No Recession in Second Life

Filed in archive Virtual Worlds on January 26, 2010

Let's hope that Second Life is an economic indicator for the real world.

VentureBeat says that the economy of Second Life (the leading virtual world in cyberspace) grew a whopping 65% in 2009. Compare that to the hottest economy in the real word, China, where economic growth at the moment is not quite 11 percent.

The total size of the Second Life economy grew 65 percent in 2009 to $567 million. By the company's own estimate, that amounts to about 25 percent of the entire U.S. virtual goods market.

Second LIfe has an impact on the real world because its money can be converted into US dollars (and other currencies). Second Lifers moved $55 million from the virtual world back into real money last year.

Can you strike it rich in Second Life? Acording to VentureBeat, the top 25 residents of Second Life together earned about $12 million last year. That's an average of about half a million each.