Second Life usage per active resident

Second Life usage per active resident. An active resident in SL is someone who has logged in for over one hour in a month. On an overall basis, active residents were in SL for 42.7 hours in June. When looking at usage per active resident on a country and regional basis, some interest patterns emerge.

The graph below shows hours per active resident for the top 40 countries represented in SL.

Clearly some major differences between countries. Both the US and Canada have very high usage (over 50 hours per month). This is explained by the fact that people spend more time in Second Life the longer they have been registered – these two countries drove the initial take-up of accounts because of where Linden Lab is located and SL originated.

Whats of interest here as well is high usage from the Netherlands – in fact the highest out of all the countries with 52.4 hours in June. The dynamics of virtual worlds is clearly impacting people in this country more than others. Germany also appears to have this characteristic.

Exploring the factors behind average usage per month is easier when aggregating countries into regions, as shown below.

Lesser developed regions (on an economic basis) have lower usage than better developed ones. This can be partly explained by the take-up of Second Life on a time-basis. Africa, South America and Eastern Europe are good examples of this. Asian countries however, are also only recently increasing take-up but still have the third highest usage – explained by the already high awareness and usage of MMOGs plus a healthy broadband penetration rate.

The full report into Second Life resident analysis and metrics can be requested here.

Based in Cambridge UK, K Zero is a metaverse marketing consultancy. More about K Zero.