VIRTUAL WORLDS and SOCIAL NETWORKING

Customized Profiles, Customized AVATARS, and MOD-Able Virtual World.

clipped from mashable.com “unite a virtual world and social networking in a completely new way” This social network gives users customizable homepages, and it’s already being piloted in Finland and the Netherlands – you can see sample pages here and here. They’ll also open up the service to celebrities, artists (bands, perhaps, ala MySpace music?) and select brands. Other features include a choice of backgrounds and themes (ala MySpace layouts), a network of friends and the ability to send messages to other users. Of course, members aren’t represented by a photo – instead, their Habbo character acts as their profile image This dual approach is similar to IMVU, which has both profile pages and a virtual chatroom. Likewise, Gaia Online has a web-based forum combined with a virtual world In short, it looks like most of these virtual worlds will eventually feature some sort of profile page at a permanent URL. Suddenly the World of Warcraft social network doesn’t look so crazy