Not sure what to get that special someone on your holiday shopping list who has everything? How about a virtual T-shirt featuring the logo of his or her favorite virtual band—or a snazzy new pair of avatar swimming trunks? Many people of a certain age may consider such gifts a waste of their hard-earned and very real money. But not so a growing number of tweens and teens as well as 20- and even some 30-somethings, who spent around $2.1 billion in 2006 on virtual goods and services, according to researchers at Finland's Helsinki Institute for Information Technology (HIIT).
Indeed, spending on virtual items for social reasons is a more sustainable model than the purchase of computer-generated real estate or avatar apparel in cyber worlds such as Linden Research's Second Life. South Korea is the leading market for virtual consumption and one of the most trendy places to spend money on virtual items is social networking site Cyworld. Unlike Facebook or MySpace, a Cyworld participant creates an avatar called a "minime," whose hair, clothing, facial expression, mood and other attributes can be changed as often as the owner wants. Much of the U.S. and European spending that can be tracked—Facebook does not provide sales figures for its virtual swag—is on massively multiplayer games, a primary example being World of Warcraft.
More information:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=virtual-gifting-holidays
More information:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=virtual-gifting-holidays