A Sun pavilion was created with outdoor theatre, meeting spaces and kiosks and vidoes showing Sun technology at work.

IBM also hosted an event on Second Life while Intel created a MySpace page for Centrino.

IT vendors claim virtual worlds build better communities, not just revenue.

Intel spokesman Bill Kirkos, said: "Creating a more emotional aspect to our brand is really important to us, that's why we are embracing the social media world."

How emotional can we be about servers, chips and operating systems?