Green.com, the new virtual world from IAC rumored from this past spring, recently soft-launched to open beta (one tipster said it came last night). I'll try to follow up with IAC shortly, but in my first look around, it seems like a neat combination of an eco-themed Internet portal (you get a green.com email, a feature called "Gno pages" allows for a user-created encyclopedia, and a curated search in partnership with Ask.com Kids brings together select content), social network (there's plenty of asynchronous interaction through a message board), and a Flash-based virtual world. The aesthetic of the world reminds me of the Slim Jim effort from this summer: its a 2D, sidescrolling environment based on photographic images. While you can't put your own face on your avatar, you can build it out of a mish mash of other people's faces and bodies (or, in my case, cats, skeletons, and karate uniforms).
Th
e site is targeted at kids and tweens, and a parents' area "will give you tools to see who your child's friends are, monitor chat and email, view search history, and set permission levels." I didn't get any information about that when I registered with my own birth date, but when I went back in and registered as a ten-year-old, I did receive a parental notification email with a link to the About Us page, but no controls.
The dashboard controls are live, though, so that may only be a function of the world's early beta status, though. In a nice touch, since I used the same email address for both accounts, my real self has total control over the chat (always filtered), email, and noteboard content of my pretend 10-year-old. The one thing I don't like, and this is personal taste, is the prompt to download a Green.com toolbar (what looks like a themed version of Ask.com's toolbar) for the browser "in order for your child to use all of the great features on Green.com" like email, search, and the home page, all of which are available through the site itself. I'm just not a fan of those installed toolbars, but at least they're being pitched to the parents instead of kids.
From a content perspective, Green.com already features partnerships with Defenders of Wildlife, Greenhouse Scholars, The Nature Conservancy, PlayPumps International, Project Explorer, Right To Play USA, and Save the Children. Walking through the world (with themed areas around the desert, space, and 
nature), you can find prompts to watch videos and play games from content providers.
The "Recycled Theater" showcases old videos with an emphasis, I think, on public safety announcements and informational clips, though there are also various cartoons, ranging from Superman to Betty Boop, so I can't quite pin a theme on the feature. Regardless, I can pretty much always watch Bert the Turtle's lessons on how to duck and cover. My avatar shows up on the side, but it doesn't like there's a way to build interaction around the videos, at least for now.
From the general map, there's a store listed as "coming soon," and you start with 100 Greenbacks that, assumedly, can be used to buy more items to decorate your room or customize your avatar with. The beta is competely free, and the site says that elements of Green.com will always remain free, but eventually a subscription option will become available, "providing exclusive access to additional worlds, features and activities."
The company is led by President Eddie Dombrower, who previously designed, programmed, and produced games for Atari, Mattel, Electronic Arts, Activision and Children's Television Workshop and served as a Vice President of The Jim Henson Company. In fact, the team has a strong Muppets pedigree, including Production Designer Edward Eyth's consulting work and Head Writer Kirk Thatcher's direction of "It's A Very Muppet Christmas Movie" and "The Muppets Wizard of Oz."
Green has been an increasingly strong theme for virtual worlds aimed at kids--and, to be fair, in product marketing for all categories and demographics. Green.com seems like it's aiming a little older than some other eco-worlds and emphasizing social networking and user-created text content more than virtual world-style interactions and gameplay, so it's definitely carving out an interesting niche. Between that and, honestly, any connection to the Muppets, I'm definitely interested even in this early stage.
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