By Staff Writer – Boonsri Dickinson (@boonspoon)

I still haven’t bought a virtual good. In all honesty, I’d much rather spend my money on real stuff.

A virtual good is not real. It’s a non-physical object that you purchase in online communities. For instance, Facebook, Zynga’s FarmVille lets you build your own virtual farm. The more attentive you are, the better your farm will do. It’s an urban escape to rural life. And you can participate in it, digitally. Another pig purchase is a click away.

I’ve never played it. But there’s one friend on Facebook who must be addicted to FarmVille. The only thing I read on his Facebook wall are FarmVille updates. I think he needs an intervention!

“FARMVILLE ADDICT found some extra bags of fertilizer in their dairy farm in FarmVille!

FARMVILLE ADDICT is offering 5 extra bags of fertilizer to their friends who visit their farm!”

I recently talked to a friend in New York (who was born and raised in Kansas) about how silly the updates seemed. He thought it was interesting that all his New York friends were obsessed with feeding their chickens and worried about having enough fertilizer for their farm. He’s a little biased. After all, he fled the rural life for the concrete jungle.

Clearly, they are living out some fantasy of another lifestyle online and they become addicted to things they have control over. They are getting in touch with their agricultural side. And FarmVille must be fun to play or else it wouldn’t be attracting 72 million monthly users.

But it looks like we’ve only gotten a taste of social gaming in 2009. Experts think the exchange of virtual goods will hit main street this year. In 2010, U.S. virtual goods will ring in $1.6 billion, according to a report by Inside Virtual Goods. The big players are Zynga, Playdom, and Playfish.

Slide’s Max Levchin is focusing on selling virtual goods. Levchin anticipated the damage from the recession. In April 2008, he shifted away from advertising and went direct-to-consumers, by selling them virtual goods.

Are virtual goods going to replace the ad network? MediaPost reported companies like Godiva Chocolates and Gillette placed branded virtual goods into social networks. Branded virtual goods are much more engaging than a text advertisement.

In general, e-commerce is growing through the exchange of virtual goods. After Linden Lab’s Second Life bought two online markets Xstreet SL and OnRez last year, virtual goods have been a hot commodity.

The online world is vast and unknown. Go explore. I’m sticking to the free Internet for now.

Image: flickr / anshu si

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