Dismissing forward thinking. Again.

A few years ago a similar story to the one I’m about to link to probably crossed the newswires and desks of people all around the world: two big technology companies adopt an existing but potentially massive idea for use in their own businesses, with the idea of improving organization-wide communication, both internally, and even eternally with clients, stakeholders etc.

The two companies involved were IBM and Sun Microsystems (yes, I’ve talked endlessly about them before on this blog, in our shiny new social media report and a lot of other places) and that story from a few years ago would have been talking about those two companies and their corporate blogging programs, which are now hugely successful and were years ahead of the rest of the world.

So, now the same story but with something new instead of blogging has again come up, and this time it's all about......virtual worlds.

Both IBM and Sun, who’ve tested out the increasingly criticised Second Life, have gone and built their own virtual worlds running on their own servers, without any of the nasty, unwashed general public darkening the purpose. A sort of "virtual world intranet" according to the discovering article over at GigaOm.

Here’s a few excerpts from the article, which I highly recommend reading in full.

……The idea is to bring remote workers in Sun’s worldwide offices together into a single embodied space, “where the spacial layout of the 3D world coupled with the immersive audio provides strong cognitive cues that enhance collaboration.” In IBM’s case, it’s a rough-and-ready 3D environment created [in house] by their Innovate Quick team, using the Torque graphics engine from Garage Games….

…..“The project team is exploring ways to scale, and also applying different models of operation,” Ian Hughes of IBM’s UK branch tells me. “We are building a user base of interested users and developers as part of our CIO office technology adoption program.” ….

….“What we need is the ability to gather some people together and use the human aspects of the avatar interaction to be more effective in our communications.”…

…..While some Net pundits have quickly dismissed Fortune 500 interest in virtual worlds as mere marketing hype, it’s projects like these which suggest that high tech companies are serious about their potential to transform the Internet. If they privately come up with new protocols and technology that adds real value to the way they do business, the future of the broader Net as a 3D medium is all but insured….

….By the same token, they may just end up adding another level of aggravation to the conference call…..

So, we’ve all been playing catch up to the IBMs and the Suns with blogs, wikis etc, because  regardless of whether you're from Silicon Valley or Thames Valley, social media is big news for businesses, industries and sectors of every type these days (even politicians are using Twitter for example).

What’s the betting in a few years time people will be taking virtual worlds a bit more seriously and wishing they'd done something about them a bit sooner? Anyone care for a virtual fiver each way?

Alex

P.S. You'll see in the GigaOm story and Sun's own page about their virtual world that both companies use Macs quite a lot. Forward thinking indeed ;-)