Second Life Metrics and Mockery

The Second Life blog has some interesting (and some may say scary) information on its users -- a census, if you will, on the population of this new virtual world. Some stats:

As of January 28, 2007 there were 3 million registered accounts in Second Life. That's equivalent to a major US city

In November 2006, users spent a total of 6.4 million hours "in-world."

70% of Linden Labs revenue is coming from the "land sales" in Second World

Perhaps what's most interesting is the growth rate. In 2006, Second World experienced growth rates of 10% to 30% per month for premium users. the number of all registered users more than doubled in four months (between October and January). More interesting Second Life stats can also be found at Wikipedia

All this activity in a virtual world has some people wondering whether we've forgotten about good old Terra Firma, a.k.a. Earth -- you know, that bright sunny thing with the air and dirt that you notice if you go outside? Thanks to a friend from Business 2.0 magazine for making sure I saw www.getafirstlife.com, where, believe it or not, people MOCK the wonder that is Second life. They seem to feel that people should spend more time being a person and less being an avatar. I tried to interact with the site, but the navigation links didn't work :)

Hey, what's not to like about Second Life? Increasing land mass, increasing populations and no global warming. Sounds like it's going to give the first world a run for its money (or Linden dollars, as the case may be).