IBM and Linden Lab (the company behind Second Life) will announce a new partnership at the Virtual Worlds Conference in San Jose today that will focus on virtual world interoperability.

The initial focus of the joint effort will be the ability to allow users to use a single virtual persona (or Avatar) across multiple virtual platforms, with seamless interworld transactions to be considered later.

IBM has been highly active in the virtual worlds space, both as a user of platforms such as Second Life as a conference and business communications tool, and as a creator with its Active Worlds chat platform. IBM’s Italian employee’s went on strike within Second Life in late September.