Mailing the story:

The virtual world known as Second Life is struggling under the weight of its increasing popularity. The number of concurrent users in Second Life is growing about 20% a month, from 18,000 in December to 36,000 earlier this month. At that pace, Second Life will hit maximum capacity--100,000 simultaneous users, says Joe Miller, VP of platform and technology development for Linden Lab, creator of the virtual world--well before the end of the year.