Virtual Worlds in Business

From Baruchnewmedia

Virtual worlds are interactive simulated environments accessed by multiple users through an online interface. They all have common features that include:

• Shared space
• Graphical user interface
• Immediacy
• Persistence
• Interactivity
• Community

Virtual world developers combine a variety of tools and approaches to create engaging virtual environments. Virtual worlds are often seen as 3D multiplayer games, or chat rooms, but they are an increasingly powerful business tool. They can be used in:

• Marketing

Use of VWs to promote real life products and services. The technology also allows for the creation of branded VWs and promotional virtual events sponsored and organized within VWs. For example, in some VWs you can dress your avatar in branded clothes.

• Recruiting

Use of VWs to connect with potential employees via virtual job fairs and virtual interviews.

• Collaboration

Use of VWs to host corporate meetings and enable remote workers to keep in touch. It is cheaper to use VWs than videoconferencing systems. For example, IBM uses ActiveWorlds as an internal VW for collaboration and also holds meetings in Second Life. Here is the video that demonstrates how that works: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DljqD-I1nHs&feature=related Also there is a ton of great collaborative software focused on text-based interaction. But the value of collaboration in the virtual world is the same as in the real one: multiple people can work on an infinite number of tasks at once, but still have group cohesion and physical proximity.

• Education and Training

Training employees via VWs can be cost effective and less time and money consuming. Interactive training is one of the most exciting areas for a business to explore. There simply is no other technology that lets distributed teams simulate things like emergency preparation, medical response, and battlefields. The other key benefit is that mistakes mean less in a virtual world, giving your team room to experiment.

What to Avoid

Forrester says that virtual worlds are ripe for use by business, but the way that vendors have presented themselves has been off the mark. This has led to most enterprises having a poor idea of what virtual worlds are good for. The two key points to remember for businesses and vendors are:

It's not about the avatar. Flashy graphics are not the point. Consumer participants in virtual worlds spend a lot of time obsessing about their avatars. But this is business, not entertainment. If the avatar is good enough to simulate a good basic approximation of who you are, then it's a non-issue.

It's not just conferencing. A virtual world is not just an unusual Web conferencing solution. It is a space that simulates the whole range of human activities, including work-related ones.

As Forrester puts it, "virtual world vendors need to limit their focus on the quality of avatars, stop trying to compete with other collaboration solutions, and start building relationships with other collaboration providers."

Source: http://www.scribd.com/doc/5570819/Introduction-to-virtual-worlds

http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2009/07/how-to-use-virtual-worlds-for-business.php