I have written about Unisfair before see, Virtual Environments for Business: Unisfair. It was my first post on this blog and covered how this company creates virtual events and environments for businesses. They provide another example of a company taking a consumer web concept and making significant changes so the outcome meets business needs. Now they have upgraded their virtual events with more useful features.

First there is professional networking. Event attendees can upload, modify and publish their professional profiles within a virtual environment. The Unisfair Professional Networking tool then searches the virtual environment and delivers recommendations on others who have similar business interests based on certain criteria.

They have also added e-commerce. Virtual event organizers can generate additional revenue by charging admission to the event, to specific locations or for specific content/presentations within the event, such as a keynote address.

Unisfair also offers multi-language events. Attendees can choose to experience a virtual environment in 15 different languages including English (US), Spanish (Latin and European), French (Canadian and European), German, Italian, Russian, Portuguese, Swedish, Turkish, Czech, Polish, Chinese and Korean.

Unisfair can also integrate with, and accommodate add-ins from, third-party solutions including sales force automation tools like Salesforce.com, webcasting and virtual hosts. Additionally, it delivers several new designs for virtual environments, virtual booths and even virtual booth staff. Unisfair has now powered more than 400 virtual business environments for clients like Cisco Systems, IBM, and Quest Software; and for media clients including Nielsen, CMP, Rogers Publishing and Penton Media. You can see their virtual worlds at their web site.