Developing a virtual world is even more complicated than most Web- and other graphical presentations. Here are some tips to make yours successful:  

1. Define your objective. Marketing or consumer-facing applications often demand a service, such as Second Life or There. Large enterprises should consider the security and control of behind-the-firewall deployments or, at least, a hosted service closed to unauthorized users.

2. Evaluate virtual worlds' ability to integrate with the rest of your environment. Whatever virtual-world environment you choose, it should provide APIs so that your organization has the ability to perform tasks such as auditing instant messaging and VOIP (voice over IP) messages for compliance, allow in-world users to see the presence of nonworld users and vice versa, and tie in to the corporate calendaring and scheduling applications.