769K World: After Brief Plateau, Second Life Ends 2009 With Small Growth Spurt of Unique Monthly Users

Second Life ended 2009 with 769,000 monthly unique returning users, according to economic data just released by the Lindens, which ends a period of slow or negative growth from August to November of last year. This figure includes 1900 Self Identified Scripted Agents (SISAs), better known by SL users as "bots". "Self-Identified" means these are bots registered with the company by their owner, and include bots acting as fashion models and AIs. (Consequently, that does not count unauthorized bots used to game Second Life's search and traffic algorithms, though it's unclear how many of these exist.)

More analysis of these latest SL stats throughout today.

Comments

[Galatea Gynoid]

Unique logins, concurrent users, etc., are not really valid ways to measure real activity in SL, since it's not really possible to determine whether a given avatar is a a bot, or even just an alt. This is the common criticism always thrown out when population/activity figures rise ("it's just more bots" or "explosion in alt population!") and ignored when they fall ("SL usage declining, users rushing for the exits!"). The population and activity figures are largely meaningless, as there's simply no way to determine what's really going on by looking at them.

To really see if SL is rising or falling, you need to look at the economic figures. They much more reliably give a picture of how much real activity is going on in the world, given that bots rarely shop, and people generally only are shopping with one avatar at a time. It also distinguishes real interest in the world vs. a curious person just checking it out who never really jumps in.

The critics generally ignore those figures, of course, since they invariably undermine their predictions of doom and gloom...

[Hamlet Au]

I agree economic activity is an important metric, GG, but not sure it should be the defining one. Should we really think someone's not an active part of SL's community unless they're spending money in it?

[LittleLostLinden]

Hey, where is the mention of campers in this data?

I see campers on the rise daily.

[Ananda Sandgrain]

I was there for that spike. Then, once all the after-holiday and New Years parties were over, all the oldbies logged off again.