Big Business Continues It’s Second Life Influx

Following the launch of an in-world office by Dell and Sun Microsystems, who both conduct regular business related activities within Second Life, IBM decides to follow suit in the “Big Blue” fashion.  Though IBM has had an SL presence for some time and does use the virtual world to host business collaborations, now Big Blue plans to launch a virtual reality project next month, and some of its now-private islands will open to the public soon.

Early this week inside the C|net SL offices, Irving Wladawsky-Berger in an interview with C|net reporter Stephen Shankland stated that virtual reality and other visual interface work is the next project on IBM’s plate. Considering that Wladawsky-Berger, besides being the vice president of technical strategy and innovation at IBM, is also the man who had led Big Blue’s early advancement into Linux and ecommerce technology and rewrote the rules of the computing industry. This new focus of IBM shall impart a very positive impact upon the development of virtual reality technology.

Shankland’s article reported: 

“I have been playing a strong role in helping us start our 3D Internet and virtual-world efforts. We are launching a new EBO in this area in January–that is, an emerging business opportunity–much like we did with Linux and the grid,” Wladawsky-Berger said Tuesday. IBM believes the virtual realm has potential for training, conferences and commerce, he said.

These statements seem to reflect the sentiments which many of us hold and for which this blog is based upon. Shankland went on to say:

“ Second Life, not unlike blogging, has become a new trend among technology companies hoping to show they’re hip to the latest trends and that believe they might benefit from direct connections to potential customers.”

Though I think that Shankland is incorrect in his assessment that this move is just a trend by technology companies to prove they are hip, one of the first rules of business is to take your products or services to where the people are. In this new era of business, we can not survive if we expect prospects or customers to come to us. Now must we not only carry our offerings to them, we must begin to develop a relationship with potential clients first. What better way to do this than to establish a direct connection with your prospects and then offer them value without cost to build their trust. If you show that you have a genuine interest in the success and well-being of your prospects, you will establish trust and a life-long customer.

With nearly 1,000 active residents and several thousand semi-active or inactive residents, IBM employees have a significant presence in SL. This could become a massive force to develop and improve Big Blue’s image and relationship with the small to medium business class. Not to mention the technological boost that their engineers and developers could bring to Linden Labs. Perhaps it won’t be long until we can see a truly scalable Second Life!

 Wladawsky-Berger was reported to say that Second Life was one of the main areas in this new initiative, but not the only one as he believes that “highly visual and collaborative interfaces will become very important in the way we interact with all IT applications in the future.”

Shankland concludes the article with:

Virtual reality connects directly with the human mind, he added. “There is something very human about visual interfaces. I almost think of text-based interfaces, including browsers, as ‘narrowband’ into our brains, whereas visual interfaces are ‘broadband’ into our brains.”

I must agree with this as the multimedia present in a virtual realm stimulates more of the human senses and thus activates much more of the brains function. By doing so, this medium provides a much better vehicle for educators to teach and train individuals since learning ability improves as more areas of the brain are stimulated. The potential for virtual worlds goes far beyond business and collaboration.

Imagine Web 3.0 as a virtual world where you can walk, ride a bike, fly, use public transit, or several other methods to move about to various portals of information where the information is delivered to you by auditory & visual methods. Where chatting is no longer a textual keyboard based event. Chat now incorporates a form of VOIP, where your avatars lips are synced to your spoken voice. Imagine the web as a natural human interface where we can all interact and enjoy life. Soon this will become our reality!