Gartner: 70% of businesses to work in virtual worlds

Gartner - the analyst group that last year predicted that 80% of regular Internet users would have a virtual world identity by 2012, has come out with a new report to do with online environments like Second Life.

What Gartner says feeds into a picture that's been emerging over the past six months - and that starts to answer the question of what virtual worlds are good for (other than spending free time there).

Which is that while the mass exodus of brands out of Second Life shows that virtual worlds aren't very good when it comes to trying to sell your stuff to consumers, these places do seem to have two tangible functions.

One is to serve as what's been called a a petri dish of user generated content. A place where you, or a small group of people can create unhindered by the restrictions or limitations of the real world. The Garden of NPIRL Delights in Second Life that we posted about yesterday and involved 100 different artists is a prime example.

The second use is as a place to do real work. And according to Gartner, 70% of businesses will have their own private area in virtual worlds by 2012, something IBM put into practice last month when it created its own restricted zone in Second Life.

The Gartner Group says that virtual worlds could have as profound an effect on our working practices and environments as the original Internet did 5-10 years ago. That's because unlike video or web based conferencing facilities, virtual worlds are ideally suited for different teams of people to meet and collaborate on projects.

However, for all this to come about there still needs to be a mind change when it comes to building virtual world presences.

According to the report, the vast majority of forays into virtual worlds are folding within 18 months, 90% because they focus on the technology rather than the users.

Analyst Steve Prentice says that businesses, "need to realize that virtual worlds mark the transition from web pages to web places and a successful virtual presence starts with people, not physics."

As with any other online medium or social network, "realistic graphics and physical behaviour account for little unless the presence is valued by and engaging to a large audience."

Photo - An Second Life office building, by Nexeus Fatale under a creative commons license.