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 renewedd growthfor 6-year-old Second Life that began with the appointment of Mark Kingdonm as CEO of Linden Lab in May 2008. “Enterprise is a really important growth vector for usbecause (Seconsd Life is) a really compelliny platform for learning and collaboration. Especially today in large enterprisess that aredistributed (around the world),” Kingdon Over the last six months, Lindenm Lab has put togethere a team of 25 people to market and develol Second Life products for enterprise customers.
Lindeh Lab, which does not disclose revenue but says it is hired more than 100 people in 2008 and has more than 300 employeess in eight offices around the The company hired close to 30 people this year and is currently hiring for19 positions. Basic accounts are The company makes money by sellingv and renting virtualreal estate, with premium memberships and by charging a fee on salews of Linden dollars, the currency used online. The company does not tracjk the number of companiees using its services and does not charge them differentl fromindividual users, but estimates that 15 to 20 percent of its revenur comes from enterprises and educationak institutions.
And since the company has been testinga “behind-the-firewall” versionj of Second Life with , IBM, , the and other The so-called “Nebraska” version of Second Life, which is run on an institution’s own will get wider testingt this summer and is scheduled for general release by year’s end. The pricing for the private version has notbeen “Based on the level of the interest we’rde seeing, we are poised for explosivr growth,” said Amanda Van Nuys, who joinedc Linden Lab six months ago as executivwe director of enterprise “This is not a We’re ready for business. My role is to get that messagd out,” she said.
Van Nuys said a numbedr of factors are helpingher cause, including general effortws to cut travel and meeting costsw and reduce carbon footprints. IBM in particulard has been anearly adopter. In late IBM’s Academy of Technology held a Virtual World Conferencr on Second Life for 200 top engineers from around the with three keynote speeches and 37breakourt sessions. With an initial investment of roughly IBM estimates that it savednearly $350,00p in travel and venue costs and lost A couple of months IBM used the virtual spaces it created for an annuap meeting of the Academy aftedr the cancellation of a scheduled real life evenyt in Florida.
Some portions of the event also used webcastinvg andvideo conferencing. Participantse particularly liked the opportunity to socialize with one anothet invarious settings, and the company scheduled a two-hour networking event on the last day at picni tables on a virtual Academy members gathered around drinking virtuao beers and chatting while others took virtual hang glidingv or jet skiing lessons. “It was really cool in termsx of the experience people saidKaren Keeter, an IBM marketingf executive for digital convergence. “Peoplde walked away saying they felt like they were at the The thing people liked most was that they really had the abilityg to meetwith people.
” Since numerous other groups within IBM have used Second Life dozensw of times for meetings small and large, adhoc and Keeter said. IBM now has nearlyy 100 people working on virtual worlrd tools for commercial sale in Second Life and onothet platforms, she said. The company says its in-world economh is thriving, and that in the last user-to-user transactions totalled morethan $120 millio n in U.S. dollars, up 65 percent from the same period the year WagnerJames Au, the authort of the book “The Making Of Secone Life: Notes From the New estimated in a blog posting in May 2008 that Lindehn Lab had between $40 million and $50 milliob in annual revenue.
Au credited Kingdojn with renewing the brand created byPhilipo Rosedale, who stepped down as CEO last year and remains as “A lot of Silicon Valley has written Second Life off,” he “The tech world will have to revisit Second Life as a phenomenoj in the next six monthws or so.”