There.com vs Second Life: demographics

There.com vs Second Life: demographics. Ben Richardson from There.com has kindly given me an insight into the demographic profile of the population of There.com. This virtual world has almost 1m registered members and is growing strongly. [read more about comparitive virtual world analysis]

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To date, the most recognised brand in There.com was MTV, running a walled garden version of Laguna Beach, although several major brands including Capitol Music Group are implementing this platform into their marketing strategies.

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There.com is a virtual world geared towards a slightly younger age profile than Second Life – the average age of a resident is 22, over ten years younger a typical Second Life resident. There.com positions itself much more as a ‘hang-out’ social destination than a creative platform, although content creation and in-world currency (therebucks) are both available.

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Here’s an age range comparison between the two:

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The minimum age threshold for the main grid of Second Life (18 years) may be a reason why younger dems reside in There.com. As shown above, 32% of the registered population are in the 13 – 17 bracket. Although Second Life does has a teen grid, this is kept completely apart from the adult population and does not have a currency or allow commercial activity.

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And, supporting the younger positioning, the graph clearly shows the scaling down of age representation as the brackets get older. Although interestingly there is a slight upside in the 35+ range.

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Here’s the age splits for Second Life [discussed in greater detail here].

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Moving onto the gender split, this metric continues to surprise some marketers. In Second Life 43% of registered accounts are (at registration point) are female. So, does this relationship hold true for There.com?

Yes it does. in fact to a slightly higher degree. Female registrations account for 3% more in There.com compared to Second Life. So either we’ve always underestimated the proportion of geeks – read, early adopters, who are female, or virtual worlds have (nearly) as much appeal to women as they do to men.