A report by Gartner says that those that are active Internet users, 80 percent will have a "second Life" in some virtual world by the end of 2011, but not necessarily at Second Life.
“The collaborative and community-related aspects of these environments will dominate in the future, and significant transaction-based commercial opportunities will be limited to niche areas, which have yet to be clearly identified,” said Steve Prentice, vice president and analyst at Gartner. “However, the majority of active Internet users and major enterprises will find value in participating in this area in the coming years.”
A lot of companies and online marketers are wondering if this is something they need to get into quickly, or else fall behind their competitors.
At this time, this study says that it's definitely something worth looking into and to experiment with, but there shouldn't be too many resources committed to it at this time. The virtual environments themselves need to mature and stabilize before this should happen.
With the virtual environments themselves not mature enough yet, it's also very difficult to build marketing models to target the users.
I think it's even a good idea to stay on the sidelines and watch and study the results and strategies that companies already doing it receive.
One thing that's different about being in the online business is that for the the most part, being the first one there isn't as important as it is on the offline world. We can afford to wait longer with Internet businesses, especially with newer, emerging possibilities.
We need to keep our eye on it as virtual worlds and their influence grow, but not let it distract us too much from what's really working now.
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