Linden Lab's Blocksworld Now Has 400K Monthly Users - Here's How They Can Grow it to Be Larger Than Second Life

VentureBeat has a long interview with Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg, which mainly hits points he's discussed with us here and here, but he also reveals a new data point which helps explain why the company kept Blocksworld, the LEGO-like tablet-based application targeted at kids, while selling off properties like Desura:

We’re learning a ton about how to make creation easy and fun. We’re learning how kids interact with a device like this. We’ve done barely any marketing around this. We’re still evolving this product, still early. But we’re already up to just about 400,000 monthly users. We’re a top-ranked game in the education category. We tend to be near the top in both the family and education categories of the App Store, at least in the U.S. The app is available globally, but at the moment, it’s English only. (Emph. mine)

That's really impressive, especially without much marketing and no non-English versions to speak of. Second Life has about 600,000 active monthly users, so Blocksworld is already within striking distance. Create a version of Blocksworld for the Japanese and Korean markets (which monetize best) and for China (which has the largest install base), not to mention Germany (the EU's biggest mobile market, I believe), and I can easily see Blocksworld getting a monthly user-base far larger than Second Life itself.

Speaking of which, Altberg describes a rich ecosystem of user-genreated content in Blocksworld:

Once you create a world, you can share it within the app. Anyone who has it around the world can play. Part of what’s interesting as you browse through the community, you see what kids make and what they like when you hand that power to them. You give kids a stack of Legos and say, “Make me something.” We see a lot of kids humor stuff, a lot of pop-culture things. Lots of memes. It’s very similar to Second Life in that it’s all user-generated content. But we’re targeting a very easy-to-construct interface. People have showed how easy it is to construct. It’s probably kids around six or seven to 17 kind of range. That’s the key demographic.

It's also a key demographic for SL2 -- because 2-3 years from now, a lot of those kids are going to turn 18 and start looking for an even richer creative palette.

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Comments

[Joe]

"The Skipper" neither created the game nor came up with the idea of it yet he has no problem talking about it like he did.

Watch how his involvement eventually ruins it.

[Jim]

"The troll" neither founded Linden Lab nor works for this company, but has no problem to decry it over and over.

Watch how he makes a fool of oneself.

[zz bottom]

Hehehe, nice reply:)

[Iggy]

Good to hear some good news about LL's business model.

Before anyone else scoffs, remember that income for the Lab supports all their products. Selling Malibus to the rental fleets lets Chevy build Corvettes.

[Amanda Dallin]

@Joe
The "Skipper" is speaking for the company which is proper for the CEO or designated spokesperson. If he was going around claiming he created SL and asking who this Philip guy you keep mentioning is then there'd be an issue.

[joe]

This article was about 'Blocksworld' and I was specifically referring to that.

Next time, read the article before trying to refute my facts.

[Jim]

Which facts?

[Fred]

interesting that blocksworld did take off and not puzzle, I though the blocksworld product seemed a bit harder to sell, but I can see why its popular it reminds me of my happy noob days building away in a sandbox trying to figure things out. Good for LL, would be cool if they integrated this stuff in SL build functionality!

[Fred]

for some odd reason I wrote Puzzle instead of Patternz..