We've been seeing how companies like IBM are embracing the virtual world as a useful part of modern business -- they've established guidelines for online behavior, for one thing, while scores of companies have already started consulting with agencies like Metaversatility and Millions of Us to create a professional virtual presence. A recent article in BusinessWeek examines this issue as part of a larger trend around technology evolving our workplaces (again)! From the article:

Even before these $80,000-and-up systems become standard office fare, other new technologies will reshape the workplace. The online virtual world Second Life, where people play using avatars (graphic representations of themselves), is starting to become a real workplace, at least for a few telesales agents at 1-800-Flowers.com Inc. (FLWS ) The online flower vendor is experimenting with a "virtual greenhouse" in Second Life, where a dozen or so workers log in and interact with Second Life residents. 1-800-Flowers Chief Executive Jim McCann plans to use it to get customers to suggest new products—far more direct feedback than focus groups or surveys, he says. "The line between our customers and our staff continues to blur."

It's an emerging dynamic variously dubbed mass collaboration, peer production, or crowdsourcing. Whatever the name, collective efforts are exploding online—from the volunteer-written reference site Wikipedia to Google's search engine, which mines the billions of links that Web site owners make to other sites to produce its results. They are producing incredible value, even though they aren't traditionally considered "work." Says Thomas W. Malone, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management and author of the 2004 book The Future of Work: "Google and Wikipedia are just scratching the surface of whole new kinds of economic organisms."

It's an interesting read that paints a picture of the role professional virtual worlds play in the larger tech evolution.