A driven, busy 50-year-old executive turned me into a werewolf. A renowned product designer poked one of my friends. I lost a movie trivia quiz to the former CEO of a global marketing holding company. Welcome to business side of Facebook - where a little play releases stress, where companies plug into their industry-wide forums, and where deepening client relationships and attracting talent happen simply by having fun.

Meanwhile, over on secondlife.com, leading consumer-focused and business-to-business companies are spending energy and money running virtual organizations. Their new existence is rooted in delight; notice the verbs in the process: they create an avatar, explore and have fun. Serious companies such as IBM, Bain, Coke and hundreds of others are leading the charge into this digital playground.

Even the austere New Yorker invites readers to play with its venerated one-panel cartoon format by submitting their own punch lines through an online form, while down the street at the Niketown Lab, consumers can design their own shoes, even add their own signature to it. The online feature of this lab alone generates three million unique visitors per month…