Second Life™ Statistics Summary
Total Hours by all Residents
Land Size km2 (m2)
The Land Size supply is an important factor for the Second Life ®virtual economy as this economy was and is driven by a
reliable land exchange new buyers is a vital factor for a thriving land and property market economy. Over the last year Linden Research ®
has released an increase of mainland and private estate - islands - in an overdriven rate. As much as the demand and the orders for especially private estate - islands - has been positive
for the financial ratio for Linden Research ® in the overall review a collapse needed to be foreseen once Linden Research ®
released through external and internal restrictions new regulations in regards to "Gambling", "the European Union V.A.T. issue" and latest the "banking
restrictions. A land and property market heavily depending on trust and goodwill had been shaken by Linden Research ® with a final
devastating effect for the resident. The "mainland" versus "private estate" ratio is a safety pillow for Linden Research ® as a steady
income of 195 to 295 US-$ is secured. The following graph shows the ratio between "resident hold mainland" and the amount of "private estate - islands -".
Money Supply
The Money Supply looks of an impressive growth as a flat comparison count with itself. An over 100 % increase can be seen from January 2007 to December 2007. But brought into comparison to
the chart of all registered users (Unique and Alts) and actual decline of per user capita can be documented as shown in the chart below.
LindEx Virtual Currency Exchange
The LindEx Virtual Currency Exchange ™ is the second important indicator of the Second Life ™
economy. The monthly increase of money into the Second Life ™ economy is done through the LindEx Virtual Currency Exchange
™. Even as shown in the chart below that money injections being in decline over some periods of times in 2007, the cash-flow is still on a stable basis. Even with this
one positive effect still happening in Second Life ™ 's economy, it has to be looked at with caution, as this is even a far more fragile industry build
on believe and trust into this platform.
Unique Users
The ' Unique User ' account has been unfortunately discontinued by Linden Research ®'s statistic director Meta Linden with the following remark.
The above chart shows that even in an increase of the total residents count from 3.1 million in January 2007 to 9.6 million in September 2007, the increase of 'Alts' - alternative avatars had not
such an effect as primarly expected. Actually a ratio from 63 % unique user vs 37 % Alts to 70 % unique users vs 30 % Alts has been documented.
Premium Residents
The 'Evangelists' of Second Life ™ are the Premium Account holding residents. The residents will or have been
charged a monthly, quarterly or annual subscription fee. The premium account holding residents can be seen as people that are convinced in the Second Life ™
concept and to regard Second Life ™ as a platform to trust and to invest into.
Top 100 countries by active users count
The two charts brought together are giving a very good overview of who is active in Second Life ™ and for how long and by confining it into
the world areas U.S.A., Americas excluding the U.S.A., the European Union, Europe excluding the E.U., The Middle East, Africa, Asia and Oceania (Australia / New Zealand and so on...) it becomes
compairable. The amount of hours spent in Second Life ™ is shown per registered user (Unique and Alts) and in the amount of a monthly use.
Monthly active Users by age bucket
The majority of 74 % is older than 24 years of age, this indicates that the interest on Second Life ™ is more of an mature character and not
participated as game structure like ' World of Warcraft '™. As Second Life ™ has no typical
gaming structure as tasks, points, solutions or ending situations. Second Life ™ is a virtual economy and a virtual adaptation of life itself.
It can be as exciting or enspiring as much as the resident is deciding to have it.
The ' Total Hours by all residents ' has risen over the 12 months in 2007 by nearly 150 % from January 07 - 10,817,688 hrs to December 07 - 25,646,287 hrs. Even if this data alone sounds
positive, the growth in the between month is actually falling, as we had a growth in the months January to February 2007 of 10.99 % but the months from July onwards showed even a decline in
user hours, which is a reliable indicator as Linden Research® has no primary influence on the user hour behaviour, unless deliberate outages would be considered as a mechanism
to influence the user hour behaviour, which should be taken out of the range of options as it would be more
devastating for Linden Research®, than it would be for the resident.
But to understand fully what the actually number of ' Total Hours by all residents ' would be telling us, is when we bring the number of ' Registration Counts ' into a relationship to it,
by doing this a decline of User hours, because of cancers explosive over population of "freebie" accounts has lead to this result. In the display below an decrease of over 36 % of user hour is
shown from January 3.45 hours per registered active user to December 2.19 hours per registered active user.
The latter income in USD for Linden Research ® shows a ratio formula of secure 50 % charge of 195 US-$ and 50 % of 295 US-$ per
private estate - islands - server. This very secure objected under estimation is giving Linden Research ® still a very comfortable security pillow.
With this in mind the end-user of the private estates - islands - is currently feeling the pain of a very constraint economy with the demand to pay it's price to Linden Research
® even that the chance of selling on is in the current market situation very limited.
Due to data quality concerns under the “Unique” population figures published historically, we are discontinuing publishing this figure. It had several challenges, regarding retroactive
cancellation of accounts and the algorithm used for determining uniqueness.
In my view a big mistake as the 'unique-ness' of the unique user was determined by
the count of residents that excludes alternative avatars matching users by payment information and / or
e-mail address. This calculation excludes also individuals that have not logged in. (Explanation Linden Researchs ®)
With this unique-ness rectification a unique-ness could have been guaranteed, but as Linden Research ® has decided not to continue this data
stream, the chart below will not show data from October 07 onwards.
As a trust indicator into the Second Life ™ platform can be seen the relative ratio between of Premium Acount holders and Unique Users.
Top 100 countries by active user hours
