Second Life Virtual World Expands 44% in Q2

Second Life Virtual World Expands 44% in Q2
Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 at 11:58 AM by: Zee Linden

Linden Lab is pleased to announce results for Second Life the second Quarter.

Land mass grew over 44%. The total number of regions owned by residents increased 44.2% over Q1 to just over 1.5 billion square meters. Our growth was due to the popularity of our newly launched “Openspace” land product along with a change in pricing to make the purchase of land more accessible to first time buyers. “Openspace” regions are full 65,000 square meter regions with an upfront fee of $250 and a recurring monthly fee of $75. We decreased the price for full regions by 40% to $1000 upfront (the recurring monthly fee remains $295). We also launched a new Land Store that instantly provisions new regions. Pricing changes plus a dramatically improved purchase experience fueled land sales in the quarter. On the other hand, premium subscriptions have remained flat since we decreased the stipend to L$ 300 per week in the second quarter of 2007. Prior to that the premium account essentially provided residents with a way to purchase L$ at a discounted rate. Because land represents nearly 8x more revenue to us than premium accounts, our focus has been on the launching of new land products rather than on enhancing the premium subscription.

User Hours grew by 8.5% while peak concurrency grew modestly. Resident user hours grew approximately 6% from an annualized rate of just under 350 million user hours in Q1 to over 380 million user hours in Q2. Peak concurrent users grew modestly from Q1 to Q2 to just under 67,000 users. Significant outages in April prevented this number from growing as fast as it otherwise might. However, uptime improved dramatically in May and June – see the grid status page – so we’re expecting to see continued growth in Q3.

User-to-User Transactions grew over 14%. Total user-to-user transactions, a measure of the gross domestic product in Second Life, grew 14.3% during the quarter from an annualized rate of $300 million in Q1 to $338 million in Q2. Resident spending remained a healthy $0.87 per user hour.

Volume on the Lindex grew 5%. Volume on the LindeX, our virtual currency exchange where users can buy and sell our inworld currency, grew 5% to an annual rate of $108 million. The total value of all the Linden Dollars in circulation grew 8.6% over Q1 to $19.7 million in Q2 with the exchange rate remaining steady against USD at approximately L$ 267 to one USD.

The number of “profitable” inworld businesses grew by 9%: Taking advantage of the growth in the economy, the number of inworld businesses with Positive Monthly Linden Flow, a measure of profitability, grew to 59,000 in June.

Meta Linden has posted the full data for June in a Google Spreadsheet here. We have made some modifications to the format to make them easier to review.

http://lindenlab.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/59kpmlf.png

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pxbDc4B2FH94lKcWU2YDVFQ