In the wake of recent coverage of Second Life in the mainstream media and growing interest in it by the corporate world, traffic to the virtual online community has shot up - and as its popularity has grown, so has the average age of visitors, according to research from Hitwise.

The share of U.S. Internet searches for "second life" last week (ended Oct. 21) shot up 73 percent from the previous week, and visits to Second Life more than doubled from the two weeks ended Oct. 7 to the two weeks ended Oct. 21, according to a Hitwise blog post. Year over year, visits to SecondLife.com were up 219 percent (week ended Oct. 21, 2006 compared with week ended Oct. 22, 2005).

For the four week period ended Sept. 23, about 32.7 percent of visitors to SecondLife.com were between the ages of 18 and 24, and only 5.6 percent were over 55. Nearly a month later, for the four weeks ended Oct. 21, those over 55 constituted 15.1 percent of Second Life visitors, whereas visitors in the 18-24 group decreased seven percentage points, to 25.7 percent.

"It will be interesting to see how many of these older visitors become players in Second Life - right now the appeal of Second Life skews to those under 45. An older, and potentially more moneyed, player set in Second Life could attract a different caliber of advertisers to the game," writes LeeAnn Prescott, Hitwise research director, in her blog.

In recent weeks, some major marketers, advertising agencies and even news outfits have set up outposts in Second Life, which some companies are beginning to use as a means of collaboration among geographically scattered workers.