Now, this is really cool. According to Yahoo News, Sweden plans to open an embassy in the virtual world of Second Life.
For those of you who are not familiar with it Second Life has more than 3 million “inhabitants”. We first blogged about Second Life in December after SES in Chicago. The success of this VR world is an incredibly important development on the web.
It proves that people will embrace Virtual Reality, even in relatively simple forms. Wait until VR worlds become truly immersive. Second World already offers commercial opportunities for the creative. Second Life has already produced at least one millionaire, and major brands, such as Starwood Hotels, already test market their future products in this world. And, now we have our first country establishing a presence.
This phenomenon is going to continue to grow. For those of you looking for new frontiers to invest in, the notion of Virtual Reality is a good one. It is still small, but I think its potential is absolutely explosive.
In the Net Force series of books created by Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik, they have created a future in 2010 where the web is completely centered around VR. Don’t laugh at the idea. It could happen.
