200K

Another milestone for the world reached today-- though I suspect the more meaningful one happens at 250K, since it's more impactful to say, "A quarter of a million subscribers."  By including the Business Week cover story which provoked another influx of attention, this screen capture suggests how SL was able to leap from 100K to 200K in under four months.  Zero Grace, the first SL blogger to notice the flip, has some thoughts and some demographics.

Comments

[SignpostMarv Martin]

I'd like to raise a few points about SL's population statistics:

SL isn't in the same genre as the other MMOGs quote in Tony's post- up until recently the wikipedia defined SL as an MMORLG (MMO Real Life Game).

In addition to "adjusting" the figures to make up for alt and inactive accounts in SL, WoW and others, the fact that SL has completely different aims from other MMOGs has to be taken into account:
* the number of alts per user will most likely be lower in SL since all you get is a new name
* the amount of superfluous new signups due to bannings is likely lower in SL because of the work done by Linden Labs to kick out griefers, and there's pretty much no room for "cheating" as there is in other MMOGs
* the number of accounts being created for resale is likely close to 0 as all you would get is the name, ratings and possibly a bunch of relationships with people you're not familiar with- only an idiot would leave an Linden Dollars on the account and you could just hire a personal shopper in world to fill up your inventory.

So while one assumes that doesn't lower the gap by much, if what I'm thinking is correct then it means Second Life's resident statistics are "purer".

PS: the statistics quoted on MMOGChart.com are nowhere near current at all as it lists SL as having a population of around 45,000 residents (I would leave a comment over on clickable culture regarding this, but the registration seemingly failed for some unknown reason).

[Keoni Chavez]

Hamlet, I love reding your work, but could you please never use the word 'impactful' again? The usage of 'impact' as a verb is horrible enough; do we need to make it worse? What's wrong with saying 'powerful'?

[SignpostMarv Martin]

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/impactful

Note that the word isn't in the wiktionary.