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Linden Labs, parent company of Second Life, is joining forced with Big Blue to design avatars that are interoperable with other virtual worlds. This means that users could potentially take their persona from Second Life and use it in other virtual worlds like The Sims or There.com.
IBM is probably not the first (or hundredth) name you think of in areas like virtual worlds, but apparently the company has been using Second Life for business purposes already. The company has held conferences within the virtual world, and CEO Sam Palmisano apparently has his own avatar.
I have some serious doubts as to whether virtual worlds are going to take the place of video conferencing or online meeting services like WebEx, but interoperability between virtual worlds would certainly be a good thing as more and more services emerge.