There was talk this weekend about the growth of the virtual world Gaia, which has now reached 2 million unique monthly visitors, in contrast to 500,000 it attracted in the middle of 2006.
While the game is built to attract teens, it's different in that it has none of the battle aspects that the majority of online worlds usually incorporate, which separates it from most the competition.
One person commenting on the world said, "i just tried it. considering it’s about as lame as myspace (on every level), and absolutely not innovative (just like myspace), it will likely get massively financed, and sold a major media conglomerate for a billion dollars."
What I like about the statement is that is shows the company has differentiated itself from other online virtual worlds. To me that gives them a much better chance at long-term survival than simply another game based upon combat.
To differentiate means by inference that you must alienate others. The whole idea of targeting a certain audience is to exclude those that don't fit into the demographic or interests of those participating; another way of saying niche marketing.
These types of worlds also seem to hold people on the site much longer. One strength it has is the majority of activity on the site is within the Gaia forums. They average a million posts daily and a billion posts have been put up so far. It is said that the message boards are only behind Yahoo (YHOO) in popularity.
The company asserts that 300,000 users log in daily, spending two hours a day there on average. By gender, 55 percent of users are females and 45 percent male; not surprising in a non-combat virtual world.
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