Over 15 Billion Minutes of Voice Have Been Delivered in Second Life

Linden Lab Reveals Plans to Further Monetize Voice; Launches Service That Enables Residents to Receive Real World Calls in Second Life

Linden Lab®, creator of the virtual world Second Life®, today announced that it has delivered over 15 billion minutes of voice services, demonstrating the rapid growth and broad adoption of VoIP in Second Life. The company also revealed its product roadmap for the remainder of 2009, introducing new features that will enhance the Second Life platform and provide unique monetization opportunities. With 700,000 unique users consuming more than a billion minutes a month, voice has become an integral component of the Second Life experience.

Over 50% of Second Life users, a group that includes a broad range of consumers, educators and large enterprises, use voice as part of their everyday inworld experience. In addition to making education, business meetings, simulations, training and casual conversations more meaningful, realistic and fluid, voice is also a key component of Linden Lab’s business model and strategy moving forward. With several key product launches scheduled for the latter half of 2009, Linden Lab expects this rapid adoption to continue while also adding several new revenue streams for the company.

The breadth, innovative approach and technical complexity of Linden Lab’s voice offering is unrivaled in the virtual worlds industry and is comparable to a large telecom. For example, every user in Second Life is given a customized audio stream, which requires a robust back-end infrastructure and enables features such as 3D, “proximity-based” communication. With 96% of regions being voice-enabled and total usage, unique users and concurrency increasing exponentially every month, Linden Lab is constantly updating and upgrading its voice platform to address the evolving needs of its diverse user base.

“The rapid adoption of voice services we’ve seen over the last 18 months demonstrates that we have a significant opportunity to evolve our offering while further strengthening our business model,” said Joe Miller, VP Platform and Technology Development, Linden Lab. “From its inception, the value of Second Life – from both a user experience and revenue perspective – has been tied primarily to the Second Life viewer. One of our larger strategic goals moving forward is to extend that value beyond the virtual world, giving our users the ability to fluidly integrate Second Life into their everyday lives. Voice is a key part of that mission and will be an important revenue driver moving forward.”

In addition to revealing its roadmap for the rest of the year (outlined below), Linden Lab is also introducing a new service called AvaLine that enables Residents to receive voice calls inworld from an outside number. Greatly extending the reach of the Second Life experience, AvaLine lets friends, customers, colleagues and business associates connect to the Second Life viewer via a landline, cell phone or VoIP application. In addition to being the first service to monetize voice, AvaLine marks the first time a Resident can communicate with a non-Second Life user within Second Life. Linden Lab is launching a beta-testing program today with the full service launching later in Q3.

2009 Roadmap Time Product Description
H1 AvaLine Assigns Residents a Second Life phone number (extension), enabling friends and business associates to call them directly from a landline, cell phone or VoIP application
H1 SLim One-to-one text and voice application that enables Residents to interact with other Second Life users without needing to have the viewer open
H2 Voice Fonts Considerably extending the fantasy element of virtual worlds, this feature will enable Residents to customize their voice by purchasing a set of fonts, e.g., French Woman, Sports Announcer, Elf, A.M. Radio, etc
H2 SMS Out: Enables Residents to send SMS messages from SLim to any phone outside of the virtual world
H2 Client-side Recording: Enables Residents to record voice conversations for playback at a later time, offering unprecedented flexibility for educators and enterprises
2010 Additional features for SLim and AvaLine These include conference calls, group chats and browser-based voice applets on the Second Life Web site

About Second Life and Linden Lab Developed and launched by Linden Lab in 2003, Second Life is the world’s leading 3D virtual world environment. It enables its users – known as Residents – to create content, interact with others, launch businesses, collaborate and educate. With a thriving inworld economy that saw over $360 million USD transacted in 2008, and a broad user base that includes everyone from consumers and educators to medical researchers and large enterprises, Second Life has become one of the largest hubs of user-generated content (UGC) in the world.

Linden Lab, founded in 1999 by Chairman of the Board Philip Rosedale and headquartered in San Francisco, develops revolutionary, immersive technologies that change the way people communicate, interact, learn and create. Privately held and profitable, Linden Lab is led by CEO Mark Kingdon, and has more than 300 employees spread across the U.S., Europe, and Asia.

Contacts

LEWIS PR for Linden Lab
Kristin Mitchell, 415-992-4434
secondlifeus {at} lewispr(.)com