A few days ago, I tweeted about some intriguing statistics that Linden Lab never really publishes, and which I actually asked out loud why not.
Probably someone at the ‘Lab picked them up (or it’s all just a holistic coincidence…) and told Lewis PR to get this press release out. I’m glad they did it, but appalled at Linden Lab’s humbleness and meekness. Were I writing a Press Release about it, I would be far more enthusiastic:
Second Life: 4% of World-Wide Market Share in Telephony and Digital Content Economy
Delivering over a whopping 15 billion minutes of voice services in Second Life, (over a billion minutes per month), Linden Lab has effectively become the second largest long-distance phone operator in the world, following Skype (33 billion minutes in 2008, 75% of those being free phone calls) and establishing for itself a world-wide market share of about 3.6% of all international phone calls (417 billion minutes in 2008), which are being routed through Second Life.
In 2007, according to the OECD, the world-wide market for digital content, including paying for music (on iTunes or similar services), video, software and game downloads, and other forms of paid digital content, reached US$11.2 billion (excluding advertising). Second Life’s internal economy of 3D content sales and virtual land management, as well as other forms of services, generated close to US$400 million (US$450 million estimated for 2009), or about 3.6% of the world-wide’s economy on digital content (note: Apple would probably have about 40% of the market).
Just think what all this means. A company that has about 4% of the world market share in both voice calls and digital content. And nobody still gives it due credit? Hmm.
