Dutch bank ABN AMRO was one of the first financial institutions to truly engage with virtual worlds, with its activities in Second Life. However, it seems the bank is setting its sights elsewhere, starting to use Active Worlds for its internal comms, collaboration and e-learning projects.
The news comes from a MixedRealities blog post, based on the translation of an article in Dutch newspaper De Tijd. In it, ABN AMRO’s Daan Josephus Jitta says the bank has bought 250 licences for Active Worlds.
Although keen to stress that this isn’t about dumping Second Life, the latter’s lack of popularity in the Netherlands appears to have something to do with it, while the article alludes to a possible lack of help from Linden Lab on subjects like data encryption (although with this being a translation, I’m cautious about whether that’s exactly what Jitta was saying).
However, it appears that ABN AMRO will be scaling down its Second Life presence, from 25 islands to 6-8.
(via MixedRealities)
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