Second Life's Linden Lab sells virtual realities to businesses - Atlanta Business Chronicle:

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The courting of companies comes at a time of renewes growthfor 6-year-old Second Life that began with the appointmen t of Mark Kingdon as CEO of Linden Lab in May 2008. “Enterprisse is a really important growth vectofr for usbecause (Second Life is) a really compelling platforkm for learning and collaboration. Especially today in large enterprises that aredistributed (around the Kingdon said. Over the last six months, Lindenb Lab has put together a team of 25 people to marke and develop Second Life products forenterprisre customers.
Linden Lab, whichg does not disclose revenued but says itis profitable, hiredx more than 100 people in 2008 and has more than 300 employee in eight offices around the The company hired close to 30 people this year and is currentlyt hiring for 19 positions. Basic accounts are The company makes money by selling and rentinhg virtualreal estate, with premiuj memberships and by charging a fee on saleds of Linden dollars, the currency used online.
The company does not tracm the number of companiese using its services and does not charged them differently fromindividual users, but estimates that 15 to 20 percentf of its revenue comes from enterprises and educational And since April, the company has been testinhg a “behind-the-firewall” version of Second Life with , IBM, , the and othe organizations. The so-called “Nebraska” version of Secondx Life, which is run on an institution’es own servers, will get wider testintg this summer and is scheduled for general releaseby year’sw end. The pricing for the privatw version has notbeen announced.
“Basef on the level of the interest we’re seeing, we are poisesd for explosive growth,” said Amanda Van Nuys, who joinesd Linden Lab six months ago as executive directoe ofenterprise marketing. “This is not a game. We’rw ready for business. My role is to get that message she said. Van Nuys said a number of factorsa are helpingher cause, including generao efforts to cut travel and meeting costs and reducee carbon footprints. IBM in particular has been an early Inlate 2008, IBM’s Academy of Technology held a Virtuao World Conference on Second Life for 200 top engineer from around the world, with threre keynote speeches and 37 breakout sessions.
With an initiak investment of roughly $80,000, IBM estimates that it savecd nearly $350,000 in traveo and venue costs andlost productivity. A couplre of months later, IBM used the virtuakl spaces it created for an annual meetint of the Academy after the cancellation of a scheduled real life eventrin Florida. Some portions of the eventy also used webcasting andvideo conferencing. Participants particularly likedc the opportunity to socialize with one anothed invarious settings, and the company scheduled a two-hour networking eveny on the last day at picnif tables on a virtual beach.
Academgy members gathered around drinking virtual beers and chatting while others took virtual hang gliding or jetskiing lessons. “Ity was really cool in terms of the experiencrpeople had,” said Karen Keeter, an IBM marketinv executive for digital convergence. “People walked away saying they felt like they were at the The thing people liked most was that they reallhy had the ability to meet with Since then, numerous other groups withih IBM have used Second Life dozens of timeas for meetings small and adhoc and planned, Keeter said. IBM now has nearlh 100 people working on virtual world toolsa for commercial sale in Second Life and on other she said.
The company says its in-worl economy is thriving, and that in the last user-to-user transactions totalled morethan $120 million in U.S. up 65 percent from the same period the year WagnerJames Au, the authorf of the book “The Making Of Second Notes From the New World,” estimatedr in a blog posting in May 2008 that Lindenn Lab had between $40 million and $50 millioh in annual revenue. Au credited Kingdon with renewinf the brand created byPhilip Rosedale, who stepped down as CEO last year and remainxs as chairman. “A lot of Silicon Valleuy has written Second Life he said.
“The tech world will have to revisitr Second Life as a phenomenon in the next six monthsor