Assuming CSI:NY had not aired their program featuring Second Life on Wednesday this week, projected signups for Wednesday and Thursday were expected to total 47,434. Actual signups for Wednesday and Thursday this week exceeded that projection by 74,412 signups, with 122,846 new registrations taking place in that 48 hour period.

The incident was marred, however, by the failure of the webservers for the CSI event, preventing many from registering via the CSI registration portal or downloading the OnRez viewer, both provided by the Electric Sheep Company.

The latest metrics and statistics are out from Meta Linden this month, covering September. The August figures were widely described as disappointing.

Let's see how Second Life fared for September. Highlights after the fold.

Concurrency data from Linden Lab's public data feeds stopped serving about two and a half hours ago (6:30PM SLT). While signup, transaction and active-user figures still appear to be updating (but for how long?), the concurrency data suddenly started reading zero. You can see it yourself on the Second Life front page, or login screen.

No word from Linden Lab as yet about this problem, though the likely cause is backbone overload, which would be consistent with the on-again-off-again asset issues today.

[Update: The concurrency feed snapped back to life, and has remained functional since 10:26PM SLT]

The latest metrics and statistics are out from Meta Linden this month, covering April. Remember that period of troubles last month where many said that Second Life was crumbling and that they expected to see some serious falls?

Did the predicted doom come about? Time to look at the numbers.

In the last twelve months the mainstream media (newspapers, radio, television, magazines) and the connected media (blogs, news sites) have made much of Second Life, either talking it up or talking it down. It's pretty plain that very few of these outlets actually care what is going on in Second Life or what the actual numbers are, so long as they've got plenty of digits and are reasonably round.

It's probably fair to say that virtually everyone else cares less about the accuracy of those numbers than Second Lifers themselves do. Certainly some of the numbers are not all they could be.

Signups could be interpreted to be a disappointing figure. It cranks up hourly now, leaving us wondering how many stay and how many go. The logged-in-last-60-days figure is barely working, updating wheezily and erratically, giving results that don't make any sense, and don't seem to be borne out by Linden Lab's other statistics.

But do you really care about the numbers? Maybe it's your experience of Second Life -- your personal world-view -- that's more important, or maybe you care more about the what's going on beyond your own circle and wonder about the future.

Do you care about the numbers -- about one million, or two million or seven million? Or is your own experience of Second Life, and the experience of those around you what really matters to you, whatever else might be going on?

Is the health of Second Life measured in numbers, or in your day-to-day experience of it?

Well, we're going to have our two millionth signup very soon. Either shortly before midnight SLT tonight (Wednesday) or in the early hours of Thursday. That's a million signups in ... what? 57 days? Sure, 90% of those people disappear before they've gotten through their first 90 days, but I've met (and still meet) some of the most amazing people.

Everywhere I go, I meet creative, talented, thoughtful, witty, kind or just plain interesting people. People I'd never have had the chance to meet otherwise. People I'd have been too scared to meet otherwise. Sure, these days there's just too many of you for me to ever catch up with, but at least I have the chance.

Sure, resources are stretched, everything's tumultuous, and we've got no idea where we're going...but would you rather be anywhere else? Obviously not - because you're still here.

[UPDATE]
The Guardian seems to have picked this one up. I'm not sure they realize that I'm responsible for both the predictions of which they speak.

After being stuck at 690,800 for one hour less than eight full days, the logged in last 60 days figure has just unstuck itself, and is now showing 789,440. This still doesn't address the rather more mysterious issues surrounding this figure and why it should be so comparatively low.

Right now, we don't know if it means what Linden Lab apparently thinks it means, or how it is derived or calculated, but either it or the signup figures are seriously wrong. We heard from Linden Lab's Community Development Team late on Friday that they are investigating this, and hope to have more information to share on this disparity soon.

To put the disparity into a more everyday frame of reference, about 5,000 people signed up each day over the last 60 days that never logged into SL, even once -- at least according to this metric.

There's a number that Linden Lab publishes on the Second Life homepage and login screen and in an XML data source. It's called 'Logged in Last 60 Days'. In theory this number is the number of distinct accounts that logged in to Second Life within the last 60 days. If you believe that it means what Linden Lab seems to believe it to mean, anyway.

The problem is, there's something seriously wrong with this number. Observe the chart on the right. Click on it to get a larger version for clarity.

That's what you get if you graph that last-60-days number less the number of people who signed up in the same period. There's some obviously perplexing and disturbing things about it.

Ultimately the litmus test of the issues that Second Life is having right now is in what we do, not what we say. We might say it stinks, and howl, scream or grumble about it, but what we're doing seems to indicate no especial lack of enthusiasm.

Signup rates remain largely unaffected, a 30% dip on Thursday, followed by a more than ample recovery, keeping growth on-track towards 2 million signups within the fortnight. As you can see from the diagram on the right, login concurrency is comparable to within a few percent of the same days last week -- except for the gap during the update period itself.

You might be unhappy about glitches, performance or whatever, but you're still logging in for about the same amount of time on the same days. Or, if you're cutting back, more people are logging in in your place. That suggests you've either got confidence, or that you don't, but something keeps you coming back anyway.

Has the last few days changed your login pattern or not?

Second Life's hit the mainstream so hard, you can just about hear the impact. I can't think of a single other concept or technology that has moved into mainstream awareness so quickly since the DVD Player.

This time last year, the mainstream press had about one article per fortnight, tops, about Second Life and the residents thereof. Nowadays, there are a dozen or more articles worldwide per day that are Web-accessible, and yet more in offline print and radio.

Look at that signup curve (pictured right). Even with the low retention rate (granted, considering the circumstances, bugs, lag, complex UI, and open-ended nature of SL, it's really pretty good, but it's still very low in percentage terms) awareness is skyrocketing. That was driven home to me a few days ago.