Countdown to 1,000,000 Second Life Residents

Metaverse World leader Second Life barely had 100,000 residents at the beginning of 2006, and enjoyed strong growth in the first half of the year, reaching 300,000 residents at the end of June.

Then Second Life makers Linden Lab changed the registration policy such that no credit card information was required. The world's registered residents began to exponentiate, particularly helped by international residents swelling from 25% to 50% of total residents. Certainly residents do not correspond to unique users, as people may have one or more "alts," alternative avatars.

The Second Life website tracks that about one third of total residents have logged in within the last 60 days and that there are an average of 10,000 residents in-world during Second Life (US Pacific Coast) prime time hours. Private estimates suggest that about 10% of total residents are actually active in-world.

$7 million of transactions were run up by Second Life residents in July and there are a factor of magnitude more SKUs available in Second Life than at Wal-Mart (hello Long Tail).

On its current course, Second Life will reach the million resident mark well before the end of October and probably even before the end of the upcoming weekend. w00t!