Free Gaia Online Gold

By the middle of last year, it was attracting half a million unique visitors monthly; fast forward to last month, and that number is two million. It’s not a traditional MMO like World of Warcraft; it’s not a social game like There; it doesn’t originate from Europe like Habbo Hotel or from Asia like Cyworld. You haven’t heard of it partly because the San Jose company has kept a low profile.

Another reason you’re still likely in the dark: it’s primarily designed for teens. But with online worlds all sizes and styles poised for an explosion, you’ll almost certainly hear a lot more about it soon.

It’s called Gaia Online, and as a guy on a giant crane behind us tore down the giant Web 2.0 conference banner in Moscone West, I had a chance to sit down with CEO Craig Sherman— formerly COO with Myfamily.com, and an Entrepreneur-in-Residence with Benchmark Capital, a main funder of Gaia— for a furious round of questioning. How did Gaia grow so large so quickly so stealthily?

 “The world’s fastest growing online world hangout for teens.”

That’s the way Sherman and his team prefer to characterize Gaia, the brainchild of Studio XD, a comic art firm which gave the site its anime-influenced look. Gaia’s online world aspect (which launches in a separate Java-powered window) is a series of virtual towns where Gaian avatars can socialize (up to 100 in a single space), with apartments they can own, and treasures they can find. (No combat, however.) It’s just that 10% of total user activity takes place in the world itself.

Gaia’s Many Experience Channels

The world is just a conduit to the larger activity on Gaia, says Sherman: in addition, there are website arenas where users can upload and rate each other’s artwork and other content (7-10% total activity), or play multiplayer Flash mini-games with group chat (10-15% total activity.) The largest cohort of activity (wholly 30%) takes place in the Gaia forums, and here’s where the truly staggering numbers come in: Averaging a million posts a day and a billion posts so far, Gaia’s message boards (with topics running the gamut from pop culture to politics) is second only to Yahoo in popularity.

Gold for Activity

A unique innovation is the way the company distributes its virtual gold currency: instead of selling it for real money (as with There) or allowing its trade on the open market (as with Second Life), Gaians are automatically given gold for participation: You get gold for posting on the Forums, for riding events, for uploading content, for exploring the world. Subscribers are rewarded for engaging in Gaia, in other words— and the reward incents them to engage in Gaia even more.

Gold for Auction

With the gold, Gaia subscribers can buy items, clothing, and accessories for their avatars, some sold by the company, but most of it sold via Gaian-to-Gaian auction. (They estimate some 52,000 auctions are completed every day.)

What pays in Gaia, however, stays in Gaia: the company strongly discourages real money trading, and works with Ebay to curtail it. That’s not to say Gaian treasures haven’t been sold online. “One item sold for $6000,” says Sherman. “Wonderful to tell you, but bad for what we’re trying to accomplish.”

Gold— for Gaia Interactive, Inc.

Instead of monthly subscriptions, Gaia Online sells “rare items”— treasures, fantastically cool fashion accessories for player avatars, and so on— two offered a month for $2.50 each. Subscribers buy them via credit card, Pay Pay, cellphone—or cash on the barrel. (“We employ someone full time whose job is getting dollars and quarters” out of envelopes kids send them, Sherman notes.)

… but first, a world for our sponsors

The company’s other revenue source are ad campaigns created to run within the world of Gaia. Before launching these, Sherman says, they solicited subscriber feedback, to find out which potential advertisers they wanted to see in the world— and which they didn’t. (Cool fashion brands got the majority nod; big American auto companies, however, didn’t.)

Staffers work with advertisers to create, not passive billboards, but an extended immersive experience. Gaia’s campaign for New Line Cinema’s fantasy adventure The Last Mimzy, for example, challenged their users to accomplish a series of tasks in order to get their own special Gaian-only Mimzy (a super-intelligent bunny). Hundreds of thousands of these Mimzyies were given out—meaning some 10-20% of their total user base jumped through the hoops to win the advertiser’s prize. (By contrast, when Nissan began giving away virtual versions of their cars in Second Life, far less than 1% of Residents took them up on the offer.)

The Secret to Gaia’s Success

Craig Sherman has been thinking what the value-proposition of his site in the era of MySpace or Facebook. “In a world where teens are constantly branding and packaging themselves” on sites like those, he points out, “Gaia is where you get away from it all.”

Whether that remains the case when the competition reaches full roil remains to be seen, but for now, the Gaia seems destined to keep growing.

The Gaia Numbers: Demographics and Usage Patterns as of April 2007

300,000 log in daily, according to the company; average unique visit is two hours a day.

Average concurrency: 64,000 users. Maximum: 86,738.

85% of users are based in the US

10% are English-speaking but non-US (with 5% a nebulous Other)

Breakdown by gender: 55% Girls – 45% Boys

About 20% of subscribers put up their real life photo in their avatar profile.

Number of Gaia gold “millionaires”, as of last week: 1385

Ah, therein lies the rub. There are six general types of clothes/items on Gaia.The first is commons. These are the stuff sold in stores. Basically, if you have enough money, you can get them. Their prices stay the same, and Gaia never runs out of these items.

The second is rares and uncommons. These are clothes and items that you get during the treasure chest or the gift box random event. Random event, you ask? Yeah. At random times (note the term “random”), you will get a  beside your avvy. Yeah, it looks just like that. It’s accompanied by a flying treasure chest or a flying gift or a glowing pink link. You need to click on these things. If you click on the flying chest or gift, you will get it in your inventory. Then you can open them to get clothes or items that are not found in stores. If you click on a pink link, your gold will go up by 1000. You can buy and sell rares and uncommons in the Exchange and in the Marketplace.

The third is donation items. If you donate at least $2.50 to Gaia, you will get a donation letter in your inventory. It’s unsealed around the end of the month and contains an item that is not found anywhere else in Gaia. Very old donation items are very expensive. The most expensive item on Gaia is the angelic halo, which was the very first donation item. That means the only people who got the halo were those who donated when Gaia was born. And the admins, of course, because they created everything. And people who were lucky enough to get the halo or buy the halo from the first donators. It costs tens of millions of gold. Seriously. That’s a lot of posts and polls XD Donation items are also available through the Marketplace and the Exchange.

The fourth is special occasion items. There are special events in Gaia, such as Christmas caroling, balls, and Olympics. Unique items are released during these events. From experience, most of them are usually not as sought-after as the donation items. They are also available through the Exchange and the Marketplace.

Fifth is game items. Gaia has some mini-games that you could play. Currently, there is fishing, slot machines, and getting bugs/flowers/trash in Gaia Towns. When you have a certain number of particular items from these games, you can have them exchanged for things that you can equip to your avatar. Game items can also be purchased from the Marketplace.

Sixth is prizes. There are particular games that are competitive, in that you and a whole bunch of other Gaians will be jonesin’ for the same prizes. This is the case for fishing and the Art Arena. If you win first, second, or third place, you get a trophy (fishing) or a medal (Art Arena). Note that these prizes are more rare than the items you could acquire using the previous methods. As mentioned before, you have to compete against a lot of other users, and only a certain number of prizes are handed out at a time. People who have won these prizes may sell them through the Exchange or through the Marketplace.