The digital alter-egos are especially attractive to young people who want to represent themselves a certain way online.SAN FRANCISCO—Get ready for avatars, the new digital alter-ego. They represent not only a new, $200 million (and rapidly growing) IT market, they represent people in a personalized manner—in e-mail, instant messaging, blogs, chat rooms and other internet services.
Avatars are highly customizable drawings or photos of people, animals, cartoon characters, inanimate objects of all kinds—basically anything that can be pictured—that online users employ as identification in communicating with their peers.
Avatars are can be created or acquired "as is"; they can be static or animated. They are primarily aimed at pre-teen and teenage users.
The avatar-as-personal-icon concept started in Korea about five years ago and is now beginning to catch on worldwide, said Tad Dagan, associate vice president at Comverse, Inc.
Dagan spoke at a seminar during the iHollywood Mobile Entertainment Summit at the Masonic Auditorium.
"These avatars are becoming big business because they are very important to people—especially young people, who are online so much of the time," Dagan said. "They want to represent themselves to their friends and people they meet online in a certain way. They want to be seen as cool and unique."
Dagan said there are few ways to show your individuality when you're communicating via SMS (instant messaging), chat rooms, e-mail and in blogs using text only.
"Teenagers want to be thought of as unique and creative, so these (customizable) avatars are attractive for them," Dagan said. "That's also why ring tones have become such big business. If you're the kid with the latest Madonna song on your phone, you're cool. If you have the standard Nokia tone, you're the class nerd."
Read the full story on pcmag.com: Avatars May Be the Next Big Online Thing
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