CNN reporter David Kirkpatrick furnishes Clay Shirky Second Life Numbers

Thanks to checking one of my new regular read blogs and Clay Shirky at Many-to-Many: in his article Real Second Life numbers, thanks to David Kirkpatrick pointing me to the blog The Browser and David Kirkpatrick’s article Why Second Life Numbers DO Matter. In this article David tears into Clay for being outraged that writers were reporting without comment on the cooked number of registrants given out by Linden Lab (LL). David goes on to admit that he didn’t call attention to “the ‘residents’ number merely reports how many people have tried to
sign up for an avatar they can use in the world of Second Life.”

David’s article on The Browser also pointed out stats that LL publishes, which I didn’t know existed, located here which gives stats for Premium Residents, Sq.Kilos of Second Life Land, User Hours, Lindex volume and Cash Payouts, and Economic Activity. Also his article pointed me to HERE which shows Population in Residents logged-in During last 7 days, 14 days, 30 days, and 60 days. much information about land sales , Islands added, Land for sale today, and Sq Meters Auctioned, a wealth of information about Currency including the number of residents making money and how much (round about)… Monthly Spending and even more information. Again I had no idea these figures were available to everyone.

David goes on to make some more very valid points about the use of Second Life and why many users never return to the fact that LL has had to add over 800 servers in the last six weeks or so.

The first comment posted on This article was Clay Shirky of course, then soon afterward David thanked Clay and told clay he had asked Philip Rosedale the day before the comment David posted (which I presume was yesterday Jan. 4,2006) and posted the answers to Clay’s question.

quote Clay at Many to Many
“Here are the numbers Philip Rosedale of Linden gave him. These are, I presume, as of Jan 3:

1,525,670 unique people have logged into SL at least once (so now
we know: Residents is seeing something a bit over 50% inflation over
users.)

Of that number, 252,284 people have logged in more than 30 days after their account creation date.

Monthly growth in that figure, calculated as the change between last September and last October, was 23%.Those of us who wanted the conversation to be grounded in real numbers owe Kirkpatrick our thanks for helping us get there.”

We at VtoReality would like to thank both Clay Shirky for stirring the pot, and David Kirkpatrick for rising to the surface with answers!