Just fly on over to campus: Virtual MIT

Time was that freshman orientation week for college was a total-immersion experience. Your first time "out of the nest," on your own, exploring your new world for the coming months and years. MIT is changing that:

Developing a cadre of close friends as a freshman can often mean the difference between a so-so college experience and a great one. With that in mind, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is turning to the virtual world, Second Life, to help freshmen choose dormitories with the ambiance and reputation that best meet their needs.

At the end of July, part of MIT's island in Second Life will feature a rough replication of the interior of campus residence halls: the artsy dorm, the jock house, the dorm for Unix geeks, and a slew of others.

Now not only does one have to shop for just the right clothes for college, but also has to shop for just the right clothes (and mods) for virtual orientation!

So I'm left with some questions: When you make your first impressions virtually, how might that affect relationships with your classmates in real life? Will people opt to make their avatars more realistic or more wild? What's next? (How about a Second Life sorority rush for a Second Life sorority? Beta Lambda?)

It's not just higher education and more tech-savvy shops going virtual: major corporations are getting into making their own virtual worlds.

Companies ranging from Walt Disney (DIS ) to Wells Fargo (WFC ) are seeking alternative virtual worlds with both greater security against hackers and control over such things as brand messaging and participants. After all, the Web-based parallel universe is a messy marketplace where you're as likely to see a bare-chested, rabbit-headed avatar trolling for adult-themed entertainment or vandalizing a digital store as a corporate suit leading a training session. And some companies want to target age groups younger or older than the average 30-year-old denizen of Second Life.

Even the earliest adopters of Second Life are turning elsewhere. In September, 2005, Wells Fargo (WFC ) was ahead of the corporate stampede into Second Life when it launched a 3D virtual environment, "Stagecoach Island," in Second Life to attract youthful, tech-savvy customers and teach them about banking. Now nearly 50 corporations use Second Life, with Royal Philips Electronics (PHG ), Coca-Cola, (KO ) and News Corp. (NWS ) among the latest. But Wells Fargo is gone. It pulled its Stagecoach Island out and opted to create its own world, a larger, stand-alone online universe that it can monitor more closely and customize.

Starwood Hotels & Resorts (HOT ) is getting ready to bail now, too. Last summer, Starwood made a splashy, widely publicized entrance into Second Life, hoping to draw on the wisdom of avatars to get customer feedback on possible real-world design features for its stylish new brand of hotels geared toward hip twenty- and thirtysomething business travelers on a budget. Although Starwood first heralded Second Life as an ongoing project, it will soon leave, too. Starwood discovered avatars don't need to sleep, and so a virtual hotel didn't make much sense in the long run. Unlike Adidas or General Motors (GM ), which sell digital versions of Reeboks and Pontiacs in the online world, Starwood didn't have goods to sell—and found itself unable to sustain avatars' interest.

Even newcomer Coke isn't banking solely on that particular patch of cyberspace as its main online platform. In May the company closed its "Virtual Thirst" contest, which asked the public to design a vending machine for Second Life. The winner gets 500,000 "Linden Dollars," the virtual world's currency. But Coke is also reaching out to potential vending-machine designers via a MySpace.com (NWS ) social-networking page, del.icio.us keyword tagging, a Flickr (YHOO ) photo page, and a YouTube (GOOG ) video clip. Coke's multichannel Web 2.0 onslaught shows the beverage giant is going anywhere on the Internet where the young can be found.

It's bringing about a whole new realm of law:

A Pensylvania federal court has held that Second Life's user agreement cannot be enforced insofar as it requires arbitration of claims alleging that Linden Research wrongfully confiscated a user's virtual property.

Under whose jurisdiction does a virtual world exist?

Just wondering.

Tech & Web Contributing editor Laura Scott blogs at rare pattern and pingVision.