First SecondLife, Now SecondWork?

I won't deny that I'm behind the curve with this whole SecondLife thing. I'm not even sure that in spite of its continued press coverage (hype?) that I have any real interest in exploring it. I still feel that it could be one of those fads that blow over after an intense, but short-lived existence. With such things I prefer to wait and see before investing too much time of my own.

Despite my skepticism, I'm still intrigued by the possibilities I read about every now and again. Most recently, Fortune reported that SecondLife can lead to employment opportunities for savvy members. Take, for exampled, Ogilvy's recent move to hire a lot of people directly from Second Life to help with projects for some of their big name clients. Even small companies such as Electric Sheep Company have used SecondLife to assemble a core team rather than dipping in to the more traditional pool of PR applicants and professional computer programmers.

In both cases, those that landed the jobs got them because of their involvement and skills with the SecondLife platform. They weren't considered to be content producers, but they were experts nonetheless with specialized skills.

So should the likes of Monster and HotJobs lose sleep? Nah. SecondLife certainly provides an alternative to the typical job search, but it does so for a very, very small portion of the public. In addition, unless you happen to enjoy SecondLife and would be "playing" it anyway, who's going to put the time in to being a visible participant on the chance that it'll lead to a job some day?