What’s With the Second Life Death Watch?

Echo Omega: One of the Original Second Life Marketing Campaigns, circa 2004.

I’m some what guilty here: I have been focusing a lot more on other technologies lately, such as the OpenSim and realXtend platforms. That doesn’t mean that Second Life is anywhere close to dead. Many media outlets (I’m looking at you, hacks at ValleyWag) have been gleefully reporting that the virtual world is on life support, because a few corporations with a sense of self-importance have left, who had no real idea on how to engage the community.

None of these “reporters” did any semblance of home work, and went straight for sensationalism. Here are some facts to refute them:

(1) The amount of active users has grown by 25% since September, 2008 and March, 2009.

(2) The total number avatars created since it came out of beta in June, 2003, has eclipsed 16 million.

(3) Unlike some “web 2.0″ companies that are still media darlings, like Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter, Linden Lab / Second Life are a profitable enterprise. Yes, they’re the only one of those four making money.

(4) The average number of concurrent users logged into Second Life at any given time is 70,000 (note: that includes “bot users”, avatars that are programmed for various purposes; think “non-player characters” in traditional games; Linden Lab estimates 10-15% of users are “bots”).

(5) Residents spent 41.5 million hours in Second Life in January, 2009, compared to 28.3 million hours in January, 2008.

(6) Over US $1,300,000.00 (yes, that’s United States dollars) changes hands daily through Second Life’s microcurrency, the Linden dollar.

(7) A rich array of innovative educational programs exist in Second Life.

(8) In February, 2009, over 64,000 Second Life users made a profit during the month. Of that group, over 200 made a profit of over US$5000, just under 1000 made between US$1000 and US$5000, and just under 4000 made between US$100 and US$1000.

Back to the corporations that have left; many of them, such as American Apparel (a brand I don’t care for) and Armani (a brand I really like) had the same problem. They thought the strength of their brand was enough to carry them in a virtual world. The attitude that being so cool in real life that it will carry you in a virtual world is a common misconception. Both American Apparel and Armani built exact replicas of their flagship stores in Second Life (how boring and predictable), and did not engage the community at all. “If you build it, they will come” does not apply in Second Life, no matter how good your image is in meat space.

I find it amazing that the death knell is being sounded, when only a few self-important companies have left Second Life. These were purely P.R. campaigns to get a press release, projects that were run by traditional marketing departments without any attempt to understand the new space. The fact that they failed is hardly a shock to anyone who has been watching virtual worlds closely. Their failure, however, is hardly reflective of a failure of Second Life or virtual worlds in general.