A student of mine shared this article on CNN.com with me: “Can second Life Help Teach Doctors to Treat Patients?” It is an interesting illustration of the potential best use of Second Life, at least in the short-term. While the original idea of Second Life was to create a virtual world where individuals can take on the role of an alter ego, the true business appeal of Second Life really lies in its capability to bring computer objects to life. Within the 3D environment, individuals can reenact real-world scenarios in a semi-real setting, a departure from the 2D dominated Internet. Thus, what is most useful about Second Life is not really the hundreds of thousands of users in the network, in contrary to other social networks such as Facebook. Rather, it is the ability to simulate real-world scenarios that may be difficult or expensive to take place in reality. Such applications include product development and demonstration; customer collaboration; teleconferencing; education and other types of simulation; and team work across geographic areas. While businesses have entered Second Life a few years ago to build a “presence” in Second Life for marketing purposes, I envision continued use of Second Life to focus more in these other business areas and applications.