Building a Starbucks franchise in a FarmVille virtual city for firms like Zynga and Facebook is just an inkling.

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Matthias Mikshe, founder and head of Stardoll, said many firms were developing virtual worlds for children because young people were far more familiar with them than their parents.

BBC: Boys playing with handheld game console,

Some firms design games and virtual environments specifically for health-care applications.

ECONOMIST: Monitor

The U.S. Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCen, last month issued a three-page memo that effectively lays the groundwork to regulate firms that issue or exchange virtual currencies.

WSJ: Bitcoin Investors Hang On for the Ride

To help level the playing field a bit more, NYSE Technologies new Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offering lets financial firms of any size place Virtual Machines directly on the same infrastructure as the exchange.

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There, Office Tiger employs 675 young Indians providing a virtual back office to some 20 American and European firms: banks, auditors, consultants and lawyers.

ECONOMIST: India aims to become the back office for the world's banks

Young men are a big audience, but the South Korean firms are also attracting women, who seem especially fond of virtual avatars.

ECONOMIST: Computer games

Kahlon aims to make Damsels the virtual destination for a community of power women--and a welcome barrel in which large firms will fish for female talent.

FORBES: Magazine Article