Second Life creator Linden Lab has announced that “residents” have now spent more than one billion hours in the 3D virtual world since it launched in 2003, and generated more than $1 billion through the sale of virtual goods and services.

Linden Lab said that user hours grew 33 per cent year-over-year to an all-time high of 126 million in the second quarter of 2009. During the same period the in-world economy grew 94 per cent.

The company also offered a series of additional statistics giving an insight into the scale of Second Life and the activity of its users.

There are now more than 270 terabytes of content in Second Life and this is growing by around 100 per cent every year. The virtual world’s total land area is now equivalent to approximately two billion square meters.

Roughly 60 per cent of active Second Life residents are based outside of the US, representing more than 200 countries. These users create 250,000 new virtual goods daily. They've spent more than 18 billion minutes chatting since voice chat was introduced in 2007, and approximately 1,250 text-based messages are sent every second.

"These metrics give a sense of some key aspects of Second Life – the deeply engaging nature of the 3D world, the immense use of Second Life as a communications platform, and the scale and strength of the economy based on the huge number of unique virtual goods users are creating," said Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon.

"These numbers are a snapshot of the success of Second Life and its Residents today, and a validation of Linden Lab's leadership in the virtual worlds space, but there's much more to come. This is a year of renovation for Second Life, and we're well positioned for reinvigorating our growth in 2010 with a range of strategic initiatives that will enhance the experience for existing Residents and propel our expansion with new users."

In April, Linden Lab announced a series of initiatives designed to provide stricter control of adult content in Second Life and make the virtual world more customisable for its user base, including the introduction of a three-tiered rating system - PG, Mature, or Adult – for all Second Life regions and the migration of adult-oriented content from the Second Life mainland to a newly created continent.