September metrics part 3: Western Europe

Western European countries account for the largest share of the population in Second Life – although North America is showing signs of catching up (and being the lead region again).

What’s of particular interest is the segmentation and analysis of the countries comprising Western Europe. The graph below shows the % share of total SL population for these countries.

Continue reading →

September metrics part 2: A global view on SL usage

North America (primarily the USA) had been the driving force behind the geographical population of Second Life up to about May 2006, largely explained by the ‘localite’ nature of Innovators. From around this period however, a surge in Western European accounts overtook North America as the dominant region in SL. Shown below over time are the major global regions and their respective share of the active resident population.

However, although Western Europe still accounts for the largest region in SL, a clear resurgence in North American active users can be observed from June 2007.

In terms of actual numbers for September 2007, these can be seen below.

Active users residing in North America now accounts for exactly one third of all active, a 1.3% increase month on month.

But what about actual usage? The key metric here is the average number of hours spent in SL per month. The graph below shows this stat for September. Continue reading →

September metrics part 1: Accounts and gender

It’s that time of the month again to examine the latest Linden Lab stats for Second Life activity. This post is dealing with registered/unique accounts and the gender split.

The first two graphs show trend analysis for total registered accounts and total unique users.

Total registered accounts closed September at 9,596,742, an increase of 3.7% from August. Total unique accounts totaled 6,736,832, an increase of 9.3% from the previous month. So, although grow has slowed on an overall basis, we’ve seen a pick-up in unique accounts, as shown in the following graph showing monthly gain.

This obviously leads us onto the relationship between total accounts and unique accounts, explained by the fact that some people choose to have more than one avatar under their control. Continue reading →

BBC News: Game worlds show their human side

BBC News: Game worlds show their human side. The BBC News website is carrying an interesting story about how researchers are using virtual worlds to study human behaviour.

Extract:

Online worlds offer great potential to social scientists because they overcome some of the problems these researchers encounter when gathering subjects in the real world, Dr William Bainbridge, head of Human-Centred Computing at the US National Science Foundation, wrote in the journal.

For instance, he wrote, social scientists often face problems finding subjects fast enough or securing funds to carry out the research.

The popularity of online worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft meant there was a ready pool of subjects that could be recruited over long periods of time for little cost, he said.

K Zero is also exploring this field. This post explains the two main types of ‘person’ in Second Life, augmentalists and immersionalists. The BBC News story discusses the number of avatars created per resident, which as this analysis shows, is higher than they suggest. Continue reading →