Japanese Use of Second Life Almost Doubles

Linden Lab released the key metrics for Second Life yesterday. Following up on Philip Rosedale's SLCC keynote it now includes stability data about crashes and framerates on servers. And the numbers reflect hat he had to say about the level of crashes staying fairly stable, if uncomfortably high for many users. Of other interest this month is the growth in registered Japanese avatars. The count jumped from 27,040 in June to 44,847 in July for a 39.7% increase. The Japanese version of the Second Life client was released on July 13, so this follows the lowering of a barrier to entry and, probably, a fair amount of press in Japan.

The growth in registered avatars should near-proportional growth in usage by hours as well, with 947,155.55 hours in June and 1,563,899.40 in July, or a 40.5% increase.

What's interesting is that one of the biggest bits of Japanese building, the Virtual Tokyo project from Tetsuya Mizuguchi and Dentsu, opened on August 23. It came with a fair amount of activity built in, so this growth seems like it could continue for a while. Numerous other Japanese firms are joining the party as well, providing a third-party content rush.