Big Blue Pushing The Virtual Envelope

Adam brings another cool story from SecondLife which bridges the Virtual Divide - IBM accelerates push into 3D virtual worlds. Apparently, IBM will be expanding the Big Blue presence in SecondLife, which might be a good idea because while I have read about it, I haven't actually seen it yet. Of course, they're 'playing' with the stuff - which is probably the most important part of a virtual world education. $10 million dollars is a lot of Linden dollars:

...IBM is ramping up its push into virtual worlds with an investment of roughly US$10 million over the next year, including an expanded presence within Second Life and the development of its own 3D intranet...

Coupled with the fact that they are developing their own 3D intranet, this bodes well for virtual worlds in general - and may even help Linden Lab. At best, it could mean getting closer to Second Life becoming Open Source, and at worst it could mean that SecondLife is subsidized a little more by IBM's investment within SecondLife.

Why the 3d Intranet? Remember what IBM did with Linux? They played with it inhouse before they started backing Linux in a Big and Blue way. I suppose we should expect the same from them when it comes to virtual worlds. IBM is serious:

...“We always ask the question, ‘if you knew 20 years ago what you know about the Web today, what would you do differently?’” Sandy Kearney, IBM’s director of emerging 3-D Internet and virtual business, told Reuters in a Second Life interview. “The Web took decades. This will likely take half that time.”...

Yes, water brother. Grok in fullness. But in the context of SecondLife, will this just fluctuate the Linden without getting money into the SecondLife economy through spending on residentially owned businesses? I suppose it may be unlikely to see some IBM employee avatars hanging out in strip clubs, but the challenge for the businesses within SecondLife is not to complain but to find a way to capitalize. It would be good if Big Blue's employees shopped and found cool stuff they liked within SecondLife and injected it into the up and coming IBM virtual world culture.

Maybe smuggling them off the private islands is in order.