The online experience is changing from a world where users pull static text off of webpages to a world were the experience is much more immersive with pictures, videos and three dimensional animations and much more interactive with Web 2.0 functionality, instant messaging and real time data. As these changes take place, information providers need to rethink their online strategies and how they use various tools.

At the center of any information strategy is a good content management system. Drupal is a widely popular open source content management system that facilitates the organization and presentation of information. It allows users of the site to easily add content and has been expanded to include better functionality for images and video. It is this ability to easily be expanded that makes it interesting as more immersive synchronous environments become more popular.

One such environment is Second Life. Second Life has been getting more and more attention as companies explore how they can use to achieve corporate goals. With Second Life, you use a Second Life client, instead of a web browser to access the Second Life servers. These servers provide a three-dimensional real time environment where uses interact with objects that have been created as well as with one another. Second Life has it’s own currency which facilitates micropayments there and there is an active currency exchange to change the Second Life currency, called Linden Dollars, into U.S. dollars.

Last January, we wrote about virtual foreign exchange trading and exploring market data in Second Life. Since then, there has been a lot of interesting activity in Second Life trading markets, which I’ve described on my personal blog.

As the number of people using Second Life and the amount of transactions expand, the need to extract data from Second Life as well as to monitor activity grows. Elsewhere I’ve written technical information about collecting information from Second Life into a Drupal content management system.

At the same time, there are articles appearing about Streambase and Simutronics working together to do statistical analysis of cheating their game server.

Streambase is a major player in the complex event processing field and it will be interesting to ways that complex event processing interacts with content management systems and immersive synchronous worlds with vibrant microcurrencies.
(Cross-posted at Toomre Capital Markets)