Economy Booming, In Fantasy Alternate Reality

Second Life, different than the first:

In a post on the Second Life blog, Tom Hale, Chief Product Officer for SL owner Linden Lab, said user-to-user transactions in the immersive world spiked 30% over last year to $160 million, breaking all previous company records…..

Additional high-points for the company included included the fact total sales on Xstreet, the Second Life marketplace, reaching $2.3 million, an 82% increase year-to-year and a 24% increase over the previous quarter. Total Linden Dollars exchanged on LindeX, the in-game currency exchange, totaled $31 million, a 9% increase over the previous year, and monthly unique users with repeat logins peaked in March at 826,214, a 13% increase year-to-year and an all-time high.

Katherine Mangu-Ward looked at encroaching statism in the unreal world of Second Life back in February 2008. Wagner James Eu with more on this from Reason magazine's June 2008 issue. Kevin Parker wrote on the economics and politics of video and virtual worlds back in our April 2004 issue.