Second Life Grid Continues to Grow in Wake of Tier Discounts (But Slowly)

Likely missed by many during Thanksgiving week, here's the latest Second Life economic report from Tyche Shepherd, a top statistician for a major multinational whose quirky hobby is tracking the evolution of virtual world land ownership on Grid Survey.  (Follow her on Twitter here.) Continuing a trend noted last month, Second Life is still seeing positive (if tiny) growth of private SL sims, Linden Lab's top revenue source, a trend which started last July after tier discounts were announced:

Total number of Main Grid regions is now 23819 ( 16144 private estates & 7675 Linden owned). 32 new regions were added and 10 returned to the grid, with 40 regions removed (14 were renamed and 0 came and went since last report) Adult regions were up in number by 9 to 5932 (24.9% of the grid). While the number of general rated fell by 5 to 2934 (12.3%). Year to date net Private Estate growth stands at 38 regions (0.2% growth).

At this rate, it's likely that overall growth for Second Life private regions in 2018 will be net positive by a whisker. But as Tyche told me last month:

"My gut feeling (rather than any actual analysis) is that the recent growth in regions has been among existing/lapsed owners rather than new landowners. In other words, while it may have brought in some lapsed users the tier reduction hasn't broadened the land holding base and natural decline is going to kick in again."

To her last point, the real trend to watch is the state of the in-world economy -- i.e. the economy for doing things with virtual land (customizing homes, fashion, events, etc). I continue to get mixed reports on that, with many content creators sending me word of a recession or a downturn, but anecdotal reports may not be accurate to overall trends. More on that soon.

Pictured above: The Second Life grid back in 2009, featuring Osprey Therian's mark-up of the map, showing the area of SL that existed when she joined in 2004.  

Comments

[YsabelleStewart]

Just heard today that the lovely Duet sim, a great place for photography, has closed. Sad to see it go.