San Francisco: IBM Corp is launching an ambitious marketing campaign in the hip virtual world "Second Life."
Big Blue has developed 12 "virtual islands," and most will be open to anyone with a Second Life account starting next week. Other areas will remain private haunts for about 800 IBM employees – including the CEO – who have cyber alter-egos.
Second Life is a subscription-based 3-D fantasy world devoted to capitalism – a 21st century version of Monopoly that generates real money for successful players. More than 1.95 million people worldwide have Second Life characters, called avatars.
At any given time, 10,000 or more avatars may be logged onto Second Life, socialising by instant messages or engaging in virtual pastimes such as flying, dancing, gambling or watching adult videos.
Second Life is notoriously buggy; avatars may spontaneously shed clothing, hair or limbs, and sometimes graphics take several seconds to render. In September, the San Francisco-based company that runs Second Life, Linden Labs, warned that a security breach may have exposed subscribers' data, including credit card numbers and passwords.
IBM's chief technologist, Dr Irving Wladawsky-Berger, acknowledged on Tuesday that virtual-world business is the "experimental stage." Big Blue does not expect to generate a profit in Second Life soon.
But the medium is promising – particularly for training and orientation sessions for Armonk, New York-based IBM, which has 330,000 workers worldwide.
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