This is timely considering our recent
discussion about Second Life — Wells Fargo
has launched a private "Stagecoach Island" inside the virtual world of Second Life, and is aiming to teach young adults how to handle their finances. If this is anything like
the "free financial advice" I got from a session with a Primerica/Citigroup consultant a couple of years ago, it
surely involves pushing Wells Fargo-flavored financial services as the solution to handling those finances.
This certainly positions Second Life as a marketing platform, and if Wells Fargo sees some success with their
experiment, we could expect to see a proliferation of business entering virtual space beyond the microeconomies that
are already going on there. There's going to be a lot of legal wrangling going on in the process of figuring out the
rules of how real world business should be allowed to operate in virtual environments.
