Dublin-based Thinkhouse PR will open the doors of its new virtual agency next month and is in the process of recruiting staff to manage launches, press conferences and parties online.

Founder Jane McDaid believes Thinkhouse is the first Irish company to launch a virtual version of itself on Secondlife and will offer PR services to more than a million Secondlife "residents".

The virtual world, created by San Francisco company Linden, offers users the opportunity to live out an alternative version of themselves online. Its members create avatars, cartoonlike characters that will represent them in Secondlife. The avatars can converse with other Secondlife residents, buy and sell goods and services and build extensions to the Secondlife world online.

Secondlife users spend over $400,000 a day.

The phenomenon has become so pervasive that news agency Reuters has even set up a Secondlife bureau staffed by reporter Adam Pasick, whose avatar, Adam Reuters, provides daily bulletins to other Secondlifers.

Thinkhouse is hoping to capitalise on the growing popularity of the virtual world.

McDaid said its new virtual agency will "host events, product launches and arrange publicity stunts for our clients".

All this will take place at Thinkhouse's "island" just off the Dublin coast. Secondlife, it seems, mirrors real life in Dublin in one crucial respect.

"We were thinking of renting an office on Second Life's ' Dublin' Grafton Street, but the property prices were too high, " McDaid said.