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The virtual world of Second Life passed a milestone today, as the number of registered avatars passed the 1 million mark, driven by a spate of media mentions over the last couple of weeks. Note, though, that this is only to say that a million unique avatar names have been registered. It doesn’t really give a clue as to how many people have visted the world, nor to how many use it on a regular basis, since many people run more than one avatar. The economic statistics page is more revealing, showing that 139,963 avatars have logged in over the last 7 days. But even this figure overcounts the number of people using SL. (I have logged in two or three different avatars this week, for instance.) Still, it’s a notable event. Congratulations, SL!

IBM’s eightbar blog flags a very nice new in-world Second Life application, developed by SL resident Turner Boehm (who I think is an IBMer), that automatically models the links and nodes of a complex system using SL objects. The picture above shows multiple interconnecting software systems represented by an automatically generated set of prims, based on information stored outside SL. This kind of visual display of information can be very important in making it easier to grasp and work with complex systems, and this is just the kind of thing that SL does well. I’m thinking this could turn into a very useful app for those working with datasets — such as certain kinds of maps, traffic patterns, software systems in development, many other things — that are difficult to represent clearly in 2D. Nice work.

According to a recent post on the official blog of Linden Lab, makers of the virtual world of Second Life, the company is again reducing the weekly stipend that premium users receive just for having an account. (The reduction only applies to accounts created after November 1; current premium accounts are unaffected.) The reduction is an attempt to control the growing money supply in Second Life, which seems to lead not so much to inflation but rather to constant downward pressure on the L$-US$ exchange rate. Resident reaction has been mixed, but stipend adjustments are one of LL’s only tools for managing the economy. As the number of registered users continues to grow, rapidly approaching a million, the company is more or less forced to continue to add new land (i.e., new servers) to the grid, or risk a situation in which the platform cannot support all of its users. But gauging the state of the SL economy remains difficult. While LL has taken to releasing more economic data in recent months, much of its figures are still vague as to methodology, and several important metrics continue to go missing.

Wired magazine, of course, has gotten in on the flurry of media entries to the virtual world of Second Life. Check them out in the Millions of Us sim (the build was done by Reuben Steiger’s virtual world services company, Millions of Us) and take a read on the Wired travel guide to Second Life that I helped put together, along with James Au, Wired writer Jeff Howe, UK games journalist Jim Rossignol and a couple of others. It appeared in the October issue, but it’s only just now available on the Web. (Slightly odd that Wired and CNet both have their sites on the Millions of Us sim. My understanding is that at least the CNet side felt quite competitive with Wired in the run-up to these launches, working hard to get their site launched first.)