Yes, that's my Second Life avatar: the Lost In Space robot* on the right. I freely admit I'm a tech geek (aren't we all, to some extent?)... but that's not the point of this post. Rather, I wanted to share a few interesting facts and recent stats about the SL environment.
- According to Gartner Research, 80% is the projected number of active Internet users that will have a Second Life by 2011.
- There are currenlty 12,260,372 residents of Second Life.
- One-day new account signups for January 30 was 21,180.
- There were 60,912 concurrent members during peak usage time on February 3.
- During the past two months, there were over 1.1 million active users.
- More than 300 colleges and universities (including Harvard and Duke) use Second Life as an educational tool.
- Toyota's Prius was introduced in Second Life before becoming available in the real world.
- IBM conducts job interviews in Second Life.
- The Linden is the currency used in Second Life. The current rate of exchange is about 250 Lindens per $1 US.
- Dr. Nick Bostrom of Oxford University gives a 20% probability that civilization as we know it is actually based on a computer simulation.
* People often call the robot from Lost In Space Robbie, but that is incorrect. Robbie the Robot was first seen in the classic Science Fiction movie Forbidden Planet and can be seen here. The Lost In Space robot was known as the model B-9 Environmental Control Robot. Both robots were designed by Robert Kinoshita.
- Hap Aziz