I have a whole section on this blog dedicated to virtual worlds as I’m fascinated by what they stand for. When you look at them from a macro lense, they potentially are teasing us as to what the web will become in the next few years. Wow. That’s fairly powerful.

Linden Lab, the maker of the ever popular Second Life has just released some significant raw data about the virtual world. Most people would never find this data but I was tipped off by a friend within the organization and while I thumbed through it, it was hard to follow because of all the numbers. I quickly turned these numbers into charts and pictures - and created a document (SecondLifeStats.pdf) to share with the world.

Who should read this document?

• Any Second Life residents
• Any marketers looking to launch some form of campaign/brand within Second Life or any virtual world
• Futurists
• People with a lot of time to kill

On a regular schedule, Linden Lab updates their Economic Statistics page which keeps us all informed of the ongoings of their economy. The data below was taken from their 2/6/2007 extraction.

The PDF is located here as a free download (~3.9mb), and goes much more in depth and hopefully sheds some light as to the population, currency, demographics, residents, and more. Enjoy it. Feel free to spread the world as well- bloggers, press, and anyone else - but please comment and send me feedback. I really look forward to hearing from you.

Every few months, the Pew Internet & American Life Project releases a study that gives us insight into a certain subject such as Social Networking Websites and Teens: An Overview and Teens and Technology (amongst many others). The resource is available to anyone and is fairly in-depth. Much of the research can be used in new venture pitch presentations or advertising/media planning (I certainly see it over and over).

In the most recent study, 55% of teens use social networking sites. That’s more than half. Impressive as the bulk of social networking sites came into existence in the past 3 years. Most interesting to me is that older teens, particularly girls are more likely to use these sites. Girls find social networking sites are primary places to reinforce pre-existing relationships; for boys, the networks provide opportunities for flirting and making new friends. Another statistic that stands out to me is that 3 out of 4 teens say that they use social networking sites to make plans with friends…. bridging online with offline. I love it.

In a time where we want “engagement” metrics… we better find a way to figure out how to measure the value of engaging a user-base because more than 4 in 5 social network users have posted messages to a friend’s profile or page. How can we leverage this for brands?

The survey was conducted via telephone interviews from October 23 through November 19 2006 among a national sample of 933 youths.

In the most recent report from 463 Communications and Zogby International, Americans say the next Bill Gates is currently studying math in Beijing.  The report is located here however I’ve summarized a few different areas of it:

1. Kids are more Internet savvy than Congressmen:Â Who knew that 83% of kids are? Â Republicans (85%) and Democrats (86%) agreed with each other.
2. One third of all Americans believe that the Internet is a greater invention than the printing press (sorry Johannes Gutenberg!).
3. While we all think that the Internet is a highly impact invention, 78% of respondents said that if a car wouldn’t start or you lost your keys, would rank higher than not being able to check email.
4. 66% of Americans believe that the Internet will be everywhere and there will be no place in the world within reason that would be without Internet.
5. 67% of Americans agreed that new camera and Internet technologies are turning us into a nation of voyeurs and paparazzi.
6. 67% of Americans said they’d rather watch the evening news coverage compared to citizen video reports.

The nationwide telephone survey of 1,203 adults was conducted 12/5/06 through 12/8/2006 and has a margin of error of +/- 2.9 percentage points.