Second Life has grew to a "population" of more than 12 million in January of this year, with residents spending more than 28 million hours in-world that month, according to parent company Linden Lab.

While those numbers reflected enourmous growth from January 2007, they also indicated that residents are spending less time in world, on a per-resident basis -- 2.3 hours/resident in January 2008, compared to nearly 3.5 hours/resident in January 2007.

The Industry Standard predicts that growth will continue to slow in 2008, and the number of total monthly hours will not break 40 million by the end of 2008.

This prediction will be judged by reviewing the public figures that Linden Lab makes available at this location. Note that the figures for December might not be made available until early 2009.

(This prediction is part of The Industry Standard special feature, Opinion: 10 'Net services that will succeed, and 10 that will probably fail. To see the related article, click here. To read the rest of the special feature, and see the many related predictions, click here.)