As if businesses didn’t have enough to worry about with employee blogs, tweets and Facebook updates damaging their reputation, industry analyst Gartner has identified a new threat – badly behaved avatars.

With avatars creeping into business usage, Gartner believes there is an increasing risk of employees embarrassing themselves (and their organisations) through inappropriate dress and actions. The spoilsports recommend putting codes of conduct in place to stop Mr Jones from accounts creating an avatar called SexyBomb 137, with cleavage and skimpy dress to match. It’ll certainly affect the traffic to avatar building sites such as Build Your Wild Self and The Simpsons.

But surely this worry provides an opportunity for web-savvy designers? We wait to see Vivienne Westwood create a corporate avatar look……………….