Linden Lab have just released the findings of their recent analysis of Second Life usage.  400 million hours of resident participation – that’s over 45,000 years for a single user!

Given that the report also shows a marked increase in resident ownership and economic participation – it bodes well for MUVEs and seems to suggest that Gartner’s predictions might be realised.

There is an argument in all this that no-one can really be looking at VW development as a fringe web activity… as an educator I hope that more educational organisations start looking to these spaces as an adjunct to their existing offerings.

Second Life Residents logged nearly 400 million hours in 2008, growing 61% over 2007 « Official Second Life Blog

Second Life Residents logged nearly 400 million hours in 2008, growing 61% over 2007
Thursday, January 15th, 2009 at 12:33 PM by: Zee Linden

Linden Lab is pleased to announce results for Q4 and 2008. User hours increased by 61% over 2007, highlighting the tremendous growth rate in user engagement that Second Life maintained throughout 2008. User hours increased steadily each quarter, culminating in a record-setting 112 million user hours in Q4. In addition:

• Peak concurrent users were up 31% over 2007
• Land owned by Residents increased 82% over 2007
• Exchange Volume increased 33% over 2007
• User-to-user transactions in Q4 increased 54% over Q4 of 2007.

Financially 2008 was an outstanding year for the company from a profitability and cash flow perspective. We are in a strong position to weather the economic downturn while continuing to invest in the Second Life platform.

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