Second Commerce

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  • Michael Schumann
    Michael Schumann    Premium Member   Group moderator
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    Second Life Economy hits all time high in Q2
    The Second Life Economy - Second Quarter 2009 in Detail

    Economy grows 94% year to year, hits new all time high in Q2
    World expands and voice usage hits all time high; Bot policy affects user hours and logins

    In Q2 2009, Second Life Residents enjoyed the sixth consecutive quarter of record growth and activity in the in-world economy. At nearly USD 50M per month in user-to-user transactions, the Second Life economy is now on a annual run rate north of half a billion US dollars, making Second Life the largest virtual economy in the industry.

    The highlights of Q2 include:

    USD 144 million dollars in total user-to-user transactions, an increase of 94% from the same quarter last year
    Voice minutes totaled 3.2 billion minutes, up 48% from the same quarter last year
    LindeX and Xstreet hit new all time highs
    Resident-owned land in Second Life increased 11% from last year

    User-to-User transactions increased 94% from Q2 2008 – The total of all transactions in Second Life reached a new high in the quarter. The sum of all of the transactions in the Second Life economy equaled a total of USD 144 million dollars in Q2 2009. This is 20% growth over the previous quarter and 94% over the same quarter one year ago. This means that in the space of one year, the Second Life economy has nearly doubled, which is a testament to the creativity, dynamism and energy of Second Life Residents.

    By way of comparison, In Q2, the US Economy decreased 1% from the previous quarter and decreased 3.9% when compared to the same quarter a year ago (see page 40 of the full release and tables from the US Government’s Bureau of Economic Analysis).

    Trading Activity on the LindeX reaches a new all time high – The volume of exchange on the LindeX, the marketplace for Linden dollars (L$), the Second Life virtual currency, grew to a new all time high of USD 29 million in Q2. This represents 4% growth over the previous quarter and 8% growth over the same quarter a year ago.

    Total Xstreet sales reach a new all time high in Q2 2009 – In its second quarter under the Linden Lab banner, Xstreet, the web marketplace for Second Life virtual goods, had gross sales of L$ 372M Linden dollars, or approximately USD 1.4 million.

    This represents 13% growth over the previous quarter and 70% growth over the same quarter one year ago. Xstreet remains small by comparison with Second Life overall, at approximately 1% of the USD 144 million Second Life economy in Q2 2009.

    User hours hit a new all time high of 126 million users hours in Q2 2009 – This is up 33% from Q2 2008 and up 2% over the previous quarter. However, the monthly figures trended down slightly in the quarter, with April, May, and June clocking 43.2, 43 and 39.8 million user hours per month respectively. This monthly trend is primarily the result of the new Bot policy introduced in late April.

    Second Life Residents used 3.14 billion voice minutes in Q2 2009 – Total Voice Minutes hit an all time high in Q2 2009, an increase of 3% compared to the previous quarter and 44% when compared to the same quarter a year ago. This metric measures all VoIP traffic across all types of voice sessions – Resident-to-Resident calls, group voice chats, and local voice.

    It is important to note that the bulk of Second Life voice minutes are Residents using local voice in small groups rather than person-to-person in-world “calls”. As a result, measuring voice minutes in Second Life is more similar to measuring voice minutes for a teleconferencing service provider, because in teleconferences there are generally more listeners than there are speakers. However, as each user is connected to a voice channel, they are counted for the purpose of calculating total voice minutes.

    Voice minutes grew faster year-to-year than overall user hours – 44% growth for voice compared to 33% for user hours. This is a function of two factors: increasing penetration of voice usage in Second Life; and the impact of Bots on user hours, which do not show up in the Voice minutes, as Bots do not use voice.

    Monthly Unique Residents with repeat logins peaks in May – In May 2009, Monthly repeat logins peaked in May at 752,035, and then declined slightly in June to 741,945. Year to year, June 2009 repeat logins grew 24% from June 2008 repeat logins.

    While the number of total unique logins (including users who log in to Second Life only once in a given month) is much higher, we use repeat logins (which captures all unique users with more than one login in a given month) as a metric to track the number of users who are engaged with Second Life.

    Peak Concurrent Users hit 88,065 early in Q2, but concurrency trended lower over the course of the quarter – In April, we hit a high of 88,065 concurrent users in April 2009, 200 users short of the all time high set in Q1 2009 of 88,200. Within the quarter, May and June saw lower monthly peaks of 82,203, and 80,265 respectively. We believe this trend is a function of the new Bot policy.

    Continued Stability supports the in-world economy – Our work on scalability and stability continued in Q2 2009 (see Updates from the Grid and Grid Monitoring and Support). In Q2, total downtime as a percentage of total user hours was .24%. This was slightly worse than Q1 2009 (at .21%), but on a par with the previous four quarters. Q2 also marked an 81% improvement over Q2 2008. The data for this metric does not extend any earlier than Q2 2007.

    We measure total user hours lost to downtime (planned and unplanned) as a percentage of total user hours as a gauge of stability as well as a factor in the growth of the economy. Because this metric includes planned and unplanned downtime, it is key to understanding the total user hours that are available for economic activity in Second Life.

    We use this metric because a outage on Sunday at noon when concurrency is at its peak does not have the same impact on the economy as an outage Tuesday night at midnight when concurrency is at its lowest. For those Residents seeking a measure of system uptime independent of the total number of user hours or user hours lost to outages, the system uptime in Q2 was 99.89%.

    Homestead sales drives addition of 109 million square meters – In Q2 2009 Resident-owned land increased to reach a total of 1.743 billion square meters. This is 7% growth over Q1 2009 and 11% growth over the same quarter one year ago.

    The increase was driven primarily by the addition of new Homesteads in the month of June, which added approximately 98 million square meters to the world. Many Residents purchased new Homesteads to take advantage of the $95/month pricing, which ended on July 1, 2009.

    Using the CIA factbook as a source, Second Life is 189th in the list of autonomous regions ranked by size, ahead of the Faroe Islands, Hong Kong and the Seychelles, and closing on Mauritius and the Virgin Islands.

    Homesteads increase in June – Total Private Regions (Islands) owned by Residents reached 22,885 by the end of Q2 2009. This represents an increase of 8% over the previous quarter end in March of 2009. The chart shows that the bulk of the increase in private regions came primarily in June and primarily from the Homestead product.

    A solid Q2 for Residents and for Linden Lab – Overall, it was a respectable quarter for Linden Lab and the Second Life economy. Though fewer Bots affected the trajectory of user hour and login growth, the growth in user-to-user transactions, voice minutes, and private regions underscores the resilience of the Second Life economy.

    https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2009/08...
    • 14 Aug 2009, 01:22 am