For the corporate world, virtual worlds (VWs) are still an unexplored land of opportunities. The fact that some big companies such as IBM and Sun Microsystems have devoted considerable funds and talent to taming the new territory has convinced others to step in. However and by the same token, the spectacular falls of some of these VWs 'projects' made other corporations hesitant or at least lukewarm about developing their own VW presence agenda. As a result of this uncertainty on the real value

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... hat expanding a presence in VWs may add to their business, some companies adopted what seemed to be a cautious strategy to go about embracing a new Ecommerce channel: they replicated in VWs the successful -real life -formulas for product launching campaigns, and branding boosting. Hence, they filled their expensive VW real estate with billboards and spread downloadable pamphlets at key locations in the VW of their choice. A few weeks or months later, most of the companies that opted for this conservative approach realized in dismay that the (costly) infrastructure designed and built often by third party consultants failed to attract visitors. In the absence of the anticipated flocks of potential customers, some companies disappeared. If the announcement of these corporate VW presences had met media coverage and fanfare, their failure sent shock waves across the virtual platform, as well as outside in the online (and mainstream) media to other companies starting or considering a VW strategy. In spite of this grim scenario, some reports have positive projections for the near future and suggest that early adopters of VWs in work environments are now seeing business value in their initial investment [3] . The success of business in VWs is straightly related to the proliferation of the client base on these virtual platforms. Studies show that the number of people in virtual worlds is increasing -15% every month -and this trend sees to be steady [1] . The same source projects that by 2011, 80 percent of active Internet users will have a 'second life', which is used here metaphorically as any metaverse and not literally as a Second Life (SL). These projections translate into 50-60 million of Internet active users will be members of at least one virtual world by 2011. As far as corporations in VWs, more than 40% of respondents in a ThinkBalm study saw a positive total economic benefit from investments in those technologies in 2008 and in the first quarter of 2009, and more than 50% of those surveyed expect to obtain a positive total economic benefit in 2009. The study included surveys of 66 Immersive Internet practitioners and 15 in-depth interviews and had the Linden Labs as one of the sponsors. Though there could be some risk of conflict of interests in the case of studies who have the companies that created some of the VW platforms as sponsors, this specific study includes a good insight on the spectrum of uses VWs -or, rather, immersive technologies as this is the topic of the study -yield for the respondents, with learning and training, as well as internal and external meetings being the most common uses. The authors also make the interesting observation that quantifying success may be difficult in the case of government, non-profits and even some non traditional corporations that promote non-financial benefits. In fact, the study found that "many who have been implementing immersive technology in the workplace did not even expect to achieve a return on their investment" [3]. The case of IBM IBM pursued initiatives for both internal and external audiences running SL behind its firewalls and promoting a culture of 'getting to know the SL community' among its employees. In a personal interview with Craig Becker, an IBM Master Inventor and tech lead for IBM virtual space events, he suggested that the initial difficulty was to be taken seriously as VWs are usually equated with games, and hence play. Besides stimulating the 'non-blue suit 'avatar among the staff members engaged in IBM's VW strategy, IBM engaged external audiences through SL destinations such as the IBM Public Sandbox, frequently visited by well known Second Life artists such as AM Radio, Tezcatlipoca Bisiani, and Bryn Oh. This, again, proves IBM's conscious choice of 'getting to know the SL community' and meeting its interests and wishes instead of creating a situation where the residents are expected to meet IBM's commercial interests. The social media and the VW strategies Just as CEOs and CIOs were struggling to understand how Facebook and Twitter can add value to their businesses, virtual worlds joined this already complex social media space. The year 2006 arguably marked the climax of the corporate interest in the metaverse as a new channel for ecommerce, as well as the embracement of web 2.0 technologies by the corporate world, upon the recognition that customer opinion was becoming more influenced by other customers' opinion than by the 'power of the brand' or -the trend seemed to be -mainstream advertising [10] .