IN the past 24 hours 1.7m people have spent $1.6m (£790,000) buying land, building houses, shopping and conducting business in Second Life, a virtual world that is rapidly developing into a sizeable real economy .

Created by Linden Lab of San Francisco, Second Life now has more than 8m registered users, up from 1.5m at the start of the year. Its “residents”, as they call themselves, create a 3D character, called an “avatar”, and wander, or fly, through its rapidly expanding world spending “Linden dollars”, the world’s currency.

Big businesses including Dell, Cisco, IBM and Reuters all have a presence on Second Life but in the main the website’s commercial life is dominated by virtual small business owners, some of whom are making real money. In June, 132 residents earned more than $5,000 a month on the site, up from 97 in January. A further 1,340 earned $500-$4,999 a month, up from 837 in January.

PA Consulting has been using Second Life to promote its services and help clients develop ideas they can use online as well as in the real world. The consultancy recently designed a hi-tech bank branch for one client.

The Sunday Times and PA Consulting are hosting an online seminar “Getting real about business in Second Life” on July 24 at 2pm UK time. The seminar will be hosted by Claus Nehmzow, PA’s virtual worlds expert, and will feature participants from ABN Amro and Cisco as well as John Waples, the business editor of The Sunday Times and Dominic Rushe, the paper’s New York correspondent. Rushe’s magazine feature on Second Life is available online at www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_ and_style/article661299.ece

We can offer places in the Second Life event to 60 readers of The Sunday Times.

To apply, please send your Second Life avatar’s name, your real-world name, contact e-mail address, and company name if applicable, to info@paconsulting.com You will be contacted nearer the time with details of how to attend.

If you are new to Second Life, PA Consulting will be holding a familiarisation event on July 24, just before the main seminar event.

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