At one time or another, everyone has thought about what it would be like to be someone else. This vicarious fantasizing is based on the absolute certainty that NFL player Tony Romo's life is probably more interesting than yours.
Daydreaming about winning an NFL game on an 80-yard pass with 22-seconds remaining to play or dating Hollywood starlets is perfectly understandable. However, this whole fantasy thing has gotten a lot more organized.
There are now virtual worlds where one can experience the thrill of victory and the agony of rejection without ever leaving the safe confines of a computer terminal. And it's progressed beyond the "Dungeons and Dragons" 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? Of course, it's those early-adapting kids.
By 2011, an estimated 53% of all children and teen internet users in the United States will visit virtual worlds according to "eMarketer." This is an increase from the 24% of teens and children who dropped into the virtual world in 2007. This report also noted that 87.1% of U.S. teens will go online at least once monthly.
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 in the movie "The Jerk": "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 heavily invested this virtual world. It purchased "Club Penguin," a virtual world for kids 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 who need something to do.
Some other well known and successful kid's marketing and entertainment companies have also made the trek through the internet ether. Huge kid's entertainment companies, Viacom and Warner Brothers have jumped in with both avatar feet.
Viacom has several of TV-themed properties like "Virtual Laguna Beach," "Virtual Pimp My Ride," and others.
An article on this virtual world for kids phenomenon written by Laurie Sullivan of "Media Post" mentioned a few other well-traveled virtual world sites for kids. These include BarbieGirls.com, Nicktropolis, Stardoll and the big kahuna Webkinz. These sites have traffic numbers that will make consumer product companies that target kids salivate. Barbie Girls had more than 1.1 million unique U.S. visitors in 2007 and Nickropolis had 2.2 million unique visitors.
There are also some interesting virtual worlds that encourage kids to learn some healthy habits. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has a site that has avatars become Ill and they were forced find a local CDC center to get virtually inoculated. In the process, these sick little avatars learned why they got sick and how to live a healthier life.
Hopefully, these sick avatars had some virtual health insurance. Otherwise, they might be taking a second virtual mortgage on their virtual home to pay the virtual hospital bill. Have you seen the rates for virtual office visits these days?!?