joining? And aren't the majority of users on Second Life into porn and sex?

[Taran Rampersad]

@Lisa - I doubt it. Truth be told, Text100 folks and IBM folks come outside of their islands (I know, I have met some of them) - but only people interested in what they are doing visit their islands?

In fact, none of the corporate 'invaders' (as some writers like to refer to them) have done anything nearly as obnoxious as using 16m square plots to do ugly advertising. The real business enemies of SL are probably the people who do that, or flip land for profit - the people who directly affect the community in negative ways.

The real world companies coming in? Sure, let them in. They're subsidizing the metaverse. As log as I don't see 'Eat at Joes' in front of my land, I'm ambivalent about Joe.

Some people just write to catch attention... just like those 16m plots with advertising on them.

[shel israel]

If you think a 57/43% male-female split is close to even, you must have been hanging out in different single bars than me, back when I was unmarried.

[François Abiven]

Hi, I think my compagny might contribute to the knowledge about Second Life : Reperes is a market research compagny now operating in Second Life. Our goal is to provide more insights about SL, based on interviews of avatars. You might find a very first extract of our first survey in our office on SL : http://slurl.com/secondlife/loon/209/23/104/.
More results will be published shortly. We hope you find it interesting. For more information contact our manager in SL : Reperes Link.