Robert Scoble talks with Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger about the implications of avatars and appearance in virtual worlds and the implications for cross-site identity.
The nature of online avatars makes for interesting question about how business will be conducted in the future. As a former World of Warcraft player, I feel that the reality is that the tools currently available for 3d internet presence are too primitive and severely misguided.
Citing World of Warcraft as a support for the future of SL is entirely invalid. WoW is principally a game, and most importantly based in closed-source, professionally generated content. This, combined with the serious issues regarding the published Linden Labs usage statistics opens the vision for criticism. I remain open to being convinced, but I cannot see an application domain for SL which cannot better be achieved with a web page.