Gaia Online: Second Life for the Graphically Challenged

Posted May 8th, 2007 by Andre

Don’t have a 512Mb video card and 2gigs of RAM? Longing for old school RPGs where the characters were 2D sprites? Compulsive MySpace/Facebook checker? Do you like anything Anime style?

Gaia Online is for you.

Gaia Online is a cross between an old school RPG and a social networking site. You can build a member page, ala MySpace and Facebook, communicate with friends, and meet new people, but at the same time it offers things that other social networks don’t: continuous gameplay.

That’s right, you can do quests, buy, sell, or trade items, build up your avatar with the newest and most awesome items, armor, clothes, and weapons. You can interact with other people in a 2D world, you can fish, gamble, play slots, earn money and a multitude of other prizes to gear up your avatar.

Here’s what they have to say:

“Founded in 2003 by a few comic book fans in a garage, Gaia Online has become the fastest-growing hangout on the web. Millions of teens come to Gaia every month to play games, make friends, and participate in the world’s most active online community.”

Source

Gaia has millions of members and boasts that it has “nearly two million unique visitors… each month” and that “three hundred thousand members log in to Gaia every day, and those members spend an average of two hours on the site daily.”

Two hours, that’s a ton of time when you think about it in context of daily web surfing. How long do you usually spend on Facebook or MySpace once you have been using it for a few months? You check your friend requests, group requests, answer some messages and maybe a wall post or two. Total time? For me, that’s about 15 to 20 minutes a day, every other day, then I’m gone.

What does this graph say? Well, that Gaia Online’s usage by its members per day is growing at 3 times the rate of MySpace’s usage and 300 times that of Facebook.

So what’s the appeal? Well, there is just that much more to do in Gaia Online.

From the site’s about page:

• Online Hangout: Millions of teens spend hours a day on Gaia, exploring, chatting and just hanging out. Whether they’re posting on our forums, participating in special events, or playing our multiplayer mini-games, there’s always something fun to do.
• Endless Customization: Gaia revolves around creative customization. Every member can create their own virtual character and dress it up with over five thousand items: clothes, accessories, pets, masks and just about anything else imaginable.
• Thriving Community: Gaia Online boasts one of the most active forum communities in the world with over one billion posts to date. Members can chat in our online games, post messages on our forums, or send each other private messages.
• Gaia Gold Marketplace: Gaia Online is free to join, and members earn free Gaia Gold for everything they do on the site- posting, playing games, or just hanging out. Members can buy thousands of items in our virtual stores, or they can set up their own shops. Our virtual auction house lets members buy, sell and trade their items– over 50,000 auctions are completed every day!
• Fun and Games: Members can interact, have fun, and earn Gaia Gold with our quick and casual online games. They can also go head-to-head in our Avatar Arena to see who can make the coolest virtual outfit, or test their talents in the Art Arena, where thousands of members vote on the best original artwork.

With a thriving economy, endless items and engaging games, there’s always a reason to stay an extra 10 minutes on Gaia.

Here’s my avatar:

He likes to rock the Scythe, but he has a softer side, shown by his love for his “mimzy,” one of the collector items that were introduced to Gaia Online to promote “The Last Mimzy” movie.

A social network exploding in size is nothing new, but now that they are aging, keeping those same users interested and logging on will be the make-it or break-it for many fledgling networks.

Link to my original post

Entry Filed under: Online Communities, Social Networking, Digital Content, Entertainment, Media, Web 2.0