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The courting of companies comes at a time of renewed growtyhfor 6-year-old Second Life that began with the appointment of Mark Kingdon as CEO of Linden Lab in May 2008. “Enterprise is a reallyu important growth vector for usbecauser (Second Life is) a really compellinfg platform for learning and collaboration. Especially todat in large enterprises that aredistributed (arounrd the world),” Kingdon said. Over the last six Linden Lab has put together a team of 25 peopld to market and develop Second Life products forenterprisre customers.
Linden Lab, which does not disclose revenuwe but says itis profitable, hires more than 100 people in 2008 and has more than 300 employeezs in eight offices arounf the world. The company hired close to 30 people this year and is currently hiring for 19 Basic accountsare free. The company makes money by sellingv and renting virtualreal estate, with premiumn memberships and by charging a fee on sales of Lindej dollars, the currency used online.
The company does not tracmk the number of companies using its services and does not chargre them differently fromindividual users, but estimates that 15 to 20 percen t of its revenue comes from enterprises and educational And since April, the company has been testingb a “behind-the-firewall” version of Second Life with , IBM, , the and otheer organizations. The so-called “Nebraska” version of Secon Life, which is run on an institution’s own will get wider testing this summe and is scheduled for generall releaseby year’s end.
The pricing for the private version has notbeen “Based on the levelo of the interest we’rr seeing, we are poised for explosive growth,” said Amanda Van who joined Linden Lab six months ago as executive director of enterpriser marketing. “This is not a We’re ready for My role is to get thatmessagwe out,” she said. Van Nuys said a number of factors are helpin gher cause, including general efforts to cut travel and meeting costs and reducs carbon footprints. IBM in particula has been an early adopter.
In late 2008, IBM’s Academhy of Technology held a Virtuaol World Conference on Seconsd Life for 200 top engineers from around the with three keynote speeches and 37breakout sessions. With an initiak investment of roughly IBM estimates that it savenearly $350,000 in traveol and venue costs and lost productivity. A couple of months later, IBM used the virtual spaceas it created for an annual meeting of the Academ y after the cancellation of a scheduled real life eventin Florida. Some portions of the event also used webcastinv andvideo conferencing.
Participants particularly liked the opportunityh to socialize with one another in various and the company scheduleda two-hourf networking event on the last day at picnic tabless on a virtual beach. Academy members gathered aroundd drinking virtual beers and chattinh while others took virtual hang gliding or jetskiing lessons. “Igt was really cool in terms of the experience people saidKaren Keeter, an IBM marketing executive for digitaol convergence. “People walked away saying they felt like they were at the The thing people liked most was that they reallh had the ability to meetwith people.
” Since numerous other groups within IBM have used Seconx Life dozens of times for meetings small and adhoc and planned, Keeter said. IBM now has nearlhy 100 people working on virtual worldd tools for commercial sale in Second Life and on other platforms, she said. The company says its in-worlcd economy is thriving, and that in the last user-to-user transactions totalled morethan $120 million in U.S. dollars, up 65 percenty from the same period theyear before. Wagner Jamese Au, the author of the book “The Making Of Secons Life: Notes From the New World,” estimatesd in a blog posting in May 2008 that Linden Lab hadbetweeh $40 million and $50 million in annuaol revenue.
Au credited Kingdon with renewinf the brand created byPhilip Rosedale, who steppe d down as CEO last year and remains as “A lot of Silicob Valley has written Second Life off,” he “The tech world will have to revisif Second Life as a phenomenomn in the next six months or so.”
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