Gaia Online a Webware Winner

There’s always been a great deal of crossover between social networking and virtual worlds. The two seem to be moving even closer together with the news that Gaia Online has won a CNet Webware award in the social category.

Gaia is browser-based “virtual space hangout geared towards young people”. Users create avatars and interact in an anime style virtual world. There are also a large number of in-world games to play and other interesting features such as “evolving” items available to buy.

By most definitions Gaia Online would count as a virtual world, so it’s perhaps surprising to see it in the Webware social category alongside Facebook, Twitter and Wordpress. However as virtual and augmented technologies improve we’re likely to see much more of this sort of crossover.