Short history of Second Life?

Second Life was founded by former RealNetworks CTO Philip Rosedale through Linden Lab. The initial alpha test version, named LindenWorld, was made available in 2002 to Residents with content creation experience, and the beta version was made publicly available in 2003. The beta versions had a different economic focus from that of Second Life's current version; Linden Dollars were far more freely obtainable, and could not be exchanged for real money, and the real monthly fee did not escalate with the amount of land the Resident owned. Some significant dates in the growth of Second Life are:

October 18, 2006 — 1 million registered accounts

December 14, 2006 — 2 million registered accounts

December 29, 2006 — First occurrence of 20,000 concurrent Resident

January 28, 2007 — 3 million registered accounts

February 1, 2007 — First occurrence of 30,000 concurrent Residents

February 25, 2007 — 4 million registered accounts