• CNET News.com, Monday, October 15, 2007 11:15 AM

Virtual worlds have been billed as a kind of social networking 2.0, but so far, they've yet to really catch on-with adults, that is. Kids, on the other hand, love the colorful 3D environments at sites like Neopets, Stardoll.com, Gaia Online and Club Penguin, where they create and care for avatars of their own making.

These cutesy virtual worlds have rapidly become big business, as evidenced by Disney's $350 million takeover of Club Penguin. Sensing an opportunity, new players has emerged in the virtual market; many come from established brands like Mattel's Barbie. But these sites are mostly skewed towards kids, because the market for kiddy virtual worlds is several times bigger than that of adults. Sites like Webkinz and Club Penguin have millions of active members, compared to Second Life and There.com, which attract between tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of users per month.

Market research groups claim there's room for these kid-skewing virtual worlds to grow, too. Emarketer expects that 53% of child Web users will belong to a virtual world within four years--which would more than double the current

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