I love these, the media loves these, everybody loves these.
The infographic quickly gives you some interesting information packaged with pretty pictures.
Linden Lab just published this fresh new one as part of the 15th anniversary of the biggest user build virtual online world Second Life.
I’ve decided to dig up the infographic Linden Lab made for the 10th anniversary and compare the two.
Up to today 57 million accounts were created, that is impressive but doesn’t say very much about how well SL is doing or how many people actually use it because we all know that many of these people who sign up don’t use SL anymore ands some are alt accounts, I for instance have roughly 2 hundred thousand alts myself 😉
5 years ago there were 36 million accounts created, so that is another 21 million in 5 years!
Today the total time spend in SL is 482.000, now that is a lot.
It would be nice to know how many people actually are responsible for these hours though.
On the other hand, I really do not want to know how many hours I’ve spend in SL!
Five years ago this number was 217.000 years, so in the last 5 years we’ve spend more time in SL than people have in the first 10 years!
Now that is interesting.
SL may have stopped growing and is in slow decline but it is being used more intensely than ever before.
On average 350.000 people register for SL every month, even if many of these are alts and even if lots of new users only stay for a short time and don’t become “lifers”, it is still quite a high number of people who are still interested in checking out and trying a 15 year old product.
However, 5 years ago this number was 400.000, so this number has gone down.
$68 million has been paid to creators in 2017, I wish I was paid a million.
This number was not mentioned 5 years ago but in 2015 Ebbe said that users cashed out $60 million, so it looks like SL’s economy has gotten better the last 2 years.
5 million virtual goods created for the marketplace, back in 2013 this was 2.1 million, so this too seems to have grown rather a lot.
In the last 5 years we’ve been creating and/or selling more items on marketplace than in the 10 years before!
Mind you, with this number you have to ask yourself if everything that is being sold is actually created by users for sale or sold one, the cacha market is huge and consists of people selling stuff they did not create.
The top 3 categories most popular in the destination guide are games, editors picks and photogenic spots.
I had not spotted the photogenic spots category yet, all my sims should be in there of course!
It is interesting to see that 5 years ago the most popular categories were games, events and adventure & fantasy.
50 million chat messages sent daily, that doesn’t surprise me, I reckon I get at least half of all those messages!
Or at least it feels like it sometimes.
Unfortunately this number was not shared 5 years ago, but I think it has gone up because those who chat the most are the people who spend a lot of time in SL and it looks like we’ve been spending more and more time in this virtual world of ours.
I wonder if the real world becoming less and less pleasant might have had something to do with that…
Most popular shopping categories; avatar apparel, avatar accessories, home & garden.
In 2013 this was not shared but we did learn that women’s hairstyles were the most purchased items.
I’d like to have seen how many users visit monthly these days and how large SL’s landmass is.
I wonder if my analysis of these two infographics makes sense.
The most important things I notices are that although SL is in decline, those of us who do make it our home spend more time and money.
Which I reckon is pretty good news.
Of course we have to keep fighting to make sure more people join and stay once they’ve joined, but the locals, the regulars, the oldtimers, are doing a great job of keeping the world alive, active, fresh and interesting.
I reckon we deserve some nice gifts during the anniversary… subtle hint….
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Jo Yardley's Second Life 