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Residents and businesses have been piling into Second Life during 2006, but a marketing firm believes that we'll see the virtual world walk back through the mirror next year.

Second Life, the massive multiplayer online world, allows users to log on through the Internet and create 3-D computer-generated identities. Justin Bovington, who controls the in-world character Fizik Baskerville, has made his firm one of the premier public relations and marketing companies to work inside the world that San Francisco-based Linden Lab has created.

Bovington, the chief executive of London-based Rivers Run Red, has been using Second Life as a 3-D virtual meeting place for his partners and clients since December 2003, when there were only 400,000 residents. Second Life's population recently topped 1.65 million.

Rivers Run Red is based in the real world and has found previous success with seminars and trade fairs, DVDs and CD-ROMs, mailers and catalogs, as well as mobile phone and Internet avenues.

However, Bovington has found innovative marketing uses in the virtual realm for a client list that includes Disney (DIS Quote), Adidas, Vodafone (VOD Quote), the BBC and even 80's pop rockers Duran Duran.

"Media planning is becoming harder," he says. "It's about finding the alternative to television advertising."

While he and his company have been pouring content into the virtual world since 2003, the flow can also be reversed.