Second Life transactions hit record high

User-to-user transactions in virtual world Second Life hit a record high in March, with $57 million worth of transactions.

Speaking to website VentureBeat, Linden Lab's CEO Mark Kingdon revealed that the number of unique users for the month rose by 13 per cent to 826,000.

Transactions for the first quarter of 2010 were up 30 per cent on the previous year to $160 million. And despite the global recession, transactions in 2009 rose by 65 per cent as a whole - to a total of $567 million.

As many other virtual worlds have closed Kingdon attributed the continued success of Second Life to its ability to attractive a "creative class" of users.

Members now create 250,000 virtual objects a day, many of which are then sold to other users.

The virtual world also plays host to around 1400 businesses, despite the high profile departure of many High Street retailers and brands last year.

"A fair amount of the press left," said Kingdon. "The customers stayed."