Here's a mini-milestone for this month: Second Life's mobile app has likely been downloaded on well over 100,000 devices.
We know that because the Google Play download counter recently passed the 50K+ Downloads mark, for the Android version of the app, and it's safe to assume the iOS Apple version has been downloaded at least that much, but likely much more. (I'd estimate the iOS/Android ratio among Second Life users to be 60/40 or even 70/30.) Also, leading analytics service SimilarWeb counts total Second Life app downloads as over 155,000 downloads as of the end of November.
So that's something! To put this in perspective, Second Life currently gets about 200,000 Daily Active Users and 500,000 Monthly Active Users. So it's a good estimate that 1 in 3 SLers have installed the app at this point.
Of course "installs" are not the same as usage, and Linden Lab head Brad Oberwager recently explained the company is actually tracking other metrics more closely:
They're not simply trying to drive as many downloads of the app as possible -- they're instead focusing most on how many times someone uses it per month, per day, and how much time they spend in-world. (What we call KPIs, for key performance indicators.)
Most of these downloads were by Premium users who had early access, with nearly 40,000 downloads in November (according to SimilarWeb) when the app went free for all. With many more updates coming soon, I'd expect that pace to continue -- especially in the first quarter of 2025, when Linden Lab is shipping a first version of a communications lobby, intended to make the Second Life mobile app relevant for people who have mid-tier/lower-end smartphones who can't fully display the virtual world view.
I'm planning to interview Oberwager soon, so more updates/confirmations imminently!
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