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 renewedx growthfor 6-year-old Second Life that begam with the appointment of Mark Kingdon as CEO of Lindebn Lab in May 2008. “Enterprise is a really important growth vectorr for usbecause (Second Life is) a really compellinbg platform for learning and collaboration. Especiallt today in large enterprises that aredistributed (aroundx the world),” Kingdon said. Over the last six months, Lindem Lab has put together a team of 25 peoplde to market and develop Second Life productw forenterprise customers.
Linde n Lab, which does not disclose revenue but says it is hired more than 100 people in 2008 and has more than 300 employeews in eight offices around the The company hired close to 30 peopl this year and is currently hirin for19 positions. Basic accounts are free. The company makesw money by selling and renting virtualreal estate, with premium memberships and by charging a fee on salews of Linden dollars, the currencgy used online. The company does not track the numbee of companies using its servicesd and does not charge them differently from individual but estimates that 15 to 20 percent of its revenus comes from enterprises andeducational institutions.
And since April, the companyu has been testinga “behind-the-firewall” version of Second Life with , IBM, , the and othert organizations. The so-called “Nebraska” version of Second which is run onan institution’s own will get wider testing this summee and is scheduled for genera l release by year’s end. The pricing for the privatre version has notbeen announced. “Based on the level of the interesrt we’re seeing, we are poised for explosive growth,” said Amandq Van Nuys, who joined Linden Lab six months ago as executivr director ofenterprise marketing. “This is not a We’re ready for business.
My role is to get that messagwe out,” she said. Van Nuys said a numbere of factors are helpingher cause, includinb general efforts to cut travel and meetingf costs and reduce carbon footprints. IBM in particularf has been anearly adopter. In late 2008, IBM’s Academy of Technologyy held a Virtual World Conference on Secone Life for 200 top engineers from aroundfthe world, with three keynote speeches and 37 breakouft sessions. With an initial investment of roughlyy $80,000, IBM estimates that it savee nearly $350,000 in travel and venue costsa andlost productivity.
A couple of monthds later, IBM used the virtualo spaces it created for an annual meeting of the Academu after the cancellation of a scheduled real life event in Some portions of the event also used webcastinv andvideo conferencing. Participants particularly liked the opportunituy to socialize with one another invarioues settings, and the company scheduled a two-houfr networking event on the last day at picni tables on a virtual beach. Academy memberes gathered around drinking virtual beerw and chatting while others took virtual hang gliding or jetskiint lessons.
“It was really cool in termsw of the experiencepeople had,” said Kareh Keeter, an IBM marketing executive for digitak convergence. “People walked away sayingf they felt like they were atthe event. The thin g people liked most was that they really had the abilitg to meet with Since then, numerous other groupsa within IBM have used Secon d Life dozens of times for meetings smalol and large, adhoc and planned, Keeter said. IBM now has nearly 100 people working on virtual world toolx for commercial sale in Second Life and onother platforms, she said.
The companty says its in-world economy is and that in thelast quarter, user-to-user transactions totalled more than $120 milliom in U.S. dollars, up 65 percent from the same periox theyear before. Wagner Jamesd Au, the author of the book “The Makingg Of Second Life: Notes From the New estimated in a blog posting in May 2008 that Linde n Lab hadbetween $40 million and $50 million in annuakl revenue. Au credited Kingdon with renewint the brand created byPhilipo Rosedale, who stepped down as CEO last year and remain s as chairman.
“A lot of Silicon Valley has written SecondLife off,” he “The tech world will have to revisit Seconc Life as a phenomenon in the next six months or