Virtual Worlds enable New Business Opportunities

Virtual worlds enable whole new business opportunities. Have a look at this article about second life and how successful businesses are using the medium to make real money. Note that the majority of this business usage currently centers on marketing and fashion. Other common uses of the virtual world include social clubs and advertising. Second life businesses article on CNET

The promise and challenge of Virtual Worlds is complex. Ideas such as cloud computing that promise massive computational and redundant, reliable storage are required to enable the increased demands on graphics and multiple-user input processing. We still have not raised the level of assurance on such services to a level of security. See this article about Amazon's storage cloud going down for more details.

The art world has certainly caught wind of the possibilities of a virtual world as well. Portraits of avatars on Second Life have already sold for $10,000 in New York! Shows are now being staged in SL including experiential reproductions of performance art that here-to-fore was ephemeral once produced. See this article and the links in my colleague's course page for more information.