Managing the Gray – Positive Advice That Everyone Can Use to Succeed

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As I piddled my morning reading blogs and figuring out my day, I came across this post in Meetings industry Soapbox. I think its great my industry now is seeing the uses of Second Life. More folks are coming into SL.

January 25, 2007
That’s (Second) Life
Posted by Marshall Krantz
http://www.misoapbox.com/2007/01/thats_second_li.html#more

As if meeting planners don’t have enough to do in First Life, i.e., the real world, they may soon have to contend with Second Life.

Since its launch in 2003, this virtual world, a parallel of our own, has grown to nearly three million people. They buy and sell goods and services in Second Life just as they do in real life, and they can exchange their currency, the Linden dollar, for U.S. dollars. Millions of real dollars change real hands every month.

Major companies are jumping on the Second Life bandwagon. IBM has bought land in Second Life, for example, and sees a rich future for meetings in virtual worlds, as this Cnet article explains. Coca-Cola, Toyota, Sun Microsystems, and Wells Fargo, among others, have also entered the fray, mainly to market their wares.

Want to promote your event in Second Life? Contact Reuters’ Second Life bureau chief, but not this week. He’s busy interviewing the avatars, or virtual world manifestations, of the business bigwigs attending the Davos World Economic Forum.

I actually had a new business propsect last week ask me, what I would do about the Linden Labs controversy? referring to the fact that people are calling BS on the registrations. My answer? Something along your lines- be upfront about actual usage while showing that it still beats everyone else (does it?). Also, there are serious RL companies in there– look at the Davos/ World Economic Forum stuff going on now. And, that no matter what metric you use, that metric is showing upward trend.

Relying on the 2 million figure was a mistake from the start.