CNet has an interview today with Irving Wladawsky-Berger, IBM's head of technical strategy and innovation, who has pioneered Big Blue's entry into the world of Second Life. Come January, IBM will open up a business unit focused on virtual worlds such as SL. The new EBO hopes to use Second Life for purposes of training, conferences, and commerce.
I'm still not sure what to make of all the recent fuss about Second Life. On the one hand, it does look like a number of companies (Reuters, Dell, Sun) have decided to establish their virtual presence in Linden Land. On the other hand, one can't help shake the feeling that this is all a big fad that will have been forgotten by next year.
(For a thorough discussion of the second issue, go here.)
My main takeaway from the interview with Wladawsky-Berger is this quote:
How will Second Life be integrated with other parts of the Internet? Right now, there's not too much overlap.
Wladawsky-Berger: It has to be integrated. We need to make it easy to interoperate with other virtual worlds on the Internet and be able to go back and forth between virtual worlds and Web sites in an easy way. The problem now is the lack of standards like we had with HTTP, HTML (languages for sending and describing Web pages), etc. We need to create them across virtual-world platforms as well as Web sites.
Anybody interested in starting up the world's first Second Life VC?
Recent Comments