Mannea LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of online media and ad company Church & Crawford, announced the development of a new, soon-to-be-deployed technology that will allow users to navigate virtual worlds using existing web URLs.

Mannea feels that currently, users in virtual worlds face challenges finding preferred locations unless they appear in a built-in search function, or unless the user is able to create a "landmark" with in-world location info.

The company's new technology, so far unlaunched, claims to allow companies or individuals to tie their web-based URL to a virtual world location (providing Second Life as an example in their press release), so that users can find locations by simply typing in a web address.

An obvious payoff of this sort of technology is that companies that have considerable investments in their online marketing will not have to incur further expense to make users aware of new virtual locations, supporting the security of existing brands.

[Note: Linden Labs already provides the SLurl service to the same effect-- it's unclear how Mannea's plans are different, or if they plan to tackle other virtual worlds outside Second Life. ]