Contact Consortium (CCON) is exploring the possibilities of organizing large-scale events in Inhabited Virtual Worlds (IVW)-Cyberspace. CCON held two such events, called Avatars98 (AV98) and Avatars99 (AV99), completely in Cyberspace. These events consisted each time of a conference and trade show. This paper starts with a quick look at the origins of IVWs. The focus is then on the manifold types of social activities that are already possible in IVW and its rapid expansion. One new social phenomenon is the trade show, which was a part of AV98 and AV99. The organization of large-scale commercial events in IVW-Cyberspace is a sign that IVWs are increasingly emancipating themselves from their origins in the realms of pastime and chatting. We applaud this development because social technologies from all social realms should be incorporated in IVWs in order to make them more real ‘worlds’ in the philosophical (cosmological) sense.