My previous blog “Rethinking Second Life Demographics” has attracted quite some search engine traffic from people who are looking for Second Life user demographics. Since the original demographic information that I linked to was a little old, I would like to point my readers to a newer and more authoritative demographic information source: Linden Lab itself. If you visit this Linden Lab’s Economic Statistics page, on the right side of the page, there is a link that allows you to download key metrics in an Excel (among other) format. The Excel file contains a worksheet called “Demographics” that provides information on SL users’ country of origin and usage hours by age and gender.
To give you a flavor of what is included there, here are some sample pieces of information provided by the latest (July 2008) key metrics:
1. Top 10 Countries by active user hours: US, Germany, UK, Japan, France, Brazil, Canada, Netherlands, Italy, and Spain.
2. Ranking of age segments by % of active hours logged: 25-34, 35-44, 45+, 18-24, and 13-17.
3. Males logged more active hours than females by an approximate ratio of 60/40.
The same Excel file also provides information on key SL economics, such as SL land ownership, business transactions, and LindenX currency exchange activities.