Welcome to Web 3-D!
3rd July 2007 by Anders Gronstedt
After holding our first weekly learning event in Second Life, it’s easy to see why this virtual world is heralded as the videoconferencing and webinar killer. This “metaverse” takes interaction and collaboration to unprecedented levels. And it’s redefining branding, from targeting consumers to interacting with engaged minds in an immersive 3-D environment.
Our last public meeting drew some 25 visitors plus some five poor souls who had to participate via WebEx because their IT departments didn’t let them access Second Life. Feel free to visit our “Train for Success” in Second Life every Thursday, noon-1:00 PM EDT. If you don’t have a Second Life account yet, you need to take a few minutes to open a free account and create your own avatar, before you’re ready to learn first hand why virtual worlds is all the rage.
Consider these facts:
* Gartner Group estimates that 80% of active Internet users will be in non- gaming virtual worlds like Second Life by the end of 2011.
* IBM is investing millions of dollars in 25 SL islands, and Sun, Dell, Intel, Adidas, Toyota, GM, and more are all there.
* Hundreds of universities, including Harvard and INSEAD teach classes in Second Life for credit.
* My native Sweden just opened an embassy in Second Life.
* Second Life has seven million residents and growing exponentially.
After a few minutes in Second Life you’ll find any regular web site to be just a collection of flat pages. As the Second Life experience becomes richer and the application diffuses more widely, it’s hard to imagine why any company would wait until it hits 100 million before they start branding in “Web 3D.”
July 3rd, 2007 at 12:21 pm
I was one of the attendees and was really impressed. Your 2L space is nice, but what most struck me was the interest of your visitors and the expertise some of them had. Obviously 2L is very real for some and a lot more people have concluded that they need to get on board.
As I said then, I’m going to be fascinated to see what happens when Linden Lab rolls out fully integrated VoiP….
July 3rd, 2007 at 2:52 pm
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