Avatars: Net Users Put Best Face Forward, Web Chatters Upgrade Their Identities

[mandy]

Web Chatters Upgrade Their Identities for Virtual Life

Web-based interactions are evolving to look less like word-based messaging and more like facsimiles of physical existence. Tens of millions of Internet users have online doppelgangers they design to act as their proxy online -- communicating, shopping and socializing on their behalf and expressing themselves through humanoid gestures, voices and facial expressions.

People meet and develop real relationships through their avatars, speaking to one another through instant-messaging systems...

...users say that avatars help build greater closeness and trust online and that the avatars hew closely to the users' actual personalities.

full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...01787.html

[mandy]

A related article:

Great moments, or at least defining ones, in the history of the digital aliases known as avatars.

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/6165.asp