blog.msurveys.com

You can barely move for news and blog posts reporting that Reuters have opened an office in Second Life (see http://secondlife.reuters.com). I just went to visit their island in-world, and there's one thing I particularly love: you can pick up a HUD (heads-up display) that shows RSS headlines from various Reuters sources. So far so good (and all done before), but the kicker is that beside each headline, there's a "chat" icon, which - if clicked - offers to teleport you to a chat room in the Reuters building, where you can discuss news with others.
At the moment there only seems to be one chat room, and clicking on any subject takes you to the same place, but I imagine with sufficient interest there's scope to extend this functionality so clicking on a chat icon next to a headline you're interested in takes you to a chat room with people wanting to discuss that same subject.

Think focus groups and qual research - you can provide respondents with a "live" list of topics, and they click on the one they want to go and talk about, and get teleported into a room with other people discussing the subject.. pie in the sky at the moment maybe, but for how long?