But the San Francisco company is far from backing away. The latest bet: that users will pay real money for things that only exist “in world,” as Second Life fans call it.

Linden Tuesday night announced that it has purchased two small companies–Xstreet SL and OnRez–that act a bit like Amazon.com (AMZN) in providing one-stop shopping for virtual goods from other merchants. One component of their strategy has been to make it easier to buy goods through the Web, not requiring users to enter Second Life to acquire the items they may use there. Financial terms are not being disclosed.

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“Businesses have learned some hard lessons,” said Gartner analyst Steve Prentice. “They need to realize that virtual worlds mark the transition from Web pages to Web places and a successful virtual presence starts with people, not physics. Realistic graphics and physical behavior count for little unless the presence is valued by and engaging to a large audience.”

A bit of a truism, that. A collaborative virtual world isn’t much of a world at all without, you know, collaborators. That said, Gartner is quite bullish on the potential of virtual worlds in the years ahead. By 2012, it estimates that 70% of organizations will have established their own private virtual worlds. “Companies need to start thinking what their virtual-world strategy is, incorporate it into their Internet strategy, and merge their two-dimensional Web pages to support a 3-D Web place,” Prentice said. “Virtual world presence is not to replace the 2-D world but to supplement it.”

Make the right impression. Your avatar’s appearance should be reasonable and fitting for the activities in which you engage (especially if conducting IBM business). If you are engaged in a virtual world primarily for IBM business purposes, we strongly encourage you to identify your avatar as affiliated with IBM. If you are engaged primarily for personal uses, consider using a different avatar.

- IBM Virtual World Guidelines

A pioneer, that IBM (IBM). A trend-setter. It was the first company to publish a code of conduct for workers enamoured of virtual environments. And soon it will be the first to create a virtual world of its own in Second Life. This morning, Big Blue announced a partnership with Second Life producer Linden Lab to create a secure, enterprise-class version of the popular Internet-based virtual world. By running a Second Life installation on servers inside IBM’s firewall, the two will homestead a sort of corporate gated community for security-conscious companies–one in which companies can conduct business without being set upon by a horde of animated flying phalli. A savvy way to drive adoption of virtual worlds in enterprise. And if all goes as planned, a host of other companies will be running Second Life inside their own firewalls by year’s end. “There has been so much hype and puffery around virtual worlds,” Ginsu Yoon, Linden’s vice president of business affairs told The Wall Street Journal. “It’s really important to Linden Lab to be able to demonstrate that it is able and willing to meet the requirements of companies like IBM.”