Economy of Second Life

An interesting article on the economy of Second Life, complete with numbers, graphs and what seems like a fair amount of research. Enjoy

"Here are the highlights for the Second Life Economy as a whole in 2009:

Financial

* User-to-User transactions in 2009 totaled US$567 million in 2009, growth of 65% over 2008.
* The total amount of virtual currency in circulation reached L$6.95 billion, growth of 23% over December 2008
* The US Dollar value of L$ in circulation totaled US$26.5 million in December 2009
* Sales of User Generated virtual items on Xstreet SL, reached L$1.6 billion or US$6.1 million, growth of 74% over 2008
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The total US dollar value of all Linden dollars traded on the LindeX™ currency exchange in 2009 reached US$115 million in value, 7% growth over 2008
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The total US dollar value of all Linden dollars traded on the Xstreet SL™ currency exchange in 2009 reached US$1.5 million in value, 169% growth over 2008


Usage

* Residents spent 481 million hours in Second Life in 2009, 21% growth over 2008
* User hours lost to downtime as a portion of total user hours were down 66%, to a best-ever low of 0.19% for the whole year
* Monthly Repeat Logins reached an all-time high of 769,000 in December 2009, 15% growth over December 2008


Land

* Resident-owned regions reached 23,900 in December 2009, up 6% over December 2008
* Total Resident-owned land (including Mainland) reached 1.85 billion square meters in December 2009, up 7% over December 2008"