by Marco Bardazzi

When Veronica Brown began making dresses with Photoshop and selling them on Second Life, she thought it would be just a pastime to fill the days between one delivery and another as a truck driver, her job in Indianapolis. But soon the 45-year-old found that her dresses appealed to the Europeans (above all the French), who are invading every nook and cranny of the virtual world, and she found herself receiving a shower of Linden Dollars, the game’s special currency that can be converted into real money. Now Brown has parked her truck for good and spends all her time managing one of the biggest garment stores on Second Life. By the end of this year, she told the local newspaper, the Indianapolis Star, she counts on earning at least $150,000. If Italians and Europeans adore Second Life mostly for the “alternative” social life it offers, or for purely sex-based adventures, the more pragmatic Americans have realized it is just another place to do business. Major companies like IBM and lucrative brands like NBA have already arrived and are seeking to conquer the online market, smelling the chance for quick real-world gains. Though invented and managed by Linden Lab based in San Francisco, to date Second Life has captured the imagination of Europeans above all. But it is also growing in the USA, particularly among the not-so-young or people with problems of mobility (a scourge in a country with soaring rates of obesity and diabetes). They find a new social life that real life increasingly denies them, particularly among people living outside the big cities. But Second Life’s biggest potential in America seems to lie in business.