Most Popular Websites For Kids

Continuing
our coverage of the mainstream web, in this post we look at some of the
most popular websites for kids. We've gathered information from a recent report (pdf) from Nielsen Online, via Marketingvox, which studied the online habits of Britons under the age of 23. We also polled friends of RWW via Twitter.

The Nielsen report concluded that entertainment sites have the greatest affinity with under 12s, games sites for 12-17 year-olds, and student and video sites
for 18-22 year-olds. We're all familiar by now with the latter 'young
adult' demographic, who are big users of social networks and video
sites like YouTube. But let's look more closely at what the under 12
and 12-17 year old demographics are using on the Web.

< 12 yrs Like Entertainment; TV Networks Dominate

The above table is ranked according to percentage of <12 yrs in
the audience, so the sites listed aren't necessarily the largest ones.
Also as it's a British study, somewhat predictably the BBC has the 2
sites with the largest audience. Despite those caveats, one trend is
crystal clear here: most of the most popular sites for under 12's come from television.
These brands dominate the list of top websites for this age group:
Nick, Cartoon Network, the BBC's CBBC and CBeebies and Disney
International. So the Internet, for under 12s, is very much about
entertainment and unsurprisingly TV networks use the Net to extend
their brands.

It's
interesting also to note that there is potentially big money for
startups targeting kids, in terms of acquisitions by the big tv
networks. Just last year Disney paid US$700M to acquire virtual world Club Penguin,
one of the sites listed above. And needless to say, kids love it. RWW
reader Richard Lusk says that "my daughter (12 yrs old) LIVES on Club
Penguin." Many other friends of RWW listed Club Penguin too (see list
below).

The site at the top of the list, with 32% of UK Unique Audience Under 12, is Swedish fashion community site Stardoll. At this site, users can dress up and play with dolls virtually. Membership is free and the company states that most of their users are girls between the ages of 7 and 17. Stardoll says that it has around 16M 20M users [Update: Stardoll contacted us to say that they passed 20M members last week]. It's had about $10M
in funding so far from the likes of Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital
Partners, so it is another example of how big the Internet market for
kids is.

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