So How Many People Actually PLAY Second Life?

Remember when you couldn't drunkenly fall out of bed in the morning without landing on some kind of Second Life news? Things were getting pretty serious for a while there, to the point where a lot of reports started spinning around that millions and millions of people were "playing" the thing. Millions? Really? Hardly. New Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon has, in an interview with VentureBeat, laid out a new userbase disclosure model the company are working on for Second Life. They're not counting registered users as "users" anymore, because while over 15 million people have signed up for the service, nowhere near that many actually use it. No, the number of "simultaneous users" is around 68,000. That's it. 68,000. Sure, that's the number logged on at once, not the total number of "active" users, but the total can't be more than a couple hundred thousand. Chin up, Lord British, there's hope for Tabula Rasa yet! Q&A: Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon on Second Life's latest evolution [VentureBeat]