When I was a lad in Second Life Linden Lab used to publish statistics galore. They still make plenty of statistics available in terms of the economy, you can find those over at Tyche Shepherd’s Grid Survey site : http://gridsurvey.com/economy.php
However along with the economy stats Linden Lab used to publish statistics on age, gender, country of origin yadda yadda yadda. They stopped doing this some time ago. A report published in April 2008 by Janet Lo, Law student, University of Ottawa, commissioned by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada contains some statsics :
Age Of Users
- 13 – 17 (Teen Grid) – 0.96%
- 18-24 – 24.50%
- 25-34 – 35.43%
- 35-44 – 23.35%
- 45 or older – 15.25%
- Unknown – 0.51%
That’s quite a vast age range of users. Gender was also quite interesting :
Gender Of Users
- Male – 59.02%
- Female – 40.98%
I seem to recall seeing a statistic where the gender balance was a tad closer, something like 57% – 43% but I can’t find a reference to this. I’m not sure why Linden Lab stopped publishing these statistics, they were good talking points and in today’s climate where diversity is a big thing, they may well be interesting. However as Linden Lab’s published statistics were, well, statistics, many people argued that we were in lies, damned lies and statistics territory. However that’s part of the fun of statistics!
Continue reading “Whatever Happened To Second Life Demographic Metrics?”