Internet community Gaia Online said Wednesday it was partnering with Millions of Us, a San Francisco-based startup that creates branded content for virtual worlds such as Second Life.
San Jose, California-based Gaia is an online world popular with teens where users create and customize digital characters, play games, and socialize. The partnership is designed to attract new advertisers and give Millions of Us a new audience for their virtual branding campaigns.
Millions of Us has created virtual Pontiac cars, a drag strip and monster truck races aimed at promoting the car company’s brand within Second Life. Its customers also include Microsoft, Warner Brothers, and Intel.
The content creator is now hoping to move from being a developer for three dimensional worlds like Second Life to an agency with experience in multiple types of social media. “A lot of the things we’ve learned over the last year about what makes people successful in Second Life are broadly applicable to these other environments,” said founder Reuben Steiger.
Founded in 2003, Gaia attracts more than 2 million unique users each month. Between 50,000 and 80,000 people are on the site at any given time, and Gaia’s forums are some of the busiest on the Internet, with more than 1 billion user posts.
As their numbers grow, Gaia users are getting access to a greater amount of branded content from media companies and other partners. Last month the company unveiled a virtual movie theatre where users can watch trailers, gab, and engage in mischief (see Go Ahead, Talk During the Movie).
A trailer for the new Nancy Drew movie, for instance, debuted on the site on May 21 and has since been viewed more than 1 million times, company representatives said.
Gaia yesterday unveiled a partnership with Toyota’s Scion brand that lets users buy and customize virtual versions of Scion cars. Gaia representatives said members of the community downloaded more than 91,000 Scion xB cars in the first 24 hours the autos were available. “It’s so much richer than what you can do on a normal site,” said Gaia CEO Craig Sherman. “If Scion had partnered with MySpace, they would have put pictures of cars… on the site.”
Mr. Steiger said his relationship with Gaia could yield results as early as August, and pointed to the fact that the two companies already have one client in common—Scion. Millions of Us did not work with Gaia on that campaign, but it seems likely that Mr. Steiger will see if his other clients are interested in getting involved.