Virtual Worlds

I'm taking a class at USF called Human-Computer Interaction. Our teacher has us using Google Lively. Maybe I'm just old fashioned but I like to meet people who I can see. At least I can actually see them as people. I went into one room and met a "cat." (Ok, I didn't actually meet the cat because I haven't learned to move myself around a room yet but the cat was there at my feet.) How many other people like to spend time in these places? How many people am I seeing who are actually far away from the state of Florida?