Last weeks session titled The Next Digital Experience at the World Economic Forum in Davos is recommended viewing. The panel was chaired by Michael Arrington from TechCrunch and made up of Hamid Akhavan from T-Mobile, Eric K. Clemons from Wharton, Chad Hurley from YouTube, Craig Mundie from Microsoft, Shantanu Narayen from Adobe and Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook. Discussions cover how mobility, social networks, privacy and platforms are co-evolving in a Meta Age. Runtime is just over one hour.

Google went public with Lively, one of its virtual world projects. The browser based offering joins Meez Nation and a number of other browser based virtual world offerings currently within the marketplace. IBM and Linden Lab announced the launch of their Open Grid Public Beta project. Interoperability within virtual worlds is something both companies have been working on in partnership for sometime.

Each of the above were discussed with analysts looking to understand how the third wave is taking shape. While public listed companies were mere observers of the second wave they are now positioning themselves to be active participants within the third wave. Making this transition from user centric to user driven is one of the great challenges many organisations face as we enter the Meta Age. Interesting times indeed.

Usage of the term meme within mainstream media has increased significantly since we first started tracking it via google alerts over the last 12 months. As with all new terms making their way into the lingua franca of business its interpretation and application varies widely.

Memeticist and author Susan Blackmore recently gave an interesting talk at TED titled Memes and Temes. She defined memes as that which is immitated or information which is copied from person to person.

The first half of Susans talk provides a useful introduction to the concept of memes while the second half provides a conversation starter on memes, genes and temes. Runtime is 20 minutes and recommended viewing in full.

On the non-profit side we have spoken with representatives from charities about how they might better harness the power of the Web. One of those is Paul Lynch and his committee who organise the annual GOAL charity ball in Paris. This year they are using a wiki to organise the event rather than email. Ronan and Paul have revamped www.goal-ball.org enabling people to pay for tickets online, specify meal choices and pick tables. A group has also been setup on Facebook (GOAL Ball Paris) for attendees to join in the conversation.

Each of the above projects are good illustrations of the transition now taking place in social computing. The beneficial use of second generation Web tools is now moving from early adopters to mainstream users.

Rivers Run Red CEO Justin Boddington recently remarked that 60% of the queries they have received of late related to internal communication projects. Organisations cannot be something on the outside they are not already on the inside as many early entrants to Second Life have learned. With two of the Metaverse Development Company founders who brought many of the early entrants into Second Life awakening to this fact that is a very good thing.

PA Consulting and The Sunday Times recently teamed up to host a conference titled Getting Real About Business in Second Life. Claus Nehmzow of PA Consulting moderated a panel with Randy Sisks of Cisco, Pascal Spelier of ABN Amro and Dominic Rushe of The Sunday Times. The event was recorded and is viewable in four parts. Runtime for each video is under 10 minutes.

Part one and two provide business presentations from each of the panel on their experiences in Second Life todate. Part three covers the following topics from the Q&A – virtual worlds v video conferencing, partnering through Second Life, communication methods and integrate channels. Part four covers the following topics from the Q&A – entry costs, focus groups, confidential meetings, recruitment and the future of virtual worlds.

Over the next five years most businesses will have a virtual world presence just as they have a website today. As the above example demonstrates some of the more forward looking organisations are already experimenting with early virtual world offerings. While only at the very beginning of the beginning of our transition to a Meta Age virtual worlds represent a unique facilitation role for organisations of all sizes and sectors. Interesting times indeed.

It was good to see The Gamer Disposition by John Seely Brown & Douglas Thomas, Making Alternate Reality the New Business Reality by Jane McGonigal, The Metaverse : TV of the future? by Miklos Sarvary, Giving Avatars Emotive control by Judith Donath and Happy Metadata trails by Jan Chipchase making this years list.

All are recommended reading and food for thought as we enter the Meta Age. For those interested in linking the above ideas together I recommend listening to this podcast. Adam Pasick interviewed Mitch Kapor at Davos last week and touched on many of the above themes.

Charlie Rose chatted with Ken Auletta about Google and emerging technology this week. Runtime is 38 minutes and recommended viewing. The conversation centers around Ken’s recent New Yorker piece titled The Search Party. During the interview Ken mentioned in passing Charlie’s interview with Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page back on July 26th 2001. Over Google’s first three years of operation it grew 20% month-on-month purely by word-of-mouth.

Six and a half years after bringing Eric Schmidt onboard as CEO Google are well on their way to becoming the first $100bn media company. Wireless is the business driver which will take them there. Key to enabling this is the arrival of handset devices which will deliver a remote control for life. Having been fortunate enough to use the N95 and iPhone over the last 6 months we are not there yet but we are getting there. Interesting times indeed.

BBC recently ran an excellent three-part series titled Visions of the Future. Futurist Dr Michio Kaku hosted the series and explores the cutting edge science of today, tomorrow, and beyond. Part one is titled The Intelligence Revolution and looks at what will happen when ubiquitous computing converges with the Internet.

In this century, we are going to make the historic transition from the ‘Age of Discovery’ to the ‘Age of Mastery’, a period in which we will move from being passive observers of nature to its active choreographers.

Ronan and I both share Michio’s worldview that humankind is at the beginning of the beginning of a major transition. Runtime of part one is 50 minutes. For those interested part two titled The Biotech Revolution and part three titled The Quantum Revolution are also recommended viewing.

The worlds largest annual trade show for consumer technology gets underway in Las Vegas today. This years CES keynotes will include Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates sharing his thoughts on natural user interface, Sony CEO Howard Stringer bringing updates on the high definition video format wars and Intel CEO Paul Otellini offering a glimpse of Third Life.

Reena Jana reports that Microsoft conservatively estimates its widened definition of the Serious Games market to be a $9 billion opportunity. The above video shows some early offerings of Virtual Earth + 3DVIA. This along with the remixing of MS Flight Simulator which debuted as Microsoft ESP (a platform for visualisation simulation) shows Microsofts commitment to the space.

While 2007 was very much a proof of concepts year, 2008 will see wider experimentation and adoption of social computing within enterprises worldwide. GM is getting the year off to a good start with the launch of GMnext which incorporates a weblog and wiki among its offering. Interesting times indeed.

The consulting unit of faberNovel has shared one of its social network research papers. The first part of the paper outlines some broad principles for understanding social networking websites, the second part of the paper provides case studies about online matchmaking websites Meetic and Match.com and the third part of the paper provides cases studies on business network websites Xing and LinkedIn.

Good to see faberNovel incorporate and build upon Fred Cavazza‘s excellent work on digital identity mapping. With Le Web 3 being held in Paris later this month it is timely and sure to provide a useful conversation starter at the event. A full copy of the research paper is available here for download.