With traditional advertising and PR on the wane, I am considering opening a virtual marketing business. Don’t laugh, Second Life, the premiere virtual world platform in existence today, boasts nearly 17 million registered users, or residents, as they are called, who spent more than $100M last year on virtual goods and services. Now large corporations such as Mattel, CIGNA, Dell, Wells Fargo, Nike, Coca Cola, Northrop and IBM are utilizing the platform to train employees, hold shareholders meetings, stage corporate gatherings, host conferences, and test new products.

In a recent Wall Street Journal article, an IBM spokesperson says the company saved “around $350K” last October by hosting its annual 3-day think tank conference virtually on Second Life (SL) instead of in the traditional way. At a SL corporate event, SL avatar “attendees” logged on to their computers, teleported their avatars to the SL venue (usually a secured, private space) to hear speakers, share documents, watch presentations, and enjoy post-meeting live entertainment – just as they might in Real Life (RL).

Second Life was created and launched in 2003 by Linden Research Inc. as a 3-D virtual world where registered residents, in avatar personae, could live, work, socialize and govern. SL is not a game, but an endlessly-evolving lifestyle. Using 3-D modeling tools called primitives (prims), which are basic geometric shapes that can be linked and textured to create more complex shapes, and animation software for avatars, SL Residents have created an impressively complex world that unnervingly mirrors real life (RL). After registering, you choose an avatar, select its body specifications, name it, and clothe it. Your avatar can change its looks or gender or species or clothing whenever you want. You can be a business executive in Second Life, a scoundrel, a vampire, or a beauty queen, or even an animal. You can also build, or have built for you, a home of any kind – from a fairytale mansion or a medieval castle… to a beachfront cottage or a cabin in the woods. To get around, you can use SL maps and teleport your avatar from one place or another, use every conceivable mode of transportation, but best of all, you can learn to fly – over land, over sea, over hundreds and hundreds of breathtaking landscapes that include nearly 1.8 billion square meters of resident-owned land. Communication involves instant messaging and voice chat. Nearby translators can translate text you key in into most any language.

Resident-created cities are replete with storefronts, nightclubs, skyscrapers, hospitals, museums, red light districts, universities, and everything that goes in them – furniture, retail commodities, you name it. Your SL avatar can attend a university, apply for a paid position and pursue any profession. You can be a SL real estate broker, a marketing guru, an event planner, a prostitute or a film maker who scripts, casts, directs and produces a full-length film, and then stages a world premiere to launch it. If you’re a musician, you can land gigs at nightclubs, coffee houses or concert venues and give live performances that could conceivably be attended by hundreds or even thousands of SL residents. Just as in RL, you can meet, date, fall in love, marry, have children and get a divorce in SL, with some elaborate weddings being planned over time and experience 9 RL months of virtual visits to your chosen obstetric avatar. To purchase land, goods or services, you use SL currency called Lindens, abbreviated L$, with an exchange rate that changes, the most recent average being about L$262 to every US$1.

RL business applications continue to grow in this virtual world. Plans are in the works for a service allowing employees of participating corporations to connect to SL virtual meetings via their landlines or mobile phones. Northrop Grumman helped build Space Park in Second Life, a secure area where military personnel and others can receive training to operate the company’s Cutlass bomb disposal robots. Virtual universities offer classes held on campuses.

Although registration is free, you may purchase a premium membership for around $10 a month that allows you ownership of a small amount of land up to 512m, extra tech support, and an allowance of L$300 per week.