Second Life has done a good job being transparent with their statistics. Key metrics are available on the home page, and additional information was released last December. Today the company got even more granular, releasing detailed information on the Second Life population, demographics, usage time and land supply in an excel spreadsheet.
All of the important ways of measuring Second Life are way up and to the right. Total registered users now number 3.1 million, up from 124,000 a year ago. A more conservative measurement of users that removes duplicate credit card and email information shows 2 million users, up from 95,000 a year ago. At any given time, ten to thirty thousand of those users are online and logged in to the world.
The total size of Second Life is growing briskly as well. The company reports a two week backlog in getting land up and running (this is effectively a hosting business, land=servers). There are 258 islands generating between $200-$300 per month each in revenue for the company, as well as another 103 square kilometers of mainland real estate, which costs $3-$10 per square meter. Based on straightline averages, this implies about $670,000/month in hosting revenue for the company.
There’s lots of other ways to slice this data up as well. The excel notebook is here for download. And it’s no wonder that Second Life is disclosing this information. The company is rolling. The only point of weakness is online users at any given time. If that number doesn’t rise, the other stats will eventually collapse.