• The New York Times, Friday, December 7, 2007 12 PM

Coke is introducing its online island within a larger virtual world site called there.com where visitors create an avatar to shop for Coca-Cola products. At CC Metro--the name of the island--visitors can shop and dance at the Coca-Cola diner, visit a movie theater to watch short films and soar around on a hoverboard like the one in the 1989 movie, "Back to the Future Part II."

The company that operates there.com, Makena Technologies, uses software to censor user postings for foul language and employs a team of people to filter out content that might infringe on copyrights or fall outside a PG-13 rating. Makena says that these practices make its site desirable to advertisers.

A number of consumer brands are designing virtual worlds that may resemble Coke's island, says Reuben Steiger, CEO of Millions of Us, an ad agency that focuses on virtual worlds. "The ones that are going to prosper are going to be the ones that don't feel like advertising," he says. No one really wants to go hang out in an ad."

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