JT WORLD V—Wise Metaverse has announced its acquisition of SL Reports for L$2.6 million. Xavier Mohr, publisher, sold 65% of his remaining private shares of SL Reports to Arbitrage Wise, CEO of the virtual companies Wise Metaverse and JT Financial.

After seeing Mohr post shares on the AVIX exchange, Wise offered to purchase SLR. "The information on SLR is different from most of the other news sites," Wise said. "SLR was a central place where I could come to get RL news that could affect my business."

SL Reports was created as a personal project for Mohr. When he first started in the virtual world of Second Life, Mohr was more involved in the land business. Mohr found that he was not very good at it and tracked real-life news stories that could affect SL activities such as land buying instead. What started with a few friends reading it turned into a site with 7000 hits a week and over 15000 group members. "We even have members of other news sites that come to us for story leads because we are all about information," Mohr said. "We encourage that because we are not necessarily about Pulitzer Prize-winning stories--we are about the latest information about SL updated around the clock for users to read and use as they wish to."

"SL Reports really outgrew me as a person," Mohr said. "I started with a good vision that proved itself successful and now it is time for a larger organization with more resources to bring that vision to its full potential." Mohr will continue to oversee the content for the next 60-90 days as they search for a replacement publisher. "I believe that Second Life attracts the most talented, most resourceful people in the world--all onto one communications platform and I believe that this sets the perfect framework for successful, ethical business to explode all over the grid," Mohr said.

Wise said he was looking to diversify his business and not focus exclusively on the financial sector, "We wanted to move into the area of advertising and the price of SLR for the traffic it receives, as well as the group members, was considered a bargain to me," Wise said. Wise is in the process of gradually developing Wise Metaverse, which will be the parent company encompassing SL Reports, JT Financial, and findalancer.com, which pairs scripters and programmers with buyers and will allow JT Financial users to use their accounts on the site. He envisions Wise Metaverse as becoming one of the largest diversified resident companies in SL and also hopes to extend the financial sector of Wise Metaverse into real estate as well as a new stock exchange.

"I think SL might soon replace some of the things we do on a Web browser," Wise said. "Instead of looking at images, you are now there. So there are exponential growth opportunities for businesses if they do it right. We will be offering them a wide range of services." He contends that none of his customers have lost money off his virtual bank, and plans to offer his customers a free Ad/Texture/Store management system. "Acquiring SLR will help increase WM's value and create some profits which will go towards paying JT Financial's interest," Wise said.