Linden Lab, the parent company of Second Life is making a strategic move into the enterprise world by partnering with Rivers Run Red.  Rivers Run Red is a company based in London, England that styles a web version of Second Life to build 3D meetings.  Rivers Run Red also allows users to store multimedia, build news feeds, and hold 3D meetings external of Second Life.

While many customers want to run these meetings on their own servers, Linden Lab has built a custom version for IBM using Second Life.  As companies continue to cut costs in the tight economy, Second Life just might become a normal alternative for traveling across the world.

Rivers Run Red does not work exclusively with Linden Lab to provide virtual world offerings.  This past July, Rivers Run Red signed a deal with Google to build a custom 3D spaces for Lively.  Other Rivers Run Red clients include Adidas, BBC, Coca-Cola, Heineken, HarperCollins, The Guardian, Unilever, and Vodafone.

Rivers Run Red’s core services are Immersive Workspaces and Immersive Brandspaces.

Some good quotes from the clip:
Susan Tenby (mini-clip): “I’ve submitted my full statement to the committee to be part of the permanent record. And my avatar name is Glitteractica Cookie.”
Jon Stewart (responding to the mini-clip): “All this time I’ve wondered why I had to settle for GlitteracticaCookie-2. DAMN YOU, TENBY!! DAMN you!! But not only was this the first Congressional hearing held about virtual world, it was also the first one held in one. The simulcast live video of the event in a virtual Second Life hearing room. As you can see the distinguished company included a winged goth nympy, a business man with giant lizard hair, and the distinguished Congress woman hooker in a red cocktail dress (D) California.”

Information Source:
[1] ValleyWag: Jon Stewart mocks Congress for discussing Second Life by Jackson West

Philip Rosedale is the creator Second Life and is now the former CEO.  Rosendale will become their chairman of the Board, but will not be responsible for hiring the team to maintain Second Life’s scalability.  This will be the job of the new CEO.

“I bet this will be the most interesting job opening in the technology world,” wrote Rosendale on his blog.

Rosendale will be responsible for the product strategy and become an evangelist about Second Life.  There currently isn’t a timeline for when Second Life plans to bring in a full-time CEO.

On the blog post, one of the funniest comments I saw was by Bobo Decosta, who said “Does this mean anarchy brakes out until a new ruler steps up?”   It’d be funny to see all these virtual avatars start freaking out.  It probably wouldn’t look any different than when Scott Adams decided to make an appearance on Second Life.

The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS) is makin’ moves online.  In August 2007, the Mickey Mouse and “It’s a small world” creators acquired Club Penguin, a kid-friendly social network for $350 million.  And now the company announced that they will be creating virtual worlds with online games.  As a matter of fact, they hired a team to focus on these specific jobs.  This new team will be part of the Walt Disney Internet Group and will be called Disney Online Studios.

Disney Online Studios will be managed by Steve Parkis.  Parkis studied at Michigan State and Northwestern and then started his career working at Kimberly-Clark.  AFter that, Parkis became a MD at Windhorst New Technologies.  Today Steve serves as the Vice President of Premium Products for Disney Online.

The new Disney Online Studios team will also include Disney Online’s Virtual Reality Studio, Toontown Online, and Pirates of the Caribbean Online.  Disney is also creating a virtual world where kids can control Disney Fairies and characters from the Disney film, Cars.  Club Penguin will continue to report to the Walt Disney Internet Group.

Disney is taking over the market-share for virtual worlds made for children, a market that Linden Lab, creator of Second Life, could have easily done.  Second Life had about 1.3 million users log in around March 2007 [clickz].  I’m not sure what the current number of users are.

[Information Source:  socalTECH]