SECOND LIFE, July 1 (Reuters) - Premium Second Life accounts shrank in the year to May 2008, according to statistics released by Linden Lab, even as total user hours climbed by more than 50 percent.
Second Life had 88,585 of the subscription-paying accounts at the end of May, down from 89,845 a year earlier.
The overwhelming majority of avatars use basic accounts, which are free. Premium accounts, which cost US$10 a month, come with additional privileges including enhanced support and the right to own virtual property on Second Life’s mainland.
Even as Linden Lab’s base of paying customers shrinks over the past year, the total hours spent by avatars inside Second Life has increased dramatically. In May of 2007 total usage of Linden Lab’s virtual world was about 20.8 million hours. A year later the number spiked to almost 32 million hours, a gain of 54 percent.
With hours up but premium accounts down, the data suggests that while Second Life is failing to attract to new users, existing customers find the virtual world more engaging than ever, spending ever-greater amounts of time there.
A wild card that Linden’s statistics cannot account for is the rapid development of open-source Second Life variant OpenSim. The zero growth among premium accounts may represent a shift in the most die-hard avatars.
Avatars unable to find a home within Second Life including banking institutions and ageplayers have already migrated to OpenSim.
As more OpenSim worlds come online and the technology’s feature set improves, the value of land ownership privileges on the Second Life Grid can be expected to drop further.