Five companies create United Nations Citizens virtual world

Cisco Systems, Equifax and three smaller companies have partnered to create United Nations Citizens, a virtual world that has a real economy and is geared toward enabling a virtual shopping mall.

The virtual world lets consumers create their own 3-D avatars to shop with or hold down jobs inside the virtual environment. Numerous partners have invested millions of dollars into the technologies that provide electronic commerce companies with the ability to conduct transactions in the world. Besides Cisco and Equifax, partners include Heads & Tails TV and Faithful Friends TV & Montage Systems.

United Nations Citizens enables online commissioned sales assistants and paid greeters to become faithful friends helping consumers with questions and purchases. Those assistants can sell the products and services of more than 330 name brand retailers. The world is a place where people can hold down well-paying jobs, says Anthony Loiacono, CEO at Heads & Tails TV. The companies say the graphics will be stellar, using the core animation engine behind the film Avatar. But I can’t tell. This could be sterile or cool.

The world has features such as high-definition television screens inside the world where consumers can watch movies or branded advertising. There are opportunities inside the world to promote local events such as high school sports, festivals, fashion shows, and more. On paper, it sounds a lot like Sony’s Home virtual world on the PlayStation 3 or Linden Labs’ Second Life. About 330 retail brands are participating, including Apple iTunes, Microsoft Store, Walmart, and Sky Mall.

If the in-world avatars do a good job selling merchandise from those brands, then the people operating the avatars can be paid. The 3-D world will offer lots of ways for the products and services to be merchandised in a way that mirrors the real world. But this world is all digital, so it will be easy to collect analytics data.