Fortune Magazine's David Kirkpatrick, in an article for CNN Money, announces that real estate brokerage firm Coldwell Banker has entered SL, but unlike many other RL companies is doing something a little different than merely being a presence. Coldwell is selling and renting its own tracts of land in SL, in the sims Ranchero, Crowfoot, Elboya, Gorbash and Scurfield.

The company will have agents on hand to help answer questions and attend to sales. I think it's great that these employees, some of whom went to school for quite a while to learn their trade, are now having to embrace this new paradigm of having to create and drive their avatars as a part of their daily job. Imagine the conversation at home after a long day at the office: "Hi honey, man am I tired ... the office was totally laggy today and we got griefed again. Damn those grey goo attacks! Why didn't they warn us of this in Real Estate 101?"

David Kirkpatrick, Senior Editor of Fortune magazine, has written a thorough article on SL and its potential as a viable medium for communications. The most refreshing aspect of the article is that he drives home the point that SL is not a game, and that its success depends primarily on its acceptance as the next Big Thing: the 3D Internet.

It does, however, seem to be somewhat of a circular argument: to gain acceptance, respected and powerful RL companies must make use of SL in ways other than a mere playground, yet without knowing how exactly to do this, major companies are unlikely to take the plunge.