Second Life's Reported Monthly Active Users Drop to 800,000, Down 200K Since 2014 -- "Paying SL Users Has Held Steady", Says Linden Lab

Linden Lab is now reporting Second Life monthly active users as just 800,000 - a figure first mentioned in Kristen French's Wired/Backchannel article last week. That's a significant drop from the last few years: In 2013, Linden Lab reported 1 million monthly actives in SL, it remained that rate in 2014, and then in 2015, Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg put the figure at 900,000 monthly actives. Now they're saying it's 800,000.

Why the drop?

"We've made a number of optimizations to our user acquisition efforts to get more qualified traffic," Linden Lab spokesman Peter Gray tells me. "As a result, though the total number of monthly actives has come down, the number of paying SL users has held steady."

Translating that from online marketing jargon, he means roughly this:

Linden Lab has changed their advertising and marketing campaigns to get potential users who more likely to stay, cutting down on churn from people who may create an account or even try using the SL client, but leave after the first log-in. I've long argued that SL's actual, meaningful, active user base has been closer to 600,000 for many years (based on sources and data the company publicly reports), with paying users  -- both people who buy/rent land, have a monthly Premium account, and/or purchase Linden Dollars -- somewhere in the range of 400,000-500,000. Seven years ago, using a somewhat different counting method, SL was reported to have around 800,000 users. So most likely, dropping from 1,000,000 to 800,000 reported users isn't so much a loss of actual people as a trimming of marketing fluff.

Comments

[Patchouli Woollahra]

Second Life is amazing, when a drop in active user numbers is actually turning out to be good news. But I'll believe it when I see the revenue-to-servicing-cost numbers.

[Shockwave]

Because LL has had 12 years to fix bugs and hasnt. Because LL is the only tech service prices have not gone down. Because LL got rid of your world your way and for ed us to live the LL way. Because LL made the marketplace so that buying land for a store was a losing move.

How anyone can build utopia where no harm is possible and screw it up so nobody wants to come to it is beyond me. Over and over people warned the labs not to $stupid thing over and over the lab said to like it or leave. So, left they did. And somehow it all the users fault, too.

[Clara Seller]

It's amazing that SL can retain these numbers given the situation it's in. LL treats SL as if it's a lost cause and I see it as a gold mine. Most sane companies would kill to have this kind of dedicated customer base who will support your business even after you've been AWOL for years.

LL has completely lost the ability to bring in new customers because they've thrown away the ability to communicate with them. They can't train new individuals in the basics of their product because they have no control over the basics. Their avatar is a crippled outcast of society faced with overwhelming hurdles of becoming normal and LL offers no hand in helping them find their way because LL doesn't know or care how to help them. You can't really enjoy the experience of being "you" because the bulk of you time is spent trying to keep your pieces glued together long enough to get a picture for your blog. That's really what life in SL is becoming... a snapshot of something that doesn't really exist.

[Ana]

LL doesn't do much but I am glad they got rid of the copybots, it was hard to design when someone right around the corner steals your designs. Thank you LL

[low]

@Ana
Yes, LL wants to be the only ones to steal your designs.

smh

[Fred]

Its strange that SL has not grown, but with all the wrong decisions they made over the years its even more strange it is still alive as a platform.

I think your estimates are more correct Hamlet than the ones released from LL. Its been a while since I read any statements about the financial situation, how is the company doing?

[Carlos Loff]

SL Secret is - COMMUNITY - not an LL achievement but an SL consequence of many years in monopoly of virtual lifes - People prefere to kerp being ignored and pay 300$ for a Sim, rather than 15$ on Opensim and with better area and performance, when faced with the terrible option of having to say goodbye to their SL friends and costumary hangouts

[irihapeti]

@shockwave @Clara @low @Carlos

14 years on there is still approx. 800,000 people with money to spend who would disagree with you. It may be that you don't see any value in spending your money on this but they do. So what does it matter to these 800,000 that you see no or little value in this for yourselves

[Carlos Loff]

Im explaining why it happens, Im not say it should or not happen, my SL inventory must be worth some 2.000$ and my past fees on mailand and sim rentals around 3.000$

[Orca Flotta]

Hmmm, couldn't it be just natural selection responsible for SL's shrinking userbase? Remember the big influx in 2006/07 when SL was booming. Well, we're all now like 9,10,11 years old, have seen and done everything there is to do in world. We were consumers, business people, dancers, whores, property moguls, perverts, parents, warriors, artists, builders and lovers. We've seen countless short-lived accounts come and go, we've heard about people passing away suddenly or seen them slowly fizzling out. But all in all I guess we're the majority of SL resis, the greatest generation! And now it's time for many of us to lose interest, to become sick and tired of SL and stay offline for longer and longer timespans. I know at least I do. :) And I don't believe I'm the only one, so if you feel and act kinda like me, there we have the visible dent in SL's concurrent online numbers.

=^.^=

[Better then Ezra]

Orca Flotta point is on pare with the real realities behind the population drift and people behind the masks.

Nothing will ever replace SL in my eyes, while still having a home now on a sleepy region, were once in a blue moon someone logs back in to SL to look around, check messages and inventory, drop a few spare Lindenburgs into the hungry hippo box then Poof once again! Many places are still booming with people and events outside my sleepy home land,(Second Life is far from dead) while i stay locked up in my ivory tower skybox looking down at the world with sullen eyes.

I love SL and do not hate LL but dislike E-Bert for abusing & neglecting the mainlands by not updating the terrain textures and other things moles could do to refresh the place.for atleast not trying to turn the mainlands into something profitable maybe downsizing it to reflect the realities of lesser people.

I am in THE BIG 3- Sansar, High Fidelity, Space, the only thing they have is they are starting fresh with blueprints, while second life came together with shared dreams,unknowns to explore & an explosion of user creativity that continues to this day minus updated build tools substituted with imported models.

[irihapeti]

@Orca @Ezra @Carlos

i think we agree on the sometimes getting jaded part. Too much of the same old same old sometimes

i come and go in SL since pretty much forever now. Have periodic absences anywhere from about 4 months up to 18 months or so. Delete my account even, thinking that I can't ever see myself continuing anymore

then months later after wandering round the internets engaging/exploring other worlds, games, spaces, etc; I feel the pull of the world that SL is calling me home. A little bit like homesickness in a sense

so I come home, bc it is home for me

i might have a different tag over my head when I do, but home it is for better or worse, and I feel that I will always belong here in this world. No matter how far, or for how long, I might range in other places and spaces

[nameinthisbox]

As sansar gets ready I can imagine they have been looking at who the target market is, some of all that may very well lead to SL's marketing changing as well. But it does remind me, it takes money to advertise and push for Sansar after some initial PR works to get some people in. So, we will see but this is interesting, but leaves a question slightly related still unanswered but shows they are focusing on profitable customers much more and willing to take a chance. Maybe some BIG DATA education or software involved?