The Club Penguin Times is a weekly online-only publication
with a readership of about 6.7 million monthly users of a Disney-owned
social network and virtual, Club Penguin.
The popular site, which Disney purchased last August for a whopping
$350 million, has been visited by more than 12 million kids ages 6-14.
While the news may be based in fantasy, their model is similar to
what many real papers are using to attract more readers online,
incorporating social networking devices and encouraging interactivity.
And one of the more successful features on the site is their
user-submitted content, which includes 30,000 daily submissions from
the pre-teen demographic.
This sounds like the perfect little hot spot for advertisers, right?
Well, neither the site nor the paper have advertising, which rely
solely on a premium service subscription fees and proceeds from an
online store.
And of course the real question is whether or not these kids who
care more about igloos and ice fishing will ultimately translate over
into real-world newspaper readers interested in politics and the
economy.
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