Actually 2nd Life to date IMHO has been more of a Prototype environment for what can be done. So far SecondLife itself is a bit more of a Social Network then a Business Environment. I think the reasons are two fold. One, It takes a fair bit of time to actually become engaged in the environment and this hurts business adoption. Businesses need to be able to take tech neophites and be able to get them up to speed on a platform quickly. SecondLife fails in this department.

The Second Reason is that the environment is too Social and not enough business. You could be a Cross Dressing Rabbit in SecondLife which isn't very conducive to participating in Business Meetings. Even though it's cool to be able to create a second self in whatever creative way you want to do so, it can distract from the business at hand.

As for 3D Property Tours and Neighborhood Tours there is certainly progress being made by a number of companies including Google with Google Earth drilling down to Google Street view and the ability to take floor plans using platforms like http://www.unitedlane.com/ and others to be able to create fully immersive walkthroughs. It won't be long before a 3D Camera with a solid rendering engine could go through a home and do full on 3D Walkthroughs where the consumer could walk through an actual home. That could be a bit of a gamechanger again in the what it means to tour homes.

All the Best,

Glenn Sanford

Actually 2nd Life to date IMHO has been more of a Prototype environment for what can be done. So far SecondLife itself is a bit more of a Social Network then a Business Environment. I think the reasons are two fold. One, It takes a fair bit of time to actually become engaged in the environment and this hurts business adoption. Businesses need to be able to take tech neophites and be able to get them up to speed on a platform quickly. SecondLife fails in this department.

The Second Reason is that the environment is too Social and not enough business. You could be a Cross Dressing Rabbit in SecondLife which isn't very conducive to participating in Business Meetings. Even though it's cool to be able to create a second self in whatever creative way you want to do so, it can distract from the business at hand.

As for 3D Property Tours and Neighborhood Tours there is certainly progress being made by a number of companies including Google with Google Earth drilling down to Google Street view and the ability to take floor plans using platforms like http://www.unitedlane.com/ and others to be able to create fully immersive walkthroughs. It won't be long before a 3D Camera with a solid rendering engine could go through a home and do full on 3D Walkthroughs where the consumer could walk through an actual home. That could be a bit of a gamechanger again in the what it means to tour homes.

All the Best,

Glenn Sanford