Forget the gaffes and mistakes that came out of Sony last year, this time they struck gold.
At the GDC, Sony announced the concept of Home: an online 3D environment which is occupied by a player’s avatar. Within this environment, several services are offered: meeting friends and chat with them in your (virtual home), sample product demonstrations, play games together ( I believe Bowling was mentioned), and in all probablility other online services.
As icing on the cake, in-world dynamic advertising is shown on large billboards.
In addition, every citizen has his or her own private apartment, with sound and vision equipment. This means that a player can share music, movies, and pictures with everyone who the player invites into the house.
This is the first real usage of some larger trend that was bound to happen; the actual migration of regular webservices to a 3D environment, and allows for a more natural experience of interaction. Furthermore, the creation of a real online home, where people can invite other to socialize and to share real-world ecperiences (showing off pictures and such) is currently unique in mainstream media.
