Second Life Growth Rates and Philip’s Tenure as CEO of Linden Lab
Last week I read with great interest about Philip Rosedale’s decision to step down as CEO of Linden Lab. Peppered throughout the article are quotes like this:
“Second Life’s growth has slowed after a period of rapid expansion. Rosedale’s replacement will face the difficult task of regaining that momentum…”
and
“The virtual world’s subscriber base and user hours are still increasing but at much lower rates than in late 2006 and early 2007, when a surge of attention brought droves of new users to Second Life.”
The article correctly points out that the rate of new registrations have been on a downward trend, that there are now over 13 million accounts, and there are “thought to be roughly 500,000 hard-core users.” Now in no way do I mean to suggest that public opinion of Second Life hasn’t drastically changed over the course of the last 2 years. However, perhaps there is a different way to look at the data besides the month-on-month registration growth quoted in the article. For starters, how many of these avatars actually spend quality time in world?
Since April of 2007 Maya Realities has observed around 450,000 unique avatars on 850+ regions. I’m asserting this data represents avatars that went out into Second Life and spent quality time. After all, these avatars actually had to get to someplace that Maya Realities analyzes traffic in order to be counted. It implies a certain purpose or intent. Rather than look at all 13 million avatars lets look at this subset.
This graph shows the number of avatars observed with a particular birthday. In other words, observed registration count. The spike around October 24th, 2007 was the statistical anomaly known as CSI:NY. Perhaps the recent downward trend seen in registrations is the result of the “avatar market” self correcting itself to get back in line with longer term growth rates. In essence, the Second Life platform (or society?) simply isn’t ready to sustain the abnormal growth rates observed as a result of CSI:NY. Lets take a closer look:
Applying a power trend line to observed registration data since April 2006 and cropping out the CSI spike, it seems that Second Life isn’t in that bad shape when it comes to new registrations. Granted new registrations show a downward trend since October 2007, however, is it that surprising considering the growth rate observed for October?
I for one congratulate Philip on an amazing job accomplished these last several years. Time will tell (and the data will likely show) how well his successor continues Linden Lab’s success. I take comfort in knowing Philip won’t be far removed from the decision making process.
