"The age of avatars"

Originally written in 2009: the big ideas. For the full article, click here.

The age of avatars

Who do you want to be, digitally speaking?

Over the past year, avatars – online characters or personas standing in for real people – entered the public consciousness and grabbed real-world headlines all around the globe.

Avatars will enjoy greater mainstream acceptance in 2009, and although convergence is not likely to happen overnight, expect certain sites to begin thinking about partnering up to allow character crossovers the way social networks are trying to make profiles more portable.

In Japan, a woman is facing charges related to “murdering” her husband's avatar in an online video game. A British couple is divorcing after a woman caught her partner “cheating” by using his Second Life character to knock boots with the avatar of another woman.

Second Life – an online world where users create characters to interact with other avatars – is just the beginning. Dozens of sites also allow users to create virtual representations of themselves.

Whether it's Second Life, World of Warcraft or Sony's PlayStation Home video game console service, businesses are starting to realize the value of emerging digital worlds and are looking for ways to use them to make real-world cash.

Some organizations, such as Canada Post, have set up virtual outlets where users can move around inside a digital representation of a retail outlet. Others have set up shop inside existing online worlds.

Currently, it's not uncommon for a person to have several avatars for various sites, similar to how some people have profiles on more than one social network.

Until now, what happened in a virtual world stayed inside that virtual world, but recently a German company called Weblin created a system that allows Second Life users to transplant a copy of their character into other websites and transport it around the Web.

Already, Facebook and MySpace are working with partner sites to allow their members to use a single profile across a breadth of websites. It's only a matter of time before experts are talking about the next step and allowing users to use a single avatar across the Web to stroll through Second Life and then traipse through a virtual storefront on another site.

There will be software compatibility and copyright issues to work out, but it's a conversation that's bound to come up.

- Matt Hartley