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In the ongoing discussion about Second Life, opinions differ. Many think it’s a frivolous fad; others, including its investors, believe it’s what the web will become - a full-fledge virtual world where thousands of businesses can sprout up, much like eBay did with the first incarnation of the web.
According to Fortune (via MarketingVox), the believers include some of the world’s smartest, richest, and most successful tech entrepreneurs. The chairman for Second Life’s Linden Labs is Lotus 1-2-3 creator Mitch Kapor; other investors include eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and Ray Ozzie, inventor of Lotus Notes and Microsoft’s chief technology architect.
Meanwhile, tech juggernaut IBM is already using Second Life to gather 2,000 employees for a presentation on global initiatives, among them a $10 million project to help build out the “3-D Internet” that is potentially Second Life.
And speaking of potential, “In two years I think Second Life will be huge, probably as large as the entire gaming community is today,” according to Mark Anderson, CEO of Strategic News Service (SNS) and its consulting practice, Technology Alliance Partners.
All sectors of the media business will suffer from the weakened economy in 2008 and 2009, with a slump in local advertising particularly hurting newspapers and local TV, according to a new projection from Goldman Sachs.
Broadcast nets will experience…
The New York Times is shuttering its International Herald Tribune site; NYTimes.com will soon host the international news normally reserved for its sister website.
The move is not about cost savings, but rather about growth, NYTimes.com general manager Vivian Schiller…
Unilever’s Vaseline set forth on an unusual research project in a small town in Alaska. Setting up a storefront, the company began giving away free bottles of lotion and asking recipients to name the person who had recommended they come…
Meet the Press, the show hosted by Tim Russert for 17 years before his death last June, is beginning to slip in ratings.
Last month, CBS’s Face the Nation pulled ahead of Meet the Press for the first time in two…
Bloggers collectively create nearly one million blog posts each day, and half of bloggers believe blogs will be a primary source of news and entertainment in the next five years, according to Technorati’s 2008 State of the Blogosphere Report, MarketingCharts writes.…
Wal-Mart and Costco reported same-store gains in September, with sales rising 2.4% and 9% respectively. Sales at Target stores open at least a year fell 3%, writes Retailer Daily.
Below, fiscal results from the discount retail giants:
Sales of food and…
