Virtual Worlds Reach for the Real World

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By Jeremy Byers

Last week at the Virtual Worlds Conference in San Jose, developers and representatives from such large corporations as IBM, Cisco, Intel and Microsoft joined together to discuss how they were going to create interoperability between virtual worlds like There.com and “Second Life,” and how they were going to reach more mainstream users.

Virtual worlds have been very popular among the more technologically skilled users of the Web since the beta release of There.com in 2001. The Web-based worlds are places where users can register and create an online social persona, or avatar, and be an entirely different character from who they are in reality.

In an effort to reach the mainstream audience in early 2007, There.com made a joint effort with MTV to launch a virtual reality show program, “Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County.”

Another effort is being launched by CBS in connection with its popular television show, “CSI:NY.” Through that medium, they will direct viewers to Second Life so that they can play the role of an investigator.

Most users of virtual worlds are already technically savvy and able to wade through the myriad of complex programs and third party downloads needed to navigate the worlds, but developers from IBM and Pelican Crossing are looking to change all that by simplifying the process.

By making the virtual world appear more like a Web browser, with which most mainstream users are familiar, they are looking to make the virtual world market skyrocket.

Also circulating the conference were talks of interoperability between the competing interfaces. The idea is to enable users to cross worlds using the same avatar, so they could spend money in worlds like Second Life and There.com, and even make money through online commerce that could cross-over for each of the worlds, perhaps even incorporating the popular massive multiplayer online game, World of Warcraft, or WoW for short.

There is certainly money to be made in the online social networking arena. According to VentureOne, entrepreneurs earned $226.5 million in the first three quarters of this year among online gaming, virtual worlds and collaborative community sites, which is up 23 percent from last year’s total.

To date, there has been very little progress in creating interoperability between the virtual worlds, but keynote leaders in the movement are hopeful that it will soon be a reality.

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Originally Published: Issue 583 - October 17, 2007

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