Gifts are virtual but bill is real

Virtual gifts -- computer-generated items given and displayed online -- are quickly becoming must-haves with more people willing to pay cold, hard, real-life cash to buy them for friends and co-workers.

Virtual beer, anyone? A pair of virtual boots?

Sure, you can't drink it or wear them -- at least in the real world. But "it's like a badge of honor" for the recipient, said Dave Coffey, who tracks online trends for Sapient, a Florida-based marketing company.

Coffey said he's gotten into the act, buying a few $1 gifts on Facebook, a social networking website. He bought a pair of virtual shoes for his wife for her birthday, a can of "whoop-ass" for a friend who got a new job, and a virtual beer to pay a bet he lost to his boss.

They are nothing more than cutesy icons posted in a "gifts" section on a person's profile page, the smiley faces of the 21st century. And like that 1970s icon, they have mass appeal.

Facebook says that since these dollar items were introduced in February, users have bought more than 24 million of them. The items are sold in limited editions. Elsewhere online, such as on Second Life, Utherverse and Stardoll, people can give gift certificates so their friends' avatars, or online personalities, can shop at "malls" on the sites.

(To see virtual fashion, secondlife.com/community/fashion.php or www.stardoll.com/en/starplaza.php)

Part of the attraction, said Jeff Roberts, a New Yorker and one of about 11 million Second Life "residents," is the ease. "A few clicks and it's done."

Kel Kelly, a marketing executive in suburban Boston, said, "It's just a really cool way to stand out." She said the presents are hip -- things like icons of champagne bottles that clients can post on their pages.

Others, however, call it a waste of money. Said Michael Bugeja, the director of Iowa State University's journalism school, it's a way of "pouring millions down the virtual drain."