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Mega-rockers KORN are coming to MTV’s virtual world this Wednesday, February 28, according to a new Virtual KORN domain on the MTV site. The band hits Virtual Laguna Beach on Wednesday to celebrate the release of their Unplugged album. One interesting thing to note: MTV is now referring to VLB and its adjunct areas like the Virtual Hills as “Virtual MTV” when the mood strikes them. It looks like this has been part of the plan all along, as I wrote in Wired magazine a while back, to slowly add areas until the project constituted a big virtual world that wasn’t necessarily tied to any one media property but which funneled an audience in through various portals. It sounds like a sensible strategy. And more evidence that media and entertainment companies are fast growing into the VW space. Unfortunatley, a few of the links on the Virtual KORN site don’t work. The one thing MTV could be better on here is a clearer path into their world. A number of people have commented on 3pointD that they have trouble singing up. Hopefully KORN fans will be able to figure it out.

If you missed last Friday’s metaverse meetup (which I’m still trying to find time to blog about at length), or even if you were there, you might be interested to check out a couple of Flickr sets that have been posted from the event. Dig a few select shots from John Swords, as well as many more from Eric Gruber. Plus, of course, this one above, of me blathering to the assembled about some recent thoughts on the metaverse. Cool crowd.

The always-awesome Ordinal Malaprop is developing an interface that will let Twitter members post and receive updates from within the virtual world of Second Life. Go, Ordinal! It sounds like there’s already a working version, though it’s in an early stage of development. I want one. I’d love to be able to Twitter my wanderings around Second Life. I like Koz Farina’s BlogHUD system, but I don’t use it because (a) I want to reach people outside Second Life, which I can’t do using BlogHUD from the chat line, and (b) cross-posting to 3pointD from BlogHUD involves composing an unwieldy notecard, which I don’t see the need for. A Twitter interface would combine the ease of posting short Twitters from the chat line, and the range of broadcast that Twitter already features. Totally ace.

Second Life Tree is a new directory of Second Life URLs that allow you to teleport directly from a Web page into the virtual world of Second Life. [Via VTOR.] It’s already got around 300 links in it, which means it should be of some value, and that value should only grow as people suggest their own links at the site. So start suggesting.

If you’re in the New York City area tomorrow, Tuesday, February 27, and want to participate in or just attend a discussion of male fashions in both the real world and the virtual world of Second Life, drop by the A.I.R. Gallery at 511 West 25th Street, Suite 301, in Manhattan, at 5:30pm Eastern time (2:30pm SL Time) for an event being put on by Daria Dorosh, a long-time professor at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology — and also a long-time explorer in virtual worlds. In fact, the organizers could use some help, so if you’re going to be in the area and you have some facility with Second Life, Skype and stuff like that, see below. (more…)

Reuters has the news that the Electric Sheep Company (sponsors of this blog) will be getting a $7 million round of investment from CBS and Gladwyne Partners (the latter having invested in a previous round). Sheep CEO Sibley Verbeck tells the news agency, “Electric Sheep plans to use the financing to create software to make virtual worlds ready for mainstream consumption.” Nice going, guys. In fact, I was mentioning something like this idea at Friday’s metaverse meetup. Virtual worlds to this point have been the province of people coming out of the gamedev community, for the most part. I really see them as more of a media convergence phenomenon. Which means that media companies, which have been serving “entertainment experiences” to huge audiences for decades — and have massive bankrolls to show for it — are going to be huge players in the space, before long. Or even sooner.