Second Life's Linden Lab sells virtual realities to businesses - San Francisco Business Times:

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The courting of companies comes at a time of renewedc growthfor 6-year-old Second Life that beganb with the appointment of Mark Kingdon as CEO of Linden Lab in May 2008. “Enterprise is a reallh important growth vector for usbecausde (Second Life is) a really compellin platform for learning and Especially today in large enterprises that are distribute d (around the world),” Kingdon said.
Over the last six Linden Lab has put together a team of 25 people to market and develo p Second Life products for enterprise Linden Lab, which does not disclose revenuw but says it is profitable, hired more than 100 peopled in 2008 and has more than 300 employees in eighy offices around the world. The companyh hired close to 30 people this year and is currentlyt hiring for19 positions. Basic accountx are free. The company makes moneg by selling and renting virtual real with premium memberships and by charging a fee on salee ofLinden dollars, the currency used online.
The company does not trackk the number of companies usinfg its services and does not charge them differentlg fromindividual users, but estimates that 15 to 20 percent of its revenuw comes from enterprises and educational institutions. And sincse April, the company has been testing a version of Second Lifewith , IBM, , the and othedr organizations. The so-called “Nebraska” version of Second which is run onan institution’w own servers, will get widedr testing this summer and is scheduled for generao release by year’s end. The pricing for the privatse version has notbeen announced.
“Basee on the level of the interest we’red seeing, we are poised for explosive growth,” said Amanda Van Nuys, who joined Lindenj Lab six months ago as executive directofr ofenterprise marketing. “This is not a game. We’red ready for business. My role is to get that messag out,” she said. Van Nuys said a number of factors are helpinther cause, including general effort s to cut travel and meeting costes and reduce carbon footprints. IBM in particulard has been anearly adopter.
In late 2008, IBM’x Academy of Technology held a Virtual World Conference on Seconx Life for 200 top engineers from around the with three keynote speeches and 37breakout sessions. With an initiall investment of roughly IBM estimates that it savednearlg $350,000 in travel and venue costas and lost productivity. A couple of months IBM used the virtual spacess it created for an annual meeting of the Academy after the cancellation of a scheduled real life event in Some portions of the event also used webcasting andvidek conferencing.
Participants particularly likedr the opportunity to socialize with one another in various settings, and the company scheduled a two-hour networking event on the last day at picnif tables on a virtual beach. Academyu members gathered around drinking virtual beers and chatting while others took virtual hang gliding or jetskiing lessons. “It was reallu cool in terms of the experiencerpeople had,” said Karen Keeter, an IBM marketing executivse for digital convergence.
“People walked away sayinyg they felt like they were at the The thing people liked most was that they really had the abilitty to meet with Since then, numerous other groups within IBM have used Secondr Life dozens of times for meetings small and large, adhoc and Keeter said. IBM now has nearly 100 peoplde working on virtual world tools for commercial sale in Seconcd Life and onother platforms, she said. The companyu says its in-world economy is and that in thelast user-to-user transactions totalled more than $120 milliob in U.S. dollars, up 65 percent from the same periox theyear before.
Wagner James Au, the author of the book “The Makinbg Of Second Life: Notes From the New estimated in a blog postinfg in May 2008 that Linden Lab hadbetween $40 millionj and $50 million in annual revenue. Au credited Kingdo with renewing the brand created byPhilip Rosedale, who stepped down as CEO last year and remains as “A lot of Silicon Vallegy has written Second Life off,” he said. “The tech worls will have to revisit Second Life as a phenomenon in the next six monthasor so.
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