In my opinion, the event gave Gartner a platform to justify their prediction. They went about it by citing that they didnt really break-down Active internet users. Steve suggested after doing some clever calculations on broadband internet users and came up with a figure of 250-300m users of Virtual Worlds as their (clarified) prediction. I would use Paul Saffo’s concept of Macro-Myopia. We dont realize how quickly the world may get computerized. The way the usage of internet has been rising, also the increasing teledensity of the BRIC countries. I heard that New Delhi has a mind-boggling teledesnity of 93% (living here I never thought we’d ever be near that mark), and with convergence happening all over, I expect the Internet being more and more used. Thus I believe this number will grow more by the day. However at the same time, I agree with comments from one of the panelist that VW have a typical use for certain things like Google is great for searching. I dont require VW for checking into a Airport when I am in rush (or do I). Essentially it will all become one big pool, where VW are suited for one kind of thing and 80% of users may use that. I predict it to be a much larger pie.

Another thought that caught my attention was that of Personal Branding, the Cornell prof felt that ‘Public’ VW are a great advertisement for such branding, however Corporates will not be interested. I differ that going forward I expect Companies / Corporates embracing the Personal Identity of the user as much as the overall Corporate brand. The Corporate Brand could be identified with the strong personal brands. For example, in the space of VWs, Epredator is a well known Individual brand, at the same time the overall brand of IBM in this space is enhanced by the personal brand.

Inviting your thoughts & comments !

Other coverages of the event here:

• Gartner goes 57 Miles to clarify their position Tateru Nino
• Gartner explains VW stance on Metaversed Panel Amalthea Blanc

An interesting article as a precursor was Gartner warning companies to carefully evaluate the use of public Virtual Worlds like Second Life.

My takeaway from the discussion was that Second life is a great public Virtual World. It gives companies the opportunity to see what Social Collaboration & socially compatible 3D visualization can do. It opens the door for them to see the vast options that this medium of information exchange provides. However it is just that, Second Life is in my opinion, is limited as an Enterprise tool for Virtual Worlds. The lack of confidentiality, stability can usually be root-cause-analyzed into putting it behind the Firewall. I feel the moment that Linden Labs propose a model for putting this behind the firewall, a lot of companies will become very interested. Suddenly we have the equivalents for a Public & Private Internet together with common interface.

At this point, the most typical question that is raised is what will be the business model of Linden Labs, I speculate even if they open source the servers, as long as they control the authorizing and the maintain the role of a gate-keeper they can continue to get good returns on their investments. As one hand they control the servers in the public sphere and charge private companies for the same and connectivity to the public world as required.