The business world explore commercial opportunities of Second Life

December 19th, 2006

Virtual world Second Life seems set to take the business world by storm in 2007, with forecasters seeing it as the next big thing for 2007, with the music industry in particular looking to what potential business benefits it can deliver. Like MySpace and Youtube before it, B2C businesses are looking at alternative channels to effectively target customers.

Second life (developed by San Fransisco based Linden Labs) is allows users to navigate through 3D virtual worlds chatting, playing virtual games and buying (in real money) virtual goods and services.

From 100000 users in early 2005, it has grown to more than 1.5 Million members now with an average of 150000 users online during peak periods. Current expectations is that membership could grow to as much as 9 million by June 2007.

This provides a very attractive market to businesses. Companies such as Dell, Adidas and Toyota have already made tentitive movements into the virtual marketplace, whilst Sony have developed a full scale campaign including the purchase of “Sony Music Media Island”, allowing users to stream tracks and watch videos of artists such as Outkast and DMX.

To read more about this, read the initial release on Yahoo

Currently much of the business benefits of utilising Second Life come from the associated PR, however those that can utilise the potential of Second Life could be in for a bumper year.

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