Gaia Online is a fast-growing free virtual world hangout geared toward teens. Originally founded by a small group of comic books fans, the site is a brainchild of the comic art firm Studio XD with characters in this virtual world accordingly resembling anime figures.

Comprised of different virtual towns, Gaia Online offers users the standard virtual world features of customizable avatars and virtual homes as a medium through which online users can socialize. Besides hanging out, exploring, and chatting, users can also choose to play from a number of multiplayer Flash-based mini-games. Like many other virtual worlds on the web, Gaia Online also has its own virtual currency called Gaia Gold, which can be used to buy virtual items on the site. This virtual world currency is unique in that users freely receive Gold just by participating on the site.

Yet what really distinguishes Gaia Online from other virtual world hangouts is that the site’s primary component of user activity is not actually derived from its virtual world aspect, but rather from the use of Gaia forums. As a forums-based site, Gaia Online has a multitude of forum message boards covering a wide variety of topics. User posts to these diverse forums actually comprise over 30% of the site’s activity. In terms of message board popularity, Gaia Online’s forums rank second only to that of Yahoo.

Since its founding in 2003 the site continues to grow, now with more than 300,000 members, over 2 million unique monthly page views, and over a billion total forum posts.