Fortune is featuring an in-depth look at Second Life. They really have no choice, given the way big business is foaming over the site’s potential.
“The 3-D Internet may at first appear to be eye candy,” CEO Sam 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.
Apparently 3,000 IBM employees have acquired their own avatars, and about 300 are routinely conducting company business inside Second Life.
Laurent Haug sees Second Life a bit differently. He calls it irrelevant and over hyped. “Second Life is an ugly, hard to use and unfriendly game. It is the hotmail of online 3D games. At the end of the day it is far from being the revolution we have been sold.”
