Over at GigaOM they note that at the first Virtual worlds Conference last March in New York there were only nine worlds featured. At the conference in San Jose thirty worlds will be in attendance. They make a good point that many of the virtual worlds are not well known and will most likely remain in obscurity.

There are some virtual worlds aimed at children that have gained traction including Zwinktopia, Gaia Online, Habbo Hotel, Club Penguin and Whyville. So even while a handful of virtual worlds succeed what will become of those that are left behind?

Wagner James Au writes, "If the last boom’s trajectory of hubris and greed is followed, most of these are destined for obscurity- or acquisition by their wiser superiors. While kid-oriented MMOs have the most active users and thus seem like the safest bet they’re also fragile ecosystems that can fall apart with too much outside interference and commercialism."

So will established virtual worlds and start-ups be able to make money and have wide appeal at the same time? CEO of iEntry and publisher of WebProNews Rich Ord said," It seems that as they try to monetize they also try to become mainstream, which of course is the kiss of death for all things trendy."

The virtual world adds its hat to a ring that includes already-successful SecondLife, and to up-and-coming Gaia, which my 12-year-old stepson obsessed over for exactly five minutes before obsessing over an Xbox game for exactly five more minutes (his presence on Gaia was replaced by 10-year-old cousin).

As I indicated earlier, these worlds skew young, which should be marketing Utopia, given the early-adopting pattern of teens.

"Rather than build the virtual world first, we created Zwinky avatars for users to express themselves creatively and visually wherever they go online," said John Park, Executive Vice President and General Manager. "We then listened to our users to create the Zwinky Virtual World they wanted."

Inside that virtual world, users can choose between 29 separate hangouts and have access to dozens of games and activities. They can shop for the latest virtual fashions, accessories, or furniture for their dorm rooms using Zbucks they’ve earned through participation.

Yes, pretend money for pretend things that may one day be worth real money you can buy real things with. The world has taken a strange, strange turn and I’m already so old it’s pathetic.

"We are one of the fastest growing groups within IAC because of our ability to share highly personalized, relevant content such as Zwinkies, Webfetti, and Smiley Central with a ravenous, passionate audience," said Scott Garell, CEO IAC Consumer Applications and Portals.

And don’t forget how valuable all that information is to marketers, in case you had trouble reading between the lines in that press release quote. The reapers have already begun.

Writing for Giga Om, Wagner James Au calls the sudden advance of online kids’ worlds a "gold rush" and wonders why it’s taken the industry so long to notice.

At present, they’re actually the only reliably expanding niche in online worlds. After all, World of Warcraft remains the uncontested traditional fantasy MMORPG, dominating all its competitors (except in Asia), while Second Life remains unchallenged in the user-created 3D world sub-genre.

A letter from Google Earth chief technologist Michael Jones has led to the shutdown of Gaia, a program that was a reverse-engineering result of an effort to make Earth data available to platforms like BSD variants that Google does not support with its applications.

ZDNet Google blogger Garett Rogers pointed out the Google action, and noted it only took about a week after the project got publicized to draw a response from Google.

Jones cited the dire threat posed to 100 million Google Earth users in his email, which criticized the multiple areas where Gaia’s developer has broken the software’s terms of service and committed other violations:

Although tone is generally difficult to determine from email, Jones appears to be trying to come across as a good guy, rather than unleashing a corporate lawyer upon the developer. Since the developer appears to be Russian, this tack may be less of a gentle approach, and more reflective of how it could be difficult to legally affect a Russian programmer who is beyond the gentle caresses of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Jones cited licensing costs as an issue. Google pays for the imagery used in its Earth software, and Jones made an analogy to music labels doing business with Apple because the iPod’s Fairplay DRM scheme doesn’t allow for sharing songs with other hardware.

In its efforts to make the world’s information universally available, Google falls flat here. Crying about licensing costs when you’re toting a $149 billion market cap rings hollow, if your corporate mission doesn’t include making that information available to platforms beyond Windows when it comes to virtually every one of your applications.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Michael Jones, the Chief Technologist of Google Earth, maps, and local search, sent 3-D Earth viewer Gaia a cease and desist letter on November 25th requesting that the site no longer change the engineering behind Google Earth.

Gaia was an opensource 3D Earth viewer which made, according to the site, “an attempt to reverse engineer famous Google Earth and implement its functionality in open, portable, customizable and extendable way.”

According to Google Earth’s homepage, the site, “puts a planet’s worth of imagery and other geographic information right on your desktop.”

While customizing and making Google Earth portable for each individual user seems like a valid idea, reversing the engineering of Google Earth is a direct violation of the site’s terms of service, which the original letter posted on Gaia’s site states.

“We appreciate that you like our software and enjoy the many millions of dollars and years of labor that the licensed data represents. Unfortunately, your curiosity about the protected server mechanisms ignores the Google Earth Terms of Service, the software license agreement that you accepted when installing Google Earth, the built-in encryption mechanisms within the client/server protocol, the economic rights of a worldwide network of providers who license this data to Google, and most of all, the sense of fair-play that is the basic relationship between Google and its users worldwide.” – Michael Jones

The cease and desist letter was not sent to Gaia via a lawyer, and no legal action has been taken as Gaia immediately complied with Google’s request.

The Gaia project’s creators also made the statement on the website that, “the project may continue it’s life as open source 3D earth viewer with GPS support, but without support Google Earth imagery. We are sorry.”

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Autmn Davis is a staff writer for WebProNews covering ebusiness and technology.