{"id":4559,"date":"2015-01-14T19:29:41","date_gmt":"2015-01-14T19:29:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/?p=4559"},"modified":"2015-01-14T19:32:11","modified_gmt":"2015-01-14T19:32:11","slug":"whatever-happened-to-second-life-demographic-metrics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/?p=4559","title":{"rendered":"Whatever Happened To Second Life Demographic Metrics?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8217;s Grid Survey site :\u00a0<a title=\"Grid Survey\" href=\"http:\/\/gridsurvey.com\/economy.php\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/gridsurvey.com\/economy.php<\/a><\/p>\n<p>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 title=\"Privacy In Second Life\" href=\"https:\/\/www.priv.gc.ca\/information\/research-recherche\/2008\/sl_080411_e.asp\" target=\"_blank\">A report published in April 2008<\/a> by Janet Lo,\u00a0Law student, University of Ottawa, commissioned by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada contains some statsics :<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Age Of Users<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>13 &#8211; 17 (Teen Grid) &#8211; 0.96%<\/li>\n<li>18-24 &#8211; 24.50%<\/li>\n<li>25-34 &#8211; 35.43%<\/li>\n<li>35-44 &#8211; 23.35%<\/li>\n<li>45 or older &#8211; 15.25%<\/li>\n<li>Unknown &#8211; 0.51%<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That&#8217;s quite a vast age range of users. Gender was also quite interesting :<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Gender Of Users<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Male &#8211; 59.02%<\/li>\n<li>Female &#8211; 40.98%<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I seem to recall seeing a statistic where the gender balance was a tad closer, something like 57% &#8211; 43% but I can&#8217;t find a reference to this. I&#8217;m not sure why Linden Lab stopped publishing these statistics, they were good talking points and in today&#8217;s climate where diversity is a big thing, they may well be interesting. However as Linden Lab&#8217;s published statistics were, well, statistics, many people argued that we were in lies, damned lies and statistics territory. However that&#8217;s part of the fun of statistics!<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>However the statistics were a point of fierce debate. Many people claimed that statistics such as age and gender were almost meaningless as people would provide inaccurate data during signup. This is something that is impossible to prove one way or the other, but people have been known to be economical with the truth when they signup to any platform that doesn&#8217;t require payment. I would hazard a guess people are far more likely to be economic with the truth regarding their age, rather than their gender.<\/p>\n<p>Second Life has long had a reputation for being rather diverse, in terms of both its userbase and Linden Lab&#8217;s workforce, although I&#8217;ve never seen any reports regarding the demographics of Linden Lab&#8217;s workforce I have met enough Lindens of both genders to suggest that Linden Lab is quite a diverse place to work.<\/p>\n<p>Whereas these statistics aren&#8217;t important in terms of operational functionality, they are useful in terms of exemplifying a platform that appeals to males and females alike. In many ways it&#8217;s a shame these statistics are no longer available.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"twitter-share-button\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/share\" data-url=\"http:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/?p=4559\" data-via=\"Ciaran_Laval\">Tweet<\/a><br \/>\n<script>\/\/ <![CDATA[\n!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=\/^http:\/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+':\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8217;s Grid Survey site :\u00a0http:\/\/gridsurvey.com\/economy.php However along with the economy stats Linden Lab used to publish statistics on age, gender, country &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/?p=4559\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Whatever Happened To Second Life Demographic Metrics?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,14],"tags":[825,698,19,1022],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6rJUK-1bx","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4559"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4559"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4561,"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4559\/revisions\/4561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}