Second Life Statistics - January 2007

Linden Labs today published their Second Life statistics - and I have taken the opportunity to extract some of the data for your delectation. These are figures as at the end of January, 2007. First off, let’s look at the population total. The overall population of registered accounts (ie residents) sits at over 3million. However, the actual number of unique users - based on either their payment details or email address - stands at under 2million. In effect, there are over a million alt accounts in Second Life, and that is not counting all the alts that use alternative email addresses. The number of premium account holders, at less than 60 thousand, is a small fraction of the total. Only premium account holders are entitled to buy land, paying a relatively princely sum of 72 USD a year to do so (assuming they pay 1 year outright, this rises closer to 120USD if bought monthly).

Unique Users... 1,974,607
Residents...... 3,117,287
Premium........ 57,702

The next table shows a breakdown of residents by country. It is no surprise to see USA at the head of the list, but I find it interesting that both France and Germany are so strongly represented, with the laggardly Brits staggering in in 4th place (as a Brit, I am used to be out of the medal positions!). The Netherlands, given its relatively small size, makes a great showing in 5th place.

Country.......... % of Residents
United States.... 31.19%
France........... 12.73%
Germany.......... 10.46%
United Kingdom... 8.09%
Netherlands...... 6.55%

Now here’s the breakdown by age band - bearing in mind that under-18s have their own Teen Grid. I am faintly surprised to see so many 18-24s here - as most of the people I know in this category are far happier with MySpace.

Age Band... % of Active
18-24...... 27.46%
25-34...... 38.78%
35-44...... 21.00%
45 + ...... 11.52%

And last, but by no means least - in terms of the number of hours logged on to Second Life - here is the breakdown by gender. This has slipped from a 50:50 split only a few months ago, to a predominantly male preserve --- not a good thing in my view. I would be interested to hear any views as to why this has come about.

Female...... 41.11%
Male........ 58.89%