Second Life August metrics: No significant growth
by Tateru Nino 
Sep 24th 2008 at 2:30PM
Filed under: Economy, News items, Second Life
First, apologies that we don't have more detailed breakdowns of the monthly Second Life statistics. Linden Lab just don't publish detailed monthly information anymore. It's mostly just numbers-for-the-numb by the look of the subset of statistics now produced.
Out of the figures we do have available, we can sum up the changes for August compared to the July figures fairly quickly: User hours showing little or no real growth, only 120 million square metres of new private simulators (no growth in mainland), Accounts with positive monthly flow down, L$/US$ exchange rate stable, Lindex currency exchange activity down, premium accounts continuing to fall.
So, those bullets aren't really the kind that look great on slide presentations.
 |
Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop. |
The gains were:
- A slight increase in user hours of only about 0.28% (based on the published figures) increasing from 34.7 million user hours to 34.8 million.
- A small increase in land (121 simulators million square metres total -- there was one million new sqms of land marked as mainland, but we do not believe it was land that was available to the general public) representing the smallest gain in absolute terms in four months. In relative terms, it was 6.5%
The losses:
- Accounts with a positive monthly flow of L$ (earning more than they spend) was down from 61,136 to 60,788.
- The amount of USD exchanged during August dipped slightly. Barely enough to count -- a mere US$15,000 on the month, falling to US$9,500,000.
- Premium accounts continue to diminish, down another 1.8%, representing an increase in the rate of the fall for the third month running. In absolute terms, another 1,574 subscriber (premium) accounts lost in August, compared to only 1,410 lost in July. The number of subscriber accounts at the end of August was 84,883.
Not a good month. Mostly things seem static, with slight gains being offset by slight losses (aside from the continuing bleed of subscriber accounts). Basically it seems that Second Life experienced no significant growth for August 2008.
Demographically, Second Life is still firmly in the hands of Baby Boomers and Generation X, with younger users statistically remaining unengaged with the platform.
The statistics are available in OpenDocument format, and as Excel spreadsheets.
UPDATE: The figures given for land area are apparently in millions of square metres, and not in simulators. We've made the corrections above.
Get a WordPress.com Blog
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Marianne McCann said on 2:59PM 9-24-2008
So it was much like everybuggy said. I know a lot of vendors, myself included, found sales to be pretty stagnant in August.
Reply
Cyn said on 3:55PM 9-24-2008
That's a cute graphic, with the scene cutout, but it's darn hard to read.
Reply
Tateru Nino said on 10:25PM 9-24-2008
The original graphic is here, if that helps: http://taterunino.net/statistical%20graphs.html
Cyn said on 5:41AM 9-25-2008
Thanks!
Vlatch said on 5:12PM 9-24-2008
Could the universe of Second Life closely tie to the real-world economy? Looks like it. I'd expect this trend to continue for awhile.
Reply
Dedric Mauriac said on 7:05PM 9-24-2008
Dunno about SL being tied to the Economy. You would probably need to look at a chart comparing the two in a long term (say a year or so) to see if they both jump and fall around the same time periods.
Reply
Tateru Nino said on 10:31PM 9-24-2008
The majority of users are not in North America and have economies that are as-yet unaffected by what's going on there.
Yes, though, there *is* an inevitable connection between SL and the physical world - everyone in SL is from the latter, after all. It's difficult to say exactly what external factors influence SL, at this stage, and in what proportion.
Virtual worlds might be older than the Web, but they've had quite a bit less research done on them.
Reply
Tharkis Olafson said on 11:49AM 9-25-2008
I'm one of those contributing to the dwindling numbers. SL just doesn't do it for me anymore. Call me jaded, or burnt out, whatever.. To me, SL has just grown too big, become too commercial, and just plain isn't fun anymore. I have a hard time being in there for more than 10 minutes at a time.
Then there's half-finished projects like MONO. Which is great, except you can't compile anything for MONO without an RC viewer which crashes every time I right click on an attached object. (I am sure there are other bugs too.) Or a 3rd party client.
I'm also sick of the lack of communication between teh labz and it's grid residents. But I am sure it's just me. These numbers probably don't mean anything. Someone in the statistical tomfoolery department in teh labz probably misplaced a zero or two this time around.
Reply
Jay said on 3:17AM 9-26-2008
I have pretty much come to the same conclusion after almost 30 months in world as a heavy user who spent alot.
In the next month or so I will be making a decision if I just sell up my two regions and leave the game.
For me it's the heavy handed attitude to governance and the facist policies on what you can and can't do. SL has not been "your imagination" for almost 18 months now.
And... don't even get me started on lack of communications, Katt Linden was probably the Lab's biggest blunder after Robin herself.
SL is just "Meh" now
sheila6225 Allen said on 1:41PM 9-25-2008
Demographics page is not updated. The demographics page shows July data while SL key metrics page shows August data in the Excel file provided by LL. Have you noticed that?
Reply
WooHoo said on 10:52PM 9-25-2008
@Tateru Post7, "The majority of users are not in North America and have economies that are as-yet unaffected by what's going on there."
Um, RL stock markets and economies the world over are now catching the U.S. contagion, so I think your assertion is not really accurate.
Reply
Tateru Nino said on 11:56PM 9-25-2008
Not for August, though. "RL stock markets and economies the world over are now catching the U.S. contagion" - perhaps so (though our own markets and economy are doing fine).
"Not yet" in this case refers to dates up to 31 August, which is the period covered by the data.