In Second Life, selling avatars that look like celebrities and apparel that mimics couture designs is big business—a mainstay of the world’s $450 million dollar virtual economy. And if a brand (or a celeb) found out that someone was using their name to make money (like the avatar that looks…

Late stage investment firm Stratim Capital has picked up an undisclosed stake in Second Life parent company Linden Lab—buying out one of the virtual world tech firm’s existing investors. Linden Lab has raised about $19 million in funding since its inception in 1999; investors include Benchmark Capital, Catamount Ventures, Globespan…

More proof that the virtual goods business continues to do well: Linden Lab is forecasting that users will conduct about $450 million dollars worth of virtual transactions in Second Life this year, up 28 percent from 2008. The company also surveyed more than 2,600 of its virtual business owners, including…

Linden Lab CFO John Zdanowski has resigned, headed off to “find the next business adventure,” according to the company blog. Known as “Zee Linden” in-world (his avatar is pictured here), Zdanowski said it was time to move on given that Linden had successfully grown from a cool tech startup, to…

A major part of Second Life’s appeal is that people can make their avatars into anything they want: vampires, steampunks, fashion models and, of course, strippers and escorts. Sex sells in Second Life, just like it does in the real world; though there aren’t any hard stats, adult and sex-related…

Second Life is still a vibrant virtual world—with over 12.2 million registered users and more than 54,000 online the last time I logged in—but you wouldn’t know it from the media coverage (or lack thereof) lately. It wasn’t always this way, as MediaShift’s Mark Glaser recounts, in a post covering…

Linden Lab, the parent company of Second Life, has appointed a big name CEO: Mark Kingdon, till now the CEO of Omnicom digital agency Organic, is stepping down to come on as the CEO of Linden. Kingdon will succeed founder Philip Rosedale, the founder who gave up his CEO role…

So the other shoe has dropped on Second Life: the once-hyped and then much-maligned virtual world company is losing its creator, founder and CEO Philip Rosedale. He will remain involved with the company full time as chairman of the board, he said in a blog posting. The company is looking…

As reasons for start-up layoffs go, it’s almost near mantra status: We’ve grown so much in recent months that it’s time to stop and trim. The Electric Sheep Company is the latest to pull out that explanation as a reason for firing 22 employees, nearly a third of its staff,…