Of course, entrepreneurs are trying to take advantage of the corporate influx. Last month, a Dana Point-based company, Corporate Planners Unlimited, opened a conference facility in Second Life, the Virtualis Convention and Learning Center. There, companies can hold meetings in a grand ballroom during the day and staffers can descend on virtual escalators to a private yacht in the evening.
Founder Dan Parks said Virtualis provides a space for organizations that lack the money or time to build their own island. Virtualis will save companies thousands of dollars by helping people meet online, he said, rather than in person. Plus, meetings would be less dull in Second Life.
"If you want a giant black unicorn to fly down with the chairman of your company and land on the center of the stage, you can do that," he said.
High-tech titan IBM, which has nearly 387,000 employees in 170 countries, began building in Second Life in late 2006. Now, about 5,000 workers visit Second Life and other virtual worlds to conduct meetings, train new employees and hold orientation sessions. In April, the Armonk, N.Y.-based company said it would become the first to host private regions of Second Life on its own computer servers, which provide more security and privacy than the islands hosted on Linden Lab machines.
Second Life helps IBM learn how to make meetings more efficient, said Jim Spohrer, director of services research at IBM's Almaden Research Center, which frequently uses Second Life and other virtual worlds.
If someone goes off on a tangent during a meeting, he said, colleagues send messages telling the person to get back on track. If an avatar falls asleep on screen, that's a good sign the staffer isn't paying attention. In fact, it means he or she has stepped away from the keyboard. Salespeople try out pitches in Second Life, and they're recorded, played back and critiqued by colleagues.
The eccentricities of the virtual world also lead to social connections that aren't possible on conference calls. For instance, Spohrer said, avatars sometimes bring their virtual pets to meetings and chat about them or invite colleagues back to their Second Life homes to show what they have built.
The virtual workplace can be tougher to oversee than the real one. One male IBM employee appears as a female avatar with heels. Another is simply a cloud of particles. But peer pressure to act professional is driving conformity.
