11 Companies In Fortune 100 Maintain Presence In Second Life (Update: And Many In The Global Fortune 100)

Map display of defense contractor Northrop Grumman's Second Life islands (currently inaccessible)

While researching a year-end recap post, I was curious to find out how many corporations in the top 100 of Fortune Magazine's famed 500 list still maintain an active and public presence in Second Life. Surprisingly, I found that eleven do, many of them integrating the metaverse into their regular corporate activity, as opposed to consumer marketing.  Here's my rough notes:

Most active:

Hewlett Packard sponsors an ongoing speaker series conducted in SL

IBM, of course, has a major enterprise/virtual campus presence

Microsoft holds in-world meetings for its .Net developer community

Time Warner via CNN has an iReport Channel for Second Life

Norththrop Grumman, creator of the B-2 "Stealth bomber", is also an official Second Life solution provider

Those five seem to be the most active, but six more also maintain a presence, plus five which now qualify as "near misses" for various reasons:

Extant, but less active:

Dell

Kraft (via marketing for Phil's Supermarket)

Best Buy (via marketing/info site for Geek Squad)

Cisco (enterprise/conferencing site)

Comcast (marketing site: SLURL teleport at this link)

Intel had a "Dev Zone" in SL in 2007, but doesn't seem currently active

Newscorp via Fox Atomic (marketing site: SLURL teleport at this link)

* * *

Defunct, near misses, and/or partly active

Coca Cola, via Nestea live music in SL sponsorship

GMAC via Pontiac (marketing site, buh bye)

Honeywell (Investigating SL, but no confirm commitments announced)

Sears (via IBM shopping prototype)

Sprint (marketing site: once here)

Did I miss any?

Update, 12:15pm:  In Comments,  Pierre-Olivier Carles and Bevan Whitfield note that French industrial giant Saint-Gobain (blogged about here) and Nokia (blogged about here) also have active presences in Second Life, and are in the global Fortune 100, along with other leading firms.  Anyone else?

Update 2, 12:30pm:  Why yes, there's more, at least another near miss:  Doubledown Tandino points out that Ben and Jerry's has a Second Life island.  The ice cream company is owned by Unilever, also in the Global Fortune 100.  (Or at least it was, in 2005.) In fact, looking at the Global 100, there's several more, perhaps the most active being Vodafone, which offers its mobile services in SL.  Deutsche Post held some kind of Winter Games event in SL late 2007, and Toyota's Scion brand had an extensive marketing presence in SL, Sony somewhat less so.

Update 3, 1:30pm: Mark Burhop notes that Siemens is using SL as an engineering platform. The corporation is currently ranked 37 in the Global 500.

Comments

[Pierre-Olivier Carles]

Hi Wagner,

I think we can add the Credit Agricole Group to this list : first bank in Europe and (I guess) part of the global Fortune 100, they are still working hard in Second Life to prepare the "Bank of the Future"... and to

You could also mentioned Saint-Gobain, world leader of the glazing business (but may be not in Fortune 100) and Suez, one of the main global operator of the Water Management Business.

;-)

[Bevan Whitfield]

Hi Wagner,

Nokia has a very serious presence in SL and is part of the global Fortune 100. It is also listed at #1 in the Forbes Network and Other Communications ranking.

Air France/KLM, now in SL, is in the global Fortune 500 and are listed at #1 in the Airline Industry ranking.

Cheers, Bevan

[Doubledown Tandino]

What, Ben and Jerrys isn't a Fortune 100 company?

[Hamlet Au]

Thanks all, keep 'em coming!

[Mark Burhop]

Siemens is there.

http://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en_us/about_us/labs/secondlife/index.shtml

Or check out:

http://siemens.pmhclients.com/index.php/engineering-in-second-life/

[Hamlet Au]

Wow, they keep coming. Thanks Mark!

[Beyers Sellers]

I'd just like to point out that there are a LOT of companies, both in Fortune 100 and those on the edge of that list, who have private presences, either intended entirely for within-firm communications, or that just aren't ready for public announcement.

2009 should be a very interesting year.

[Doubledown Tandino]

How about Orange? Although USA has no clue who they are, apparently they're #1 cell phone service in europe?

By the way, Orange gets my hands down vote for the BEST BEST BEST BEST ever RL company to maintain a SL presence. Orange, since the day it opened has always been a spectacular treat.

[Nedd Zeplin]

Ya might want to include Sony in the guise of Sony-BMG Music, nice big sim in SL

[Doubledown Tandino]

BMI has been in SL.

and US government, I consider them a company.

[Doreen Garrigus]

I love this. I think it is worth noting that there are _dozens_ of government agencies with SL presences, too, as well as many, many universities. The companies that failed were the ones who built islands that were really nothing but billboards. The ones that succeeded did so by integrating SL with their daily operations and/or by creating events that were interesting on their own merits---with or without advertising. This technology is too useful to ignore, and more and more businesses, government agencies, and universities will see that as time goes on.

My daughter is a college freshman. I told her she was required to learn how to use SL now because I didn't want her to have to slog through the learning curve at the beginning of a class we were paying for or, worse yet, several years from now, while her boss was watching.

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

It's the silent wave. The other day I was told that a major radio station (commercial, not public) and four book publishers from my country have been in Second Life for some time; any of those would be a reference immediately known by any Portuguese, but there wasn't a single mention of it in the news (on average, one book is launched per week — and the event is not even on the events list, much less on the news — but they're always *full*). Some record labels, also from Portugal, allegedly have set up a presence in SL — sponsoring artists — and I can't even track them down to see if it's true! In a sense, those small, silent presences are slowly becoming uncountable and ubiquitous, and pop up everywhere and we're not even aware of them, because nobody writes about them...

I think this trend will continue. These "new generation" of virtual presences *avoid* the media splash, because of the 2006/7 "hype era". They just want to be here in SL and do what they have/want to do, and forget about the hype, the drama, and the bad publicity.

I also agree, 2009 will be quite interesting...

[Boliver Oddfellow]

you forgot GE, which has a 2 sim recruiting center featuring the ecomagination pavilion. They are located on virtual NBC 5 and 6

[Looking for Online Tech Support]

It will be interesting to see which companies stay and which companies go under in the next ten years.