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Let's Get Virtual

At one time or another, we all thought about what it would be like to be someone else. This vicarious fantasizing is based on the absolute certainty that Tony Romo's life is more interesting than yours.

This daydream of winning an NFL game with an 80-yard pass with 22-seconds left to play or dating Hollywood starlets who may or may not know how to spell N-F-L is perfectly understandable. However, this whole fantasy thing has gotten a lot more organized.

We're talking virtual worlds where we can experience the thrill of victory and the agony of rejection without leaving the safe confines of our computer terminal. And it's moved way past the Dungeons and Dragon crowd when "Second Life" has tens of millions of consumers traveling on "islands" paid for by Coca-Cola.

So, which demographic group would you guess is the fastest growing bunch living in this fantasy world of avatars and no-guilt urls?

Yep. It's those wacky kids again.

By 2011, an estimated 53% of U.S. children and teen internet users will visit virtual worlds according to "eMarketer." This is according to Debra Aho Williamson, a senior analyst with the organization. This is up from the 24% of teens and children that dropped into the virtual world in 2007. This report further forecasted that 87.1% of U.S. teens will go online at least once monthly. I would have guessed that number would have been about 99%.

Needless to say, where there are this many teens and younger kids (this includes the dorky account executive in the cubicle next to you), there are marketing people working until all hours, trying to figure out how to sell them something.

As Steve Martin first exclaimed: "Oh, it's a profit deal!" And in this great, supply-and-demand, free market country, there's nothing wrong with that. Up to a point.

The granddaddy of all children's marketing companies; The Walt Disney Company is all over this virtual world. It purchased Club Penguin a virtual world for kids recently for $350 million. It also owns the virtual world of Toontown Online and Virtual Magic Kingdom and has plans to create virtual sites based on "Pirates of the Caribbean" and one based on the "Disney Fairies." If you're a proud stockholder of this very successful company, rest assured they are not investing this kind of cash because they have a few hundred web designers sitting around needed something to do.

Some other well known and successful kid's marketing and entertainment companies have also made the trek through the internet

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