Higher Education Marketing and Second Life - Part 2 of 6: Demographics

Average: Select ratingCancel ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome

Your rating: None Average: 5 (2 votes)

Printer-friendly version

Because of the medium I am discussing, I should probably note that I am providing real world demographics of users in Second Life, rather than their Second Life demographics.  Of course, the latter would be interesting to collect, since you would end up with categories probably not recorded in the real world, such as how many people with animal heads or spaceships.  Perhaps we would find that the virtual versions of people are actually better predictors of activity than their real world demographics, since the latter is more a product of nature, while the former is a product of choice.  I’ll work on that one for a future blog!  In the meantime, here are some highlights from the real world demographics (you can download a spreadsheet with more in depth statistics that we’ve gathered from various sources, you can find it at the bottom of this article when logged in):

Second Life Demographics as of August 2008

Age Groups (August 2008):
18-24 (15.5%)
25-34 (35% usage)
35-44 (28% usage)
45+ (20%)
Stats as of this moment (All of Second Life):
Residents Logged-In During Last 7 Days 498,293
Residents Logged-In During Last 14 Days 636,549
Residents Logged-In During Last 30 Days 895,096
Residents Logged-In During Last 60 Days 1,257,127
Total Residents 15,554,589
U.S. Traffic for August 2008 (based on hourly usage): 40.13%
Other Top Countries for August 2008 (in order): Germany, U.K., France, Japan, Canada, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, and Australia.

The most important statistic to me, especially for online programs is the 25-44 age group (two groups combined), which tells you that the heart of the adult learner age group makes up 63% of usage on Second Life. Combining some of the statistics, this would mean that around 226,000 users in the U.S. in the age range of 25-44 are logging into Second Life per month.

Related Posts:

• Introduction and General Information about Second Life;
• We'll dig into the demographics of Second Life users;
• Discuss what statistics to use when analyzing Second Life as a marketing channel;
• Discuss some of the marketing challenges you'll face in Second Life;
• Discuss brand building for higher education institutions in Second Life;
• And reaching out to Alumni in Second Life.