Reuters gets a Second Life online

Stan Beer
Monday, 16 October 2006 19:36

Your IT - Home IT

News wire service Reuters has added its name to a growing number of top shelf real businesses that are setting up shop in the fast growing online fantasy world creation of Linden Lab called Second Life. Reuters is setting up a virtual news bureau, that will report on the events that happen in Second Life as well as the real world, events that sometimes intersect both sets of realities.

There are now about 850,000 Second Life users, who take on animated avatar personnas that interact with other virtual characters in quasi real life situations where they do business deals and make and lose virtual money - and increasingly real money.

The phenomenal success of Second Life has led real life top shelf businesses to become involved setting up virtual offices from which they do real life business selling their wares to Second Life users.

Last week, Sun held a virtual press conference to promote its new line of gaming hardware and software which currently goes under the code name Project Darkstar. This week Reuters is touting its news gathering prowess, with real life Reuters reporter Adam Pasick serving as virtual bureau chief Adam Reuters in the online fantasy world.

Like other real-life businesses, Reuters has cottoned on to the fact that the virtual inhabitants of Second Life are actually real life people who can be sold real products and services for real money.

Tom Glocer, Chief Executive Officer, Reuters, said: “Reuters is all about innovation - new technologies, new audiences, and new ways of presenting the news. In Second Life, we're making Reuters part of a new generation. We’re playing an active role in this community by bringing the outside world into Second Life and vice versa.”

Last month Second Life made the news in an unfortunate way, when it was discovered that a database containing sensitive information of the then 650,000 members of the site was hacked. The incident, however, has not prevented Second Life from forging onward and threatening to become the next big social networking destination on the web.