Presence standards for buddy lists (seeing who's online, where, doing what, and how they could be contacted) have pretty obvious applications in online gaming. The video gaming industry has long been a serious early adopter for graphics, sound, processor and now network technology with the explosion of online games. In fact, sites like XBox Live already let you create buddy lists and see who's online, playing what game, and how good they are. They just don't yet connect with other presence applications -- you have to go to XBox Live to see what your buddies are playing. I think that will change, and these kinds of sites will "push" that presence information into your main IM/presence client, so that you might be tempted to get the service or go online when you otherwise would not have. Classic viral marketing.

For that matter, how about porn, another high-tech early adopter industry? Surely hard-core online porn fans want to know when one of their favourite "D-Cup Blondes" members "comes" online!