Seeing the opportunities in Second Life

Via Shel Holtz, David Kirkpatrick - the senior editor of Fortune magazine - reports on "why IBM's Sam Palmisano and other tech leaders think Second Life could be a gold mine."

Kirkpatrick opens with Palmisano's presentation last year in Bejing in front of 2,000 employees while another 5,000 watched the virtual version in Second Life and has obviously had an interesting discussion over e-mail with the well-respected CEO:

"The 3-D Internet may at first appear to be eye candy," Palmisano writes in an e-mail interview, "but don't get hung up on how frivolous some of its initial uses may seem." He calls 3-D realms such as Second Life the "next phase of the Internet's evolution" and says they may have "the same level of impact" as the first Web explosion.

The article is well worth a read and the main site's RSS feed is also worth adding to your reader/aggregator.

As I said at the time Palmisano's presentation did make things a little clearer in terms of examples for Second Life for internal comms, but the waters are definitely still very, very muddy and I still think few senior execs that aren't in the tech industry would go for it, it's still too obscure.

However, that doesn't mean you should ignore it too and what does entirely make sense to me is Shel's recommendation:

"The reason to embrace Second Life now is to understand the principles so your organization can be ready when the transition begins. (Remember all those companies that shrugged off the Web for years saying, “Who needs a website?")

I think that transition is inevitable, although I certainly could be wrong, but here’s the issue: If I’m right and your organization hasn’t figured it out, you’ll be playing catch-up while your competitors are out in front. If I’m wrong, you really haven’t lost anything."

Alex

(image via the BBC)