First, apologies that we don't have more detailed breakdowns of the monthly Second Life statistics. Linden Lab just don't publish detailed monthly information anymore. It's mostly just numbers-for-the-numb by the look of the subset of statistics now produced.
Out of the figures we do have available, we can sum up the changes for August compared to the July figures fairly quickly: User hours showing little or no real growth, only 120 million square metres of new private simulators (no growth in mainland), Accounts with positive monthly flow down, L$/US$ exchange rate stable, Lindex currency exchange activity down, premium accounts continuing to fall.
So, those bullets aren't really the kind that look great on slide presentations.
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The gains were:
- A slight increase in user hours of only about 0.28% (based on the published figures) increasing from 34.7 million user hours to 34.8 million.
- A small increase in land (121 simulators million square metres total -- there was one million new sqms of land marked as mainland, but we do not believe it was land that was available to the general public) representing the smallest gain in absolute terms in four months. In relative terms, it was 6.5%
The losses:
- Accounts with a positive monthly flow of L$ (earning more than they spend) was down from 61,136 to 60,788.
- The amount of USD exchanged during August dipped slightly. Barely enough to count -- a mere US$15,000 on the month, falling to US$9,500,000.
- Premium accounts continue to diminish, down another 1.8%, representing an increase in the rate of the fall for the third month running. In absolute terms, another 1,574 subscriber (premium) accounts lost in August, compared to only 1,410 lost in July. The number of subscriber accounts at the end of August was 84,883.
Not a good month. Mostly things seem static, with slight gains being offset by slight losses (aside from the continuing bleed of subscriber accounts). Basically it seems that Second Life experienced no significant growth for August 2008.
Demographically, Second Life is still firmly in the hands of Baby Boomers and Generation X, with younger users statistically remaining unengaged with the platform.
The statistics are available in OpenDocument format, and as Excel spreadsheets.
UPDATE: The figures given for land area are apparently in millions of square metres, and not in simulators. We've made the corrections above.
