Second Life Gift Registry: Bringing Retail Web Applications into the Metaverse

The combination of realistic virtual environments and product information offers a compelling new medium for consumers to shop for products. Specifically, by combining the experience of exploring a virtual house with retail information on items in that house, a consumer can virtually populate a house with desired items. This is particularly appealing for people, such as a couple getting married, who are looking to furnish an entire house with newly-purchased items. The system proposed in this paper provides this combination of realistic, 3D visualization and detailed product information. It uses second life to provide the realistic user interface, and a REST-style Web-based application to create connections between this platform and publicly-available retailer APIs. In cases where a retailer API is unavailable, HTML wrapping may be used to obtain equivalent information. The economic viability of the concept is examined through a business case study.