Virtual worlds are now a reality. Virtual worlds such as the growing Second Life and Entropia Universe, allow everyone to create a digital character representing themselves and interact with other computer-generated individuals, landscapes, and even virtually-run global businesses in real-time....

Virtual worlds like Second Life are becoming important tools for, among other activities, socialization, social networking, entertainment, collaboration, and business development. These environments offer information systems researchers a unique opportunity to study how these environments are...

Virtual worlds are now a reality, representing intriguing environments for researchers from multiple fields to pursue collaborative investigations. To provide a background, we first highlight the basic business and sociological phenomena occurring in virtual worlds. Real world institutions,...