Certification Magazine - March 2008 - (Page 29)

To learn more about virtual worlds, check CertScope to read 93 CertMag articles and link to more than 175 Web sites covering the topic. get in flat form, for example if you’re doing a known item search,” Bower said. But he believes large stores such as Home Depot will move over to being represented online by virtual worlds. “All their stores are the same; there’s no reason why their Web site shouldn’t be a virtual version of their store,” he said. According to Bower, migration to virtual worlds has the potential to change not just e-commerce, but advertising as well. “What virtual worlds provide, and not very many of them understand this yet, is a way to engage users more deeply than any other form of media,” Bower said. “As we become aware of that, advertising should no longer be ‘How many eyeballs watched a 30-second slot,’ it should be ‘How many brains are involved in an activity’ at the level of hours, days and months. Then, because that’s driving advertising and marketing, it’s going to drive the growth of virtual worlds. “For that reason, it’s a growth industry for people who know how to build and manage these things.” 8 – Daniel Margolis, dmargolis@certmag.com “It never occurred to me before, but you could half imagine that a way [we] would certify somebody as being sophisticated with respect to the management and operation of virtual worlds would be to challenge them to go in and pass certification for each of the five or six different jobs that you can do as an avatar in Whyville,” Bower said. “That would give you pretty broad exposure to the issues of managing virtual worlds.” But there also are issues presented in managing virtual worlds that are more complex than general operation. The civil, judicial and property rights of users within virtual worlds have only come to be loosely defined, if they’re defined at all. “There are a whole bunch of issues at work in a virtual world of adults in which almost no investment has been made in any form of control or enforcing community standards,” Bower said. “Virtual worlds like Second Life are a cross between Orange County, where the developers run mad, and Baghdad, where the terrorists run mad.” Regardless, virtual worlds will likely grow into a more prominent presence in our lives. “With any new technology, initially humans use it in an old way,” Bower said. “So, 99 percent of the Web sites out there are basically flat 2-D books or magazines. Computers are not limited to that.” According to Bower, a growing contingent believes that within 10 years, the entirety of the Internet will consist of virtual worlds. Bower holds this prediction to two-thirds of the Internet. “There are kinds of information that it just makes sense to http://www.CertMag.com http://www.thetrainingassociates.com http://www.thetrainingassociates.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Certification Magazine - March 2008

Certification Magazine - March 2008 Editor's Letter Contents Data Stream Tech Careers Academic Connection Dear Techie Virtual Village Mastering IT: Choosing Between an Immediate Job and Higher Education Inside Certification Virtual World Administrators: Service Requests in Cyberspace Interface Boomers in IT: Will the Talent Shortage Affect Techies? Ad Index Endtag

Certification Magazine - March 2008

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