• by Tameka Kee , September 11, 2008

Weblin, a browser-based social network/virtual world hybrid, is eyeing the U.S. market. The German-based company has already partnered with brands like Adidas and 20th Century Fox for European campaigns, and set up a Boston office in mid-spring. The potential expansion comes in the midst of another milestone: The site has attracted one million registered users.

Users download the platform and create an avatar or "weblin" that resides at the bottom of their browser screen. They can customize their weblin's appearance and chat with other users while surfing the Web naturally--checking emails, watching online video or playing casual games--without having to be logged in to an actual world.

"It's not as intensive in terms of the amount of space it requires on your hard disk," said Marc Theermann, Weblin's general manager, North America. "And it's not cutting into the surfing habits of other sites, so the entire Web becomes the weblin's playground." Currently, the most popular areas for weblins to gather have been on social media sites like Facebook, hi5, Orkut and YouTube, and the average time spent with the application live is over 30 hours per month.

Advertisers can launch campaigns in Weblin with branded avatars and merchandise, include the application for download on their site, or even develop a customized, white-label version of the program. Adidas, for example, created branded weblins that spread through the system, stretching, jogging and chatting about the particular sneaker they were wearing.

"So people on Facebook and YouTube saw these joggers and interacted with them because it was in line with the regular Weblin experience," Theermann said. He said that click-through rates (CTRs) on the scripted avatars, which sent users through to a customized landing page, topped 3%.

Fox launched a more involved campaign for the European premiere of "Horton Hears a Who!" creating a custom microsite that introduced the film's characters, and featured games and other activities, as well as a Weblin application download. Once kids loaded the app, they could search the microsite for a special treasure chest and win prizes. "The whole idea was to have users interact more with the site, and to create ambassadors that would roam the Web," Theermann said. "Other users would be on Disney.com or YouTube and see a 'Horton' character walk by. Then they'd follow it and click back to the microsite."

Theermann said that on average, weblins received about seven clicks back to their birthplace each month, whether to the Weblin home page or another branded site. "So if 100,000 users went to a company's site like Coke, for example, and created a weblin, then Coke would end up with 700,000 clicks back to that site every month."

Theermann said that the Adidas and Fox promos were executed on a per-campaign basis, most likely coming from the companies' viral marketing budgets, but he expected that CPM-based buys would be available in the coming months. The application is available in nine languages, including English, Spanish, German and Japanese, with a translator tool in the works.