We hear from the Second Life Office of Reuters News that Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale is stepping down from the top spot at the company he founded.

Second Life remains a very popular virtual world destination, but growth has slowed over the past year and as the comments to the Reuters post suggest there are more than a few restless virtual natives roaming the Second Life landscape.

Mitch Kapor, the largest investor in the company and current chairman of the board, told Reuters:

“It was not precipitated by a crisis,” … “We had always anticipated that there would be a time when he’d decide he no longer wanted to be a CEO.”

Kapor added that the management change is not a prelude to a sale of the company or an initial public offering, though he acknowledged that an IPO was an option under consideration.

As a private company Second Life financials are not public, but this amazing statistic suggests a robust financial picture for the *real* company:

US Dollars spent in Second Life over last 24 hours $1,453,349 as of 5:29pm PDT

Note that the Second Life economy uses something called “Linden Dollars” as a currency, but this number is in real dollars reflecting the true value of that currency, which is exchangeable for real $US dollars. There are now full time businesses operating in Second Life with real world employees who “play” in Second Life for Linden Dollars which are then converted to cash.

Also, Reuters notes this about Second Life growth in registrations:

More than 12 million Second Life accounts have been created since the world was launched, although the vast majority of accounts are no longer active; there are thought to be roughly 500,000 hard-core users. Month-on-month registration growth, which peaked at almost 50 percent in October 2006, had fallen to 4.6 percent by January, 2008, the most recent figures available.