1 billion hours spent in Second Life

In between all its DEMO coverage Dean Takahaski at VentureBeat had some real news with the announcement from Linden Labs, developers behind the virtual world Second Life, that users have spent more than 1 billion hours in the game.

That breaks down to something like 115 wasted years interacting with people’s avatars in the hope that maybe that life will be better than to one you already are living. User hours said Linden Labs has grew in the second quarter to 126 million hours during which they contributed to the annual income of more than $500 million.

Some of the other notable facts Linden Labs shared

• $1 billion in transactions between users
• each visit to the virtual world averages at about 100 minutes
• $50 million trades hands each month for virtual goods
• 250,000 virtual goods are created every day
• 18 billion minutes have been used in chat in the virtual world
• 1,250 text messages are sent every second
• more than 200 countries are represented

I guess a whole bunch of folks figured out how to get a life.