Gaia Online

Gaia Online is a social networking website that allows users to create highly personalized anime-style avatars, play games, engage in battles and spend gold.

Gaia Online started out as a web 2.0 community in 2003. After building a significant user base of over 2.5 million teenagers by 2007, the service created a video partnership with Sony Pictures, bringing free and premium movies to the popular site. By the fourth quarter of 2008 the site's active membership had risen to over 7 million users each month. Partnering with AOL this time, Gaia Online released it's own branded internet messaging service, Gaia Instant Messenger (GIM). Within weeks over 2 million messages were being sent on the system each day. Finally in December of 2008 the site debuted it's online multi-player game.BusinessWeek: Gaia Interactive, Inc. Profile Within months of the debut many new websites sprang up to offer support, tips and tricks for the new online gaming portion of the community.

Since the site is geared towards the teenage game player, some have been concerned with privacy on the site. While the site does strive to allow players to maintain anonymity, there are quite a few moderators overseeing the forums and other interactions on the site. Any player can report suspicious activity to a moderator who will, in turn, investigate. Anyone found not complying with the site's terms of service can be banned by a moderator.Official Site: Gaia FAQs

Gaia Online allows companies to integrate their own branded experience into the platform. The Gaia economy is based mostly on sales of virtual items and microtransactions within the site. Advertisers can sell branded in-game objects to the community.Virtual World News: How Gaia Online Made Users Love Ads With Branded Virtual Goods

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