Even with the strong media coverage of Second Life, and it's somewhat ambiguous growth, the virtual world remains pretty much an experimental playground for marketers.
Because there is so much uncertainty to potential advertisers, Linden Labs released some key metrics to offer some more accurate answers to where things are really at.
One key metric is its number of actual registered users, which is numbered at 3.1 million, but in reality, when you take away duplicate accounts, it decreases by more than a third to about 2 million unique residents. Still not too bad, it's up by 124,000 from last year.
The countries that are most represented in the virtual world are from Germany, the U.S., Britain, France, and the Netherlands.
As far as users that are on the site at any one time, there are 30,000 logged in on average. That's an increase in ratio to overall residents by 38 percent from December.
At this time it seems the site still isn't scaling anywhere near where it would be a help to the majority of online marketers. Most of the value is in the resultant buzz a company gets for doing the ad in Second Life in the first place; not in the ad itself.
This will be an experimental strategy for a long time that is more valuable to large national brands than it would ever be for more targeted, niche audiences. Sponsoring events are the main way of marketing within the world at this time. Again, the real value now would be the press releases that talk about the event that is being sponsored or companies creating unique experiences for visitors, rather than the actual experience and event in Second Life standing alone.
Comment Preview