Charles River Ventures' Susan Wu (pictured at right) moderated a revealing panel on virtual worlds yesterday afternoon at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. It was the first public look at three emerging virtual world startups and provided context around the notion that this is an area poised for rapid growth.

Obssessed with safety and fun, this Canadian company hosts the world's most popular social network for six to ten-year olds. And it's really popular. Susan Wu said the company is doing four to five million uniques per month and "no other site online today is impacting the future of the Internet than Club Penguin." As far as I could tell, the company has not yet raised venture capital.

This virtual world has raised $20 million from Benchmark Capital, Redpoint Ventures and DAG Ventures. Led by former Benchmark EIR Craig Sherman, Gaia Online claims to be the fastest growing online property among teens. It hosts the second most active message board online behind Yahoo but ahead of AOL, attracts 2 million unique visitors per month that stay an average of 1 hour and generate 2 billion page views per month. It has tripled in size over the past year. Sherman said, "In a world where teens are constantly packaging and branding themselves on MySpace and at school, Gaia is the place to get away from it all and be yourself or who you want to be." (dressed as a troll).

Backed by CRV and Crescendo Ventures with an undisclosed amount of money, company founder Ralph Koster said nothing about his company but a lot about everything else. Before ridiculing one of the moderator's questions that I thought was a perfectly good question about how virtual worlds could best gain user traction, Koster ranted, "The game industry is old media, broadcast centric, IPO owning, clueless and oblivious... Their lunch has been eaten by all these people from the outside." Areae is melding MMOG and virtual worlds. Presumably, his business model doesn't rely on any business development deals with the game industry.

For more on the the Web 2.0 Expo, see:
Ross Mayfield
San Francisco Chronicle
Shannon Prickett's transcription of the panel

Tags: web2, web2expo, web+2.0+expo, susan+wu, gaia, gaia+online, areae, club+penguin, crv,vc, venture+capital