Valley of the Virtual Dolls

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And most important for the business-minded, the sites create a space for building a brand and advertising a product. Most offer some sort of virtual currency, whether it's Trollz "Trollars" or Gaia "Gold," to buy virtual goods, often distributed as a reward or incentive for participation. Some of them also sell virtual items for real money. According to the blog Tech Crunch, Stardoll sells between 60,000 to 180,000 items a day. In addition to virtual goods, many of these sites want their users to buy real-world products. Mattel hopes to sell Barbie-inspired handheld music players to interact with the Barbie Girls site. Gaia Online sells all manner of physical garb.

For established brands like Barbie, Trollz, and Disney, it's all about getting girls to convince their parents to go from virtual fun and games to real-world purchases. For the startup companies without strong brands or established products, the financial model is more about sponsorships and brand integration. WeeWorld, a site that lets you create cute avatars that can act out emotions using instant-messaging commands, partnered with AOL Instant Messenger to set up a sponsorship with Skittles where WeeMees sport Skittles bikinis, ride Skittles skateboards, or wear Skittles T-shirts against an animated Skittles background. New Line Cinema recently launched a promotion on Gaia Online for its film The Last Mimzy, inviting Gaians on a quest to view the movie trailer and then retrieve a "Mimzy plushie" to accompany their avatars.

Creating Communities

While this arena is still very new, a few leaders have emerged, and their numbers are nothing to sneeze at. According to Tech Crunch, Stardoll gets 5.5 million unique visitors a month and is adding 20,000 members a day. Gaia Online says it gets 2 million unique visitors a month, while GirlSense reports more than 1 million. The challenge, of course, is getting girls to come back and spend more time on these sites.

That's why most of these sites offer community in the form of chat and forums, as well as online games. Gaia Online views dressing up Gaians as "just the start," says CEO Craig Sherman. "You use [avatars] to participate in a community of millions with literally dozens of different activities on the site—from watching movies to inviting friends to your house to voting on user-submitted art to game playing to message boards and more."

Just as our grandmothers spent hours creating the perfect dresses for their paper dolls, today's tween and teen girls are flocking to sites where they can personalize and accessorize their avatars. Marian Merritt, director of consumer experience at Symantec (SYMC), was excited to find her daughter dressing her avatar. "I was quite surprised to see my 12-year-old daughter playing with these," Merritt says. "My mother loved paper dolls and for years tried to interest her, so to suddenly see my daughter using interactive paper dolls was kind of a nice thrill."

Goodstein is the publisher of Ypulse.com, a Web site specializing in marketing to young people, and is the author of Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens Are Really Doing Online. She covers teens and technology in an occasional column at http://www.businessweek.com/technology/.