Virtual Life - Real Opportunity

Virtual gaming has morphed into a cultural trend to an online world where you can take on a second persona, and not only play games, but have 'real' businesses, with real money. Second life which has grown from 20,ooo users to 170,000 users in about a year, in an amazing social phenomenon. There are actually people making real world money in there (the exchange rate is about 300 linden dollars, the second life currency to 1 US dollar). If people can have virtual lives, and virtual businesses, it then begs the question - what about virtual advertising for those businesses within the SecondLife world? I then start to think about possibilities for current online services. Why couldn't you take that same service, and apply it to virtual customers within the game. Is a virtual avatar (that is associated to a real person) any less real than a real-world virtual user? You could build buyer profiles off them, and offer them similar products that you would offer real people, except it would be based on the wants, needs and habits of the avatar rather than the real world user.

Check out this new article in Business week entitled My Virtual life for more insight into SecondLife.