Philip Rosedale: Second Life Usage Surpasses 2 Billion Hours

After I Tweeted that Second Life was still in Nielsen's Top 10, SL co-founder Philip Rosedale responded with a Tweet of his own: "SL recently passed 2+ Billion hours of use!" Maybe I missed if this milestone was mentioned before, but in any case, it's worth noting here. SL surpassed 1 billion user hours in September 2009, which took six years from its Summer 2003 launch to reach, so it took only 3 years to add one billion more.

From a certain perspective, "2 billion" is such a large number it sort of seems meaningless, so here's some elementary math to put it in perspective:

• 2 billion total user hours translate to 228,310 total years of Second Life usage.
• About 20 million people have tried Second Life so far. So 2 billion user hours averages out to 100 hours per user -- i.e. 5 days in Second Life.
• If you laid those 2 billion hours end to end, they would stretch so far into the cosmos that the ghost of Carl Sagan would appear in front of you and say, "Motherfucker that analogy makes no goddamn sense." And he would be right.

So, 2 billion hours. Monthly active users, to be sure, remain fixed below a million uniques, and probably stand at around 400,000 to 600,000 regular recurring users. But as the hours suggest, those actives are active indeed.

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Comments

[Iggy]

To build in "Man Hours," as the old term goes:

--Supermarine Spitfire: 51,000 (helped win a war)

--Transcontinental Rairoad: 240,000 (linked a nation)

--Empire State Building: 7,000,000 (served as Doc Savage's HQ and death-perch for giant ape)

--Hoover Dam: 68,250,000 (helped make the West overpopulated and will last until end of next Ice Age).

Two billion on pixels...pass that Martini! (10 man-minutes needed)

[Dartagan Shepherd]

That's almost like them saying that more users are signing up now, but spending less time in world.

Only different.

[Pussycat Catnap]

That it took half as long to double the mark shows that despite all claims to the contrary, use of SL is going UP, not down.

[A.J.]

I wish that LL would take note... that it just takes a little positive communication to make their paying customers feel good about spending their money in SL.

This shouldn't be some second-hand news on NWN. It should be on on every SL players dashboard.

[Gaga]

That sure is a lot but how many are campers, bots and sleepers, not to mention the huge number of daily signups that never return? As for the real users well, they are all just broken people and misfits living a rural life - according to Phillip if I remember right. Somehow the figures don't ring true anyway since the daily peek traffic struggles to reach 60,000 and off-peek drops to 30,000 or less. It's easy to say something but we need proof with metrics and LL are shy at giving those these days.

[Orca Flotta]

If you laid those 2 billion hours end to end, they would stretch so far into the cosmos that the ghost of Carl Sagan would appear in front of you and say, "Motherfucker that analogy makes no goddamn sense." And he would be right.
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That was actually the first time ever this blog made me smile. Lemme try to find my smiley face. brb ... :) <-- So, there you are.

But as the hours suggest, those actives are active indeed.
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Hey, we know that we are active, we know that SL is the right product for our niche of the market, we don't give a flying fox if it's the right product for any other demography. It works for some, for others it don't. Time for LL to wake up and smell the roses. I say it since a long time now and maintain my position: SL is a niche product! It's not for the masses, it doesn't appeal to the mainstream, it's not as casual as many think it is, it's not for facetwats, it's not for the 5 minutes/week users, it's geeky and complicated. We "activists" know that and we are happy about it.

[foneco zuzu]

As more and more are using open source Open sim tech to link thousands of schools, institutes and public networks, more and more will know and log in Second Life as well!
Still, agree all with Orca, Sl should not be a mass product, should not be easy, should only be for a few!
By the way LL treats its user base, for sure it smees like they share this!