I was on the Stanford campus yesterday at the AlwaysOn conference where I met Philip Rosedale, founder and CEO of Linden Lab, the creator of Second Life, the vast virtual world.
Philip told me that Second Life provides functionalities to post video to virtual movie screens and television sets. He said there is some video up and he expects to see much more. We’ve found some examples of that in the Apple iTunes area.
He said that the Linden has provided the tools to post videos for about 18 months. I hadn’t heard about this, but I have spent very little time in the virtual world. Maybe Beet.TV should have a virtual video blog? Could be very cool.
I asked Philip about the role of marketers paying big bucks to set up shop in Second Life. He told me that these corporate sponosorships are not key to the company’s business proposition. WIRED’s Frank Rose has a fairly tough story in the currrent issue about the viability of Second Life as a marketing platform.
Regardless of the viability of the virtual world as a marketing platform, it’s a media sector that is taking off. This is demonstrated by today’s $350 million Disney acquisition of the Club Penguin. Hats off to Josh Jaffe of VC Ratings who predicted that Disney would buy the Club six weeks ago.
— Andy Plesser
Philip Rosedale
Second Life
Online Video
Linden Lab
