Second Life Enterprise just went Beta.  What does Enterprise do?

• familiar Second Life environment
• completely within the company intranet, behind the firewall
• prepackaged virtual regions, with a four-corners auditorium that can hold 400 people.
• set of standard business avatars.

Among Open Beta Participants:

• IBM,
• Northrop Grumman,
• Naval Undersea Warfare Center,
• DefenseWeb Technologies,
• Case Western Reserve University,
• The New Media Consortium,

Read the press highlights

• CNN, Going to the Virtual Office in Second Life
• InformationWeek, Second Life Steps into the Enterprise
• eWeek, Second Life Takes Virtual Reality Behind the Firewall at I

 Metanomics is exploring the serious uses of virtual worlds and we invite you to be part of the conversation. Learn from the executives, entrepreneurs, educators and artists who are using virtual world technologies; the researchers who are studying them; and the policy makers who will influence how they affect our real-world society.

Yes, they do have one.  Just started last week.   Here is the announcement in a blog by Amanda Linden.

Goal:

“To get new potential customers comfortable in Second Life and to clearly demonstrate that Second Life is not a game— but a powerful collaboration and learning tool.” 

Current topic:

Bringing enterprise or government client people into Second Life for the first time for a demo and tour of places that show potential of SL.

Amanda observes that most business people are used to browsing the web and so have point-and-click habits already.  But they don’t have move-around habits.  The orientation starts on the phone, with voice instruction that they already know how to handle.  I think that is a good plan.  Skype start is the method I have been recommending to instructors planning to bring their classes into Second Life.

 I can hear the voices from the skeptic tank right now.
“Nah.  You get real entertainment from TV.”

 OK.  I won’t debate the nature of reality here.  Certainly not against the proposition that Television is reality.  My idea of real entertainment is what entertains people. For example, the music business in Second Life.

The music business in Second Life

There must be hundreds of musical acts performing in SL.   I have more than thirty listed on my web page, Musicians in Second Life.  And these are just the musicians who have been booked on Saturdays Wild, my weekly variety show.  Here is a list compiled by Crap Mariner of musical
 performers in Second Life offering CD’s or MP3’s on iTunes on Amazon. 

Some ideas from us about what LL should be doing to improve how Enterprises use the SL virtual world platform.  We tried to keep the list small enough and focused more on the key marketing and cost reduction areas.