SecondLife Hype? Or a sign of things to come

Big debate going on about SecondLife Numbers.

Clay Shirky has been giving SL a thorough examination ... and though I am still fascinated by SL, I have pondered from time to time.... why SL? Why all the media attention, is it because of Millionsofus and Rivers Run Red or is it something else? Something more... mercurial.

Tristran Louis, has done some numbers . He says

So, it looks that, under the most conservative growth rate, we will see 3.5 million users registered and over 600,000 using the service by the end of April 2007. Under a liberal interpretation of the data, those numbers would shift to 9.6 million and just under 7 million. However, in the most likely case, it is probable that there will be 7.2 million users registered with 1.6 million logging in over the previous sixty days. Not too shabby. For the sake of planning, I would advise my readers to go with the most conservative estimate because my data set is still relatively small. Even then, this type of growth mirrors some of the growth patterns we’ve seen in the early days of the commercial web and seem to support the contention that LindenLab is going to be a very strong player in the future.

For me I believe, that SL demonstrates, that exploration of identity, the need to escape, new business platforms and communities of interest are all a reality.

Love it or hate it – it is fascinating

Comments

[Zbigniew Lukasiak]

Please fix the spelling of the name of Clay Shirky.